12 Best Chinese Dishes
Chinese Dishes If you need help figuring out where to start, it can be difficult to introduce your taste buds to the world of traditional Chinese cuisine in China due to its diverse and highly varied cuisine across different regions. We looked into traditional recipes and spoke with a Chinese cuisine expert to find out which ones are the best for newcomers.
Traditional Chinese Dishes
Fried Rice
Chinese fried rice is a full meal that can feed a whole family. Rice is an essential ingredient in Chinese dishes. Anything from vegetables (carrots, peas, and onions) to proteins (pork, chicken, and shrimp) can be included in the mixture of ingredients. Dinner is a filling and healthy dish. For the best-fried rice, use leftover rice—it’s also very easy and quick to prepare at home.
Stinky Tofu
Stinky Tofu The stronger the smell of fermented tofu, also known as stinky tofu, the better it tastes. Similar to cheese, tofu is fermented for several months after being brined in a mixture of fermented milk, vegetables, meat, and flavors. Depending on the region, there are several ways to prepare it: cold, steamed, stewed, or deep-fried, with soy and chili sauces on the side.
Chow Mein
Noodles are a staple in Chinese cooking, aside from rice. Chow mein comes in a plethora of variations, much like fried rice. Make this simple dinner for the whole family if you’re a busy parent. Additionally, cooked spaghetti can be used to make the dish in place of traditional Chinese egg noodles or chow mein noodles.
Chinese Hamburger
We never would have thought of a hamburger as anything other than a pita-like bun stuffed with tender braised pork, but it tastes great anyhow. From Shaanxi in northwest China, street food has been around since the Qin dynasty (c. 221 B.C. to 207 B.C.), and some even claim that it is the original hamburger. The meat is seasoned with over twenty different spices.
Scallions Pancakes
These savory pancakes don’t have maple syrup instead. So, they’re more akin to incredibly chewy flatbread with scallion and sesame oil bits mixed in. They are offered as street food, in restaurants, and both frozen and fresh in supermarkets. They are pan-fried, so the crispy outside and the tender inside are perfectly balanced.
Kung Pao Chicken
It’s also a genuine, traditional dish that many Chinese restaurants serve. The person who is perhaps the most popular Chinese chicken dish outside of China. Sichuan peppercorns give the authentic version of the spicy stir-fried chicken dish, which is fragrant, spicy, and slightly numbing. The dish is native to the Sichuan province in southwest China, though you’ve certainly had the Westernized version. The O.G. is fairly simple to replicate at home if you want to avoid the Americanized copycat.
Mapo Tofu
Mapo tofu is a Sichuanese tofu, beef, and fermented bean paste dish that you may have heard of or even tried. However, Westernized versions of the dish tend to be much less spicy than the traditional version, which is heavily spiced with Sichuan peppercorns and chile oil. According to origin stories, the name translates as “pockmarked old woman’s bean curd,” since it was allegedly created by an elderly woman with pockmarks. It has a lot of heat, strong flavors, and textural contrast. It has it all.
Char Siu
Char siu is, in theory, a method of seasoning and cooking barbecued meat, especially pork. Given that the Cantonese dish is prepared on a skewer in an oven or over a fire, its name translates to “fork roasted.” For pork belly, butt, or loin, the seasoning nearly always includes hoisin sauce, soy sauce, honey, five-spice powder, and red processed bean curd, which gives the dish a unique scarlet color. If you haven’t started salivating yet, char siu tastes great on its own, over noodles, or inside baozi.
Noodles with Fried Sauce
These chewy, thick wheat noodles, also known as cumian, are used to make these “fried sauce noodles” from the Shandong province. Zhejiang sauce, or another sauce, depending on where you are in China, is a rich concoction of fermented soybean paste and ground pork. It is sold almost everywhere in the nation, including in fine dining restaurants and street vendors.
Chinese Dumplings
A thinner dough than baozi is used to make jiaozi, a type of dumpling stuffed with meat and vegetables. Boiling, steaming, pan-frying, deep-frying, or even serving them in soup are some of the various ways they can be prepared. The little savory parcels are regarded as a lucky charm. Although they’re consumed year-round, they’re particularly well-liked during the Lunar New Year.
Wontons Soup
“Among the most genuine Chinese dumplings are wontons.” The wontons themselves are formed from a thin, square dumpling wrapper that, depending on the area, can be filled with pork, fish, shrimp, or a combination of these (Yinn Low’s recipe calls for shrimp). There are often noodles and cabbage mixed in with the wontons, and the broth itself is a rich mixture of aromatics, pork, chicken, and Chinese ham.
Peking Duck
The most delicious way to enjoy duck, a dish from Beijing, is to have Peking duck. A wrapper filled with salad and hoisin sauce encases crispy roasted duck that has been sliced into small pieces. You really can’t make Peking duck at home because it’s seasoned, dried for a full day, and cooked in an open-air oven called a hung oven. However, we do suggest trying it at a traditional Chinese restaurant. (Traditionally, it is carved and served in three courses: pancakes, bean sauce, cucumbers, skin, meat, and bones in a broth).
Summary
Chinese Dishes is well known for its wide range of ingredients and flavors. Chinese dishes offer a wide variety of flavors and textures, from spicy stir-fries to hearty noodle soups. Every dish is designed to balance tastes such as sweet, sour, salty, and spicy, with an emphasis on fresh vegetables, meats, and fragrant spices. Chinese food attracts the senses with its daring and well-balanced combinations, whether it’s the intense heat of Sichuan cuisine or the delicate subtlety of Cantonese culinary arts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the traditional dish of China?
One of China’s most ancient culinary traditions, zongzi, is typically served during the festival known as the Dragon Boat Festival. It is also, made up of a bamboo leaf roll stuffed with sweet beans, small pieces of meat, and sticky rice. Usually, the parcels are boiled or steam-cooked. Zongzi typically have a cylindrical shape.
Are Chinese dishes spicy?
Some Chinese areas are popular all over the world for their spicy dishes. These places share Texas’s renown for barbecue. People in these areas love spicy food and incorporate it into their daily lives regularly. Their fiery fare is as ubiquitous as hamburgers in the United States!
Why is Chinese food so popular?
for the huge range of flavors and textures it offers. The spicy Sichuan meals and the sweet and savory Cantonese cuisine offer something for almost every palate. Chinese food appeals to a broad spectrum of palates because of its diversity of flavors.
Why is food so expensive in China?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that by mid-2022. So, China will possess 69% of the world’s corn reserves, 60% of its rice reserves, and 51% of its wheat reserves. These reserves are thought to be at a “historically high level” by China itself, which is one reason driving up food prices worldwide.
What food has the most spice?
Known as the world’s spiciest dish, phaal Curry requires diners to sign a form before use (basically, to prevent them from suing the restaurant if something goes wrong).
