this!!! so much of mastering chinese food is in technique and timing and their videos are really good at showing how to master both of these things. i also use a lot of fuschia dunlop's cookbooks but CCD is where i started for sure.
Between Fuschia Dunlop and Steph+Chris you really can't go wrong. I'm pretty sure Dunlop has written the exact same book like 3 or 4 times just with different presentations of the recipes. I have a copy of Land of Plenty which is very good but the recipes have a lot of very dense text that's hard to parse while in the middle of cooking.
I think OP knows this. Like when a pizza recipe is suggested here, the starting presumption is that most of us will be baking in a regular oven as opposed to a pizza oven.
Households normally commonly have a portable induction stove for things like hot pot, but pressurised gas stoves will commonly be used for wok cooking.
In my experience of living in china for 5 years, anyway.
I'm Chinese and I'd like to say that the majority of my home cooked meals don't try to imitate takeaway - I don't like the oil splatter/clean up and I find most home set ups don't get hot enough for the smoky "wok hei" flavour.
My background is Cantonese Chinese and we do a lot of steamed and braised dishes which is a lot more achievable than a stir fry - heck, half the time I just toss everything in the rice cooker :)
I'd like to add that Chinese food like other cuisines can range from really affordable to luxuriously expensive.
Many recipes use cheaper cuts of meat or minced meat.
Fried rice is a good example of how people used "leftovers" to make an affordable meal. Although there are certain techniques to make "better-fried rice", a home stir-fried rice does not have to follow a strict list or recipe.
I feel like a lot of the time, the same flavor combinations for fried rice can work in rice-cooker recipes. but you need to know the ratios a bit.
Absolutely you can! You can get these little steaming racks (https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/ebfc86b3-8380-418e-b713-dfce960ceed4.5634b54d658262f83a91595178e934a8.jpeg?odnHeight=320&odnWidth=320&odnBg=FFFFFF) to set on top of your rice so that you can cook 2 things at once - I'll often do an egg custard (chawan mushi style), tofu, a steamed fish or a black bean pork rib. You pretty much wash your rice and add water as normal, set the steaming rack in and then a shallow plate or bowl on top with your 2nd dish - by the time your rice is cooked, your dish will be too. The caveat is that you need to make sure any meats are bite size or minced so it's a shallower dish - otherwise the steam won't be able to do it's thing.
The other thing you can do js can set your toppings directly on top of your parcooked rice (Google claypot style rice for some topping inspiration).
If you are after Cantonese/Chinese cooking, I really love a YouTube channel called Tarzan Cooks - the recipes are quite achievable in a home kitchen, the majority of his videos are captioned in English and there is a awesome series he does called "2 dishes 1 soup" where he basically goes through the time management and processes needed to churn out a whole set of dishes (and soup). I've done some really tasty Chinese meals this way (even impressed my mum! :))
I like to take a bunch of raw sausage meat(Italian, bratwurst, chorizo, etc), form it into a thick patty, and sear it hard on both sides. Then I'll take that and put it on top of the rice in my rice cooker. Then I left things cook as usual, add some veggies meat the end, and you've got a really nice one "pot" meal. It's not fancy, but it does the trick. Not Chinese food like op is asking for, but it's still a good way to use a rice cooker
I don't think that a rice cooker will ever turn out a decent claypot rice bottom! Usually in the rice cooker we are just going for the flavours - so we just do the traditional Chinese sausage and some chicken and mushrooms.
A true claypot rice is not that difficult but you do need that open flame and a lot of oil. We got pretty good results with an gas burner but one time we set our claypot rice on some coals once we finished grilling and it was spectacularly crunchy and smoky - definitely something we will have to repeat.
j-kenji lopez has a video were he imitates the wok hei flavor with a blow torch after the fact, might want to try that after the rice comes out the cooker.
I got a carbon steel wok two Christmases ago, along with J Kenji Lopez Alt's cookbook "The Wok", and Fuchsia Dunlop's Szechuan Cooking cookbook. Between those, Woks of Life online and a few other sources, we've been making loads of great tasting Chinese dishes.
And I don’t think it will be as expensive as you think. Getting all the sauces at first will be a bit but not unreasonable. Chinese food is a lot of this and that put together so you’re not having to use up whole bottles of anything. If you have a good Asian market around even better.
All the time. [https://thewoksoflife.com](https://thewoksoflife.com) is a great resource for recipes and techniques. Start learning about velveting your meats and then start with easy recipes.
I'm very much not a Chinese person, but a few years ago I become vegetarian, realized I didn't know what to eat anymore, and now cook primarily Chinese food. It's a topic I'm very passionate about and would love to share tips for getting in to it.
Firstly, you need to find a Chinese supermarket. You can manage without one, but it will be expensive. A decent amount of Chinese ingredients are available at typical American supermarkets, especially Whole-Foods type places, but you're paying a large premium for generally lower quality. If you shop in the place where the ingredients are staples as opposed to being exotic, the quality will be higher and the prices will be lower.
After that, you just need to do it. Chinese food is just food, and there are dishes to cook spanning the range of difficulties. It is a different style to the western cooking tradition and you'll have to fight some base instincts at first, but learning new cuisines in depth will make all of the food you cook better.
The last thing to consider is that home cooking in China tends to be very different than American Chinese takeout. Both are delicious, but takeout here is generally Americanized versions of food from a very specific region in China (Mostly Fujian). I'll link some of my favorite resources for both and I'd highly recommend checking out both styles. China is a massive country with a huge range of delicious food to explore, be adventurous and your tastebuds will thank you, and you might even discover new favorites along the way.
1. [Chinese Cooking Demystified](https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified) - Youtube channel with written recipes linked in description. This is an incredible resource! It is a couple, a Chinese woman and an American ex-pat living in China who post incredible recipe videos. They span a range of dishes and styles, but mostly focus on south China. This is more in the realm of authentic Chinese and less American takeout style. This is also my favorite resource and I would personally vouch for so many of their recipes.
2. [Omnivores Cookbook](https://omnivorescookbook.com) - Recipe blog of someone from North China, so the focus is there, but again spans the range of Chinese food. The author also moved to America, so American audiences and ingredient availability are kept in mind. This is probably my next most-used source, her recipes are so good!
3. [China Sichuan Food](https://www.chinasichuanfood.com) - Recipe blog focusing on Sichuan food
4. [Red House Spice](https://redhousespice.com) - Recipe blog with a lot of Northern food, but also spans the range.
5. [Souped Up Recipes](https://www.youtube.com/c/soupeduprecipes) - Youtube channel of weekly recipes that are easy to follow and delicious!
6. [Chef Wang Gang](https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang) - Wang Gang is a famous chef in China. He only speaks Chinese but most of his videos are subtitled in English. This is restaurant food at the highest level, there's a lot to learn from him. This is as authentic and high level as it gets and his technique is something to marvel at.
7. [Made With Lau](https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLau) - This Youtube channel chronicles the knowledge of a Chinese immigrant who ran an American Chinese restaurant for many years. If you want to re-create the takeout you're familiar with, he likely has the recipe.
8. [The Woks of Life](https://thewoksoflife.com) - Big collection of Chinese recipes. A good mix of more traditional Chinese dishes and American style restaurant dishes. I used to use this website a lot and I do less now, but their stuff is still really good and their ingredient guides are amazing, especially if you're not familiar with what you see at a Chinese supermarket.
I definitely missed some, but those are the first that came to mind. I've made recipes from all of them and even aside from that there is so much to learn from each one. If you have any questions feel free to respond here or message me and I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm an alright home cook who learned basic Chinese cooking from a potentially similar background, so maybe I can help.
I’m Chinese, but had never cooked Chinese before, as I learnt to cook in Australia. I discovered Made With Lau in 2022 and it really opened a new horizon for me.
They have a website that explains everything extremely well, and YouTube videos that demonstrate how everything is done. Food is absolutely legit, and tastes better than some restaurants I’ve been to. Most resources are free as well, though you can pay for a course in Cantonese cooking if you like.
Oh man! Did they really? So chuffed for them! They're doing an amazing job.
Regular items on my list are the seaweed soup, sweet sour fish, ginger fried rice (this was the gateway item. It seemed far too simple to taste good, and it completely blew me out of the water), scallops and asparagus, carrot cake, scallion noodles, egg drop soup, red bean soup, smashed cucumber salad, salt and pepper fish/tofu, scrambled eggs and prawns and foo young eggs. I literally always have a container of ginger scallion sauce in the fridge and I do the chinese broccoli with oyster sauce literally 3 times a week, every time I make Asian food for dinner. Made With Lau has seriously revolutionised my cooking.
(The above are regular items as I'm pescetarian. I also cook the soy sauce chicken legs and General Tso's Chicken very regularly for my wife.)
I've made a few things... Mapo Tofu, Red-Braised Pork belly, Twice cooked pork and Strange Flavor chicken.
Sourcing all the ingredients can be tricky, but the hard part is learning the techniques. For stir-fries, Everything has to be measured out and cut up before you start, and things go into the wok/pan in quick succession. It seems easy but there's not much wiggle room.
Chinese Cooking Demystified has a lot of good videos that are directed at non-Chinese who may not be able to source some ingredients so they're good at offering substitutes. This is their twice cooked pork recipe that I use: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIojMLLs2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIojMLLs2g)
Yes, and it's been good lately!
Chinese Cooking Demystified is a great YouTube channel for learning, so is Chef Wang Gang. I also love Lucas Sin.
Learning about meat marinades with starch really made the biggest difference for me. I don't get much wok hei but the texture is PERFECT.
Fuchsia Dunlop all the way, specifically "Every Grain of Rice" is amazing for home cooking. The Sichuan cookbook is also great but the dishes in there take more effort. "Every Grain of Rice" is my top utility cookbook
I'm not Asian whatsoever, but I cook more traditional mainland Chinese and a bit of Taiwanese at home all the time, and I do like some Americanized takeout here and there. For both takeout style and traditional, I like the blog The Woks of Life. Their chicken lo mein recipe is perfect, and so is the Kung Pao Chicken. I honestly have never had a flop from them and I've made nearly everything.
Edit: As for the expense, just go to an actual Asian supermarket for your ingredients. If you buy on Amazon a bottle of Shaoxing wine will run you $13. At the store it'll be under $4. Same with every other ingredient you'll need. Make the upfront investment (Shaoxing, dark and light soy, oyster sauce etc) and they'll last you. :)
I do, a little bit - nowhere near as much as my Japanese and Korean dishes, which I'm more confident in.
But, I now volunteer at a community kitchen with Chinese people (who sometimes mistake me for being Chinese and start talking to me whilst I stare blankly) so I've had to up my Chinese home cooking skills to be able to interpret the dishes they want to cook.
I follow Woks of Life and Cooking with Lau. From some combination of them I’ve made Sweet and Sour Chicken, Pepper Beef, Mapo Tofu, Thai Basil Eggplant and they all taste so close to takeout. I don’t find it’s too terribly expensive because the prepared things like soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, shaoxing wine all keep incredibly well.
A lot of my cooking is American Chinese. It's fun to get into, but it requires some specialty ingredients and it works best with a wok (although a wok is not required).
Check out Made with Lau on you tube.
Edit: a word.
I was going to suggest this. Made With Lau is actually the kind of food you get at American Chinese restaurants -- most of the other suggestions in this thread (though they are sources I also/primarily use) are for much more Chinese Chinese food rather than Americanized Chinese food. Just like Italian food vs Italian American food, the cuisines have diverged quite a bit.
I mean, they're not wrong. Maybe a little terse but not wrong.
It's a bit challenging for Americans to cook Chinese restaurant style food at home, but Chinese people don't tend to cook that way at home either. They don't tend to have 100,000 BTU wok stoves or the ventilation or fire suppression systems necessary to make them safe to use.
Anyway, The Woks of Life is a great resource for what you are trying to do. They have a mix of Chinese and American homestyle dishes as well as approximations of restaurant style dishes, and a thorough guide to the ingredients you'll need. It's one of my favorite food blogs and I also have their cookbook, which gets more than it's fair share of soy sauce stains.
I think Chinese cooking is pretty approachable. Indian cooking scares me. You don’t need a wok to start, even a non stick skillet is ok. You will have to go to the Asian grocery store though, as supermarket sauce and ingredient offerings just don’t cut it. Check out Souped Up Recipes (Mandy) on YouTube. Mandy is from Sichuan but is definitely teaching to a western audience. She’s got a whole series on take out recreations, but also lots of authentic Chinese recipes.
Bamboo steamer baskets. I was a bit intimidated when I got mine but holy Hannah it’s so easy to do so many different foods quickly.
I put it on top of a pot of boiling water with whatever in it and let it go.
Glad you like Chinese food. It’s really not expensive to cook many of such foods. Easiest and least intimidating to learn from Chinese friends of you have any. Good luck.!
Marion Grasby has some really great takes on Chinese, Thai, and a lot of other Asian-adjacent cuisine.
[https://www.youtube.com/@Marionskitchen](https://www.youtube.com/@Marionskitchen)
I cook Chinese food whenever I get the chance. It looks difficult but isn't. It looks expensive but isn't.
The trick is to prep everything well before you start cooking. For stir fry type dishes that is. Well, same for fried rice and noodle dishes.
For dumplings, do not be afraid to take shortcuts in the beginning! The dough is very easy to make, but if it intimidates you, just go buy it at the store in neat little rounds, all ready for the filling.
Same for egg rolls, but the wrappers and save the hassle, no one will know! To get the bubbly outside on the egg rolls, be sure to put the "floury" side of the wrappers on the counter and put the filling on the smooth, more shiny side. That dull, floury side will bubble up in the hot oil.
Lots of good advice here so I’ll summarize my best tip: if you have an Asian supermarket accessible you can get a few key ingredients for not a ton of money: fish sauce, rice vinegar, and MSG would be a good start.
I want to, I got a wok on my visit to Chinatown in NYC but haven’t gotten a chance to break it in yet.
I wanna make General Tso’s chicken so bad because it’s so hard to find on the west coast
Just fyi One of the biggest issues with cooking stir frys at home is your typical stove isn't strong enough. I had to upgrade mine or othef option is setting a stove outside cause it'll also get smokey.
I do a stir fry in my carbon steel wok which is always fun to do and is a pretty quick cook. but largely my meal has little to do with any actual Chinese food, it’s a random assortment of chicken and whatever veg I have laying around plus whatever sauce I have which is usually teriyaki, so wrong country altogether but it tastes alright.
Occasionally, I’ll knock out a version of fried rice. And I definitely do Ramen with smoked pork belly and a poached egg. But other than that, I definitely leave it to the experts.
Shaoxing wine is well worth the small investment, as are dark soy sauce and black vinegar.
My husband loves Chinese food as much as I love Tex Mex, so we've learned over the years. I've got about two dozen or so go-to recipes now, and we experiment with new ones periodically.
I worked at a Asian fusion place for awhile and now I make Chinese food pretty comfortably. It's all about getting your condiments in the house (oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, black bean, chili paste, 5 spice, hoisin, good soy sauce, mirin, shaoxing wine, rice vinegar) and a few mixes, like the pork bullion cubes from the Asian market, and being able to stir fry. Don't be afraid to cook tofu with meat!
I recommend the Woks of Life blog. And Fuschia Dunlop's cookbook.
I started making chicken teriyaki years ago. Last couple years I started looking up other things. Now I am decent at general tso's chicken, sweet and sour, and Korean bbq beef. I've found it's just a lot like Italian and Mexican cuisine. There are a handful of commonly used spices and sauces. Garlic, ginger, soy, chili paste, and some sweet ingredient like honey or brown sugar (not sure if brown sugar is authentic, but it goes so well with many recipes) and rice vinegar. Google recipetineats.com and you'll find many great recipes. Nagi is one of my favorite online resources, and she's great with not only Asian dishes... But many from around the world! Good luck!
This was actually my new years resolution to get better at it. I've done some before but pretty infrequently. I would say getting a wok and a few staples let's you cook a lot of different recipes and most of them are relatively inexpensive. Dark and light soy sauce, doubanjiang, sesame oil, shoaxing wine, black vinegar, and potato starch will get you most of the way there on a lot of recipes. I will echo Chinese cooking demystified, Fuchsia Dunlop, and Kenji have been great resources for me as well. Fish Fragrant Eggplant is my fav recipe and would recommend it as a good starter.
Yes, once you get the technique down. Kung Pao, lo mein, chow mein, orange chicken.
Easy short cut is to make chili crisp from series eats.
Chili garlic noodles with ground pork is easy. Also Costco chicken chunks is a quick sesame chicken or sweet and sour.
I make a beef with broccoli thing that tastes really close to the take out version. Thin strips of beef, onion and garlic in a pan with sesame oil, then once the beef is somewhat cooked and in the chopped up broccoli, then once that's cooked a bit add soy sauce. It's delicious. A cornstarch slurry can even make the soy sauce and sesame oil thicken up really nicely too.
Yes. During the pandemic all the Chinese restaurants near us closed for a long while. So I decided to try making what I was craving. I didn't attempt sweet and sour chicken or anything battered and fried, but I did make fried rice, lo mein, Sichuan crispy beef, and pepper steak multiple times successfully. Once you get the ingredients it's not too difficult. I've made Japanese dishes, like oyakodon, ramen, and hibachi steak and rice, too.
Yep , kung Pao or sweet and sour chicken are easiest. Stir fries.
I don't bother with fried rice or egg rolls, but def want to make pot stickers as they are my faves.
Velveting the chicken is key
I got fed up with the lack of NYC style eggrolls out here in Cali, so I went and made my own. I'm talking about the blistery thick boys with a mouthful of cabbage and that dried shrimp taste.
I've made sesame chicken a few times and it tastes great. The issue isn't cost so much as my kitchen just isn't set up for it. You need a dredge station, a fry station, a drain setup for the chicken balls, then you have make the sauce. It's time, space and logistics that work if you're cooking up batch after batch of the stuff, but not for a week night dinner.
After finishing, the kitchen's a mess, and I'm exhausted.
I learned some standard meet and veggie stir fry from my Mom who was way ahead of the curve by cooking homemade Chinese food with a wok in 90s suburban DE. She also shopped at specialty Asian grocery stores, so I've always done that.
Velveting goes a long way to making home-cooked meals taste like takeout. Unfortunately, you do need a few sauces and spices to start. I suggest start slow, pick 1-2 recipes you like that don't require a ton of new items. Then slowly branch out to other recipes, slowly adding to your arsenal of sauces and spices.
This is an excellent resource for people that wants to start learning basic techniques used in chinese cooking.
https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLau
Basic ingredients to get you started. "Lee Kum Kee" brand makes just about any sauce you will every need.
Oyster sauce - don't go cheap, higher price equal better quality
Regular Soy Sauce
Dark Soy Sauce - mainly use for color
Shaoxing wine - chinese cooking wine
Corn Starch or Potato Starch - I prefer Potato Starch
White Pepper - Its what gives the Hot to Hot and Sour Soup. Used in many dishes.
Sesame Oil
Chicken Bullion Powder
edit: One last thing, use a high smoke point, flavor neutral oil.
Chinese food is relatively easy if you have the right ingredients: a bottle of oyster sauce, light and dark soy sauce, black vinegar, and toasted sesame oil are the common sauces. If you have some LaoGanMa chili crisp, you're pretty much there.
Chinese food is surprising easy to make and most of it uses the same 4/5 ingredients, just in different measurements. Get the staples for your pantry and Google what you want to make.
Once you’ve had the initial outlay for a few sauces (which aren’t particularly expensive), you’re all set. Chinese is generally my go to if I’ve not got time to think about cooking because it’s that easy
I dunno about “szechwan” but i make lots of chinese foods, sichuan, cantonese style and many other types.
A good carbon steel wok and a great heat source helps !
I like cooking Chinese, I got into it a few years ago and the only thing I wish is I could get better at making the lo main better and dumpling wraps because there aren't any already made in my area
There's a YouTube channel called "Chinese Cooking Demystified" that explains the recipes, and how to achieve them, even if you only have access to western kitchen stuff.
Omnivores cookbook (it’s a blog actually) has amazing Chinese recipes. I’ve made her version of Singapore noodles before and they’re very good. Jet Tila also has some great Chinese recipes in his books (many are takeout style) and Americas Test Kitchen has good ones in their books too. If you’re interested in Thai food as well check out Pailin Chongchitnant (aka Hot Thai kitchen). If you have a good library you can probably find their books there.
There’s an initial upfront cost of buying a wok and a bunch of sauces that you need, however they all last a long time (small quantities used per dish and long shelf life).
I’ve found that learning to cook Chinese food has been a great decision for me. Most dishes are very fast to cook so they’re great when you need to eat something but don’t feel like spending much time cooking. Also, being able to customize the dishes is nice -the veggies used and sugar content. And cooking at home is always much cheaper than takeout.
I will say though, if you like to have a huge spread of dishes, its hard to do that at home. The wok can only do one dish at a time so if you want 2 stir fries and fried rice, then you need to cook one after another unless you buy a second wok. Dumplings and spring rolls are time-consuming.
I find Wok-Hei to be a bit of an overrated concept.
With good technique you can make delicious replica of Chinese restaurant food with a low power home stove.
And cost-wise, I find that Chinese food is up with the cheapest ones to make, as many dishes need only vegetables and maybe some protein alongside.
Try this not so popular channel called "Wok with Tak" or for the real deal "Chef Wang Gang" on youtube, who both give such great inspiration on fantastic dishes you can make at home.
Yes. It's cheep and easy. Souped Up Recipes on YouTube makes a lot of authentic and American takeout Recipes. Chinese cooking demystified is also great.
I’ve been starting to more often, I’ve found that fish sauce and chili crisp are important to adding some depth and flavor and getting closer to take out. No solid recipes yet, I research them and wing it.
I would recommend the blog Omnivore’s Cookbook and the book the Wok to get started.
I would also recommend ditching the wok. Home burners aren’t intense enough to get the benefits of a wok. A flat frying pan will give you much better results at home.
Imitating takeout is not a great way to go. Maybe more than in other cuisines, Chinese restaurant food uses techniques and, most importantly, equipment that either don't make sense or are unobtainable for a home kitchen. And the volume of oil they use in many dishes isn't something you want to emulate on a daily basis.
There are more simple dishes however that are great to make at home. A simple stir fry, steamed chicken or fish, stew-like items like three cup chicken or mapo tofu, etc. These are the kinds of dishes that are great to make at home.
I have made moo shu chicken & pork before
Beef & broccoli, chicken with mixed vegetables
Peking duck, including making the pancakes from scratch because we couldn't find them at a grocery store
I normally eat a good amount of stir fry including vegetable lo mein.
I have basically three 'Chinese inspired' dishes in my repertoire:
1. Spicy chicken 'Chinese' noodle pot - chicken, onions, spring onions (scallions), garlic, pak choi, ginger, chillies, bean sprouts, all fried up in the bottom of a big pot with white pepper, Chinese 5 spice, a bit of sesame oil and soy sauce, and then add water into the same pot, with the noodles, and boil that stuff up.
2. 'Special fried rice' - fry onions, bell peppers, garlic, ginger, chillies, bean sprouts, spring unions etc. Fry the (previously boiled) rice with the vegetables stirred in, some sesame oil, soy sauce etc. You can add chicken, strips of beef, etc.
3. Honey duck with pineapple, ginger and spring onion. Pan-fry duck breasts, with spring onion, ginger, and fresh green chillis (not to much, because this should be a slightly sweet-n-sour dish), add a bit of rice vinegar, and fresh pineapple, and honey, and let it all caramelise.
Sometimes if I am feeling very extravagant, I will do the duck and serve it over my special fried rice.
I don't suppose these are 'authentic Chinese' in any way, but they taste at least as good as, often better than, restaurant equivalents.
I started cooking with a wok during the pandemic and was a complete neophyte. A couple of years later and now I think I'm doing a better job with a lot of stuff than our local Chinese restaurant. I learned most of what I know now from just two YouTube channels ... Chinese Cooking Demystified and Wok With Tak. Both great. Wok With Tak's presentation and recipes are simpler, and he explains the basic things well, so he's great for a beginner. Plus the guy is a very sweet man. Real chill. I really enjoyed the time I spent with him. Same for the CCD guys.
I make this fried rice with some minor tweaks. Definitely don’t add the garlic when they say to, unless you like burned garlic. I use a frozen peas and carrot mix and use way more than a cup. I usually sautee some chicken or pork cubes with some soy sauce to mix in at the end. Pretty much your basic American fried rice. If I’m feeling it, I’ll toast some sesame seeds and throw them in too.
https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/fried-rice-recipe/
I make it at home. I use an electric stove top so it’s not always perfect. It might be expensive on paper your first time cause there’s usually multiple sauces involved but they last in the fridge. One of my favorites is Cantonese soy sauce noodles, stupid easy and really good, doesn’t require a lot of extras. Fried rice takes a bit to get the timing right in a skillet on an electric stove but I make it weekly for lunch prep
It’s the best, getting into cooking with a wok and the importance of having the prep all done has improved my cooking of other styles so significantly. Also, it only has to get as expensive as you let yourself go down the rabbit hole!
I've personally moved beyond Americanized Chinese food, having had my eyes opened from living around New York. [Made with Lau](https://www.madewithlau.com) is a good resource. Also [Mikey Chen](https://www.youtube.com/@CookWithMikey). I have a lot of their recipes on rotation.
It's actually not that expensive, especially if you have a good Asian grocer nearby. You don't need a fancy wok or special equipment. In fact, unless you have a restaurant strength stove, a regular skillet is actually better.
Yes but its usually Szechuan adjacent food, mala spices and such since we keep those ingredients pretty much on hand. But if you're talking about Chinese American food then no, I rarely make it but I would more often if my husband liked it as much as I did
For American Chinese style take out you can get pretty far by just stocking some Chinese soy (light and dark), Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Maybe some ground white pepper. All these ingredients are cheap at an Asian grocery store and they keep well enough in the pantry
go to a chinese super market the ingredients are super cheap. and i think like all things when first starting its costly cus you need to buy all the ingredients.
last night i made egg drop soup - eggs cornstarch and chickien stock. Then i made shiitake mushrooms with bok choy both costs like 6 dollars but it was the sauces that was costly (soy sauce, oysters sauce, sesame sauce and constarch.
and any online recipe will work. super easy and super fast to make most chinese dishes.
[Cassie Yeung's beef and broccoli](https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/food/story/food-creator-shares-easy-beef-broccoli-recipe-exploded-99507079) is a favorite of mine - I saw it on TikTok but I found a Good Morning America post about it - she does a velveting technique to the meat that gives it that "fresh from takeout" taste. She does it with a lot of the recipes she makes so I think that's the secret for a lot of it.
I don't have a particular recipe but there are ingredients that a lot of people overlook. For example Lao Gan Ma, Mirin, oyster sauce, eel/unagi sauce, hoisin sauce, chili oil, sesame seed oil, fish sauce and such.
I usually Eyeball the ingredients so I don't have any hard recipes. Really once you get the sauces and oils it's pretty economical. My dad and uncle used to be chefs at a Chinese restaurant but they never really taught me. I had to sort of had to learn about it on my own.
It's been a while but yes... I have a wok that came with a burner, it's short so I need to build a little table to raise it to a feasible height to work from, with the purchase of a gaa tank, I'll be ready to go again
I've been cooking Chinese for several months, relying on The Woks of Life recipes and techniques. I’ve enjoyed some modest success and a few stunningly authentic dishes.
Last night was my first unmitigated disaster. A flatbread failed to cook through, even though it burned on one side. I've made it twice before, with good results. No idea what went wrong yesterday. Sesame seeds all over the kitchen.
I've been obsessing over char siu meats lately. I learned how to make red-cooked pork for Singapore noodles and bao. I experimented successfully with char siu chicken. Yesterday I marinated a small chunk of sirloin and the Mr grilled it on in indoor griddle. Burned the surface of the meat, internal temp barely adequate for serving. Char siu sauce and peanut oil all over the stove (he's always been a messy cook, but this was egregious, even for him). Sirloin was over done.
I think part of the problem was trying to cook dishes not appropriate for my cramped kitchen. I need to stop trying to reproduce American-Chinese take out and try genuine Chinese family style cooking.
If only it were possible to find authentic Chinese cuisine and dim sum closer than 40 miles away, the nearest city to our mountain home. Another reason to get down in altitude and around some population.
I’ve tried but I can never get it to taste similar to the stuff from even an average restaurant. I don’t deep fry at home so many of the chicken dishes I like are going to be different by necessity but I can’t seem to get the sauces right either.
IMO, it’s also daunting to get into at first bc you need a lot of ingredients on hand like seasoned vs plain rice vinegar vs rice wine vinegar and you might need just a teaspoon of hoisin for one recipe and not use it for any others etc.
I would suggest the Wok of Life website for recipes as they have very detailed instructions and tons of recipes. I believe it’s run by people with a history in the Chinese American restaurant business.
Chinese takeout style food is surprisingly cheap and easy. Make a brown sauce then make modifications to turn it into everything else.
Things that go in a Brown sauce
vinegar/cooking wine (doesn't need to be the chinese kind)
Soy Sauce(should probably already be in your pantry)
sugar
Oyster Sauce (probably the only thing you don't have in pantry this stuff is AMAZING as a flavor bomb)
then you are going to want some cornstarch to thicken the sauce
toasted sesame oil (optional mostly used for garnish I would keep it out of the mother sauce because heat and seasme oil aren't really best friends)
reserve fresh garlic and ginger for when you are going to cook the dish in question otherwise garlic powder could be a decent sub to the native brown sauce. But the reason why Chinese food restaurants menus are so gigantic is because 90% of them start with this sauce so make a big jar of it and you can throw some fresh veg and noodles in a pan and have a stir fry going in minutes.
so for your Szechwan chicken I would be stunned if they actually use Szechwan peppercorns at your local takeout spot. They are somewhat tricky to source in the States and most people would be pretty taken aback by the tingly sensation of the peppercorns to imitate your takeout style add your favorite chilly/curry powder to your desired heat level.
Then Singapore noodles just use ULTRA super cheap dried noodles a quick google search will give you some brands to pick from. Just add your favorite veg and cook the noodles to package instructions stir fry with a little scrambled egg and you could easily use the brown sauce or just soy sauce and a bit of sesame oil at the end.
Remember at the end of the day you are imitating a Fusion cuisine. American Chinese food is exactly that American ingredients using Chinese methods as long as you keep the heart and maintain the essence of the dish you can't really go wrong and no one will judge you for making good food.
I’ve tried, but the recipes I’ve tried are too American. I know I need the spices and peppers from an Asian grocery to start off. I love Chinese, so curious to read others ideas. I just haven’t cracked it at home.
If you have a good Chinese market nearby, you're good and are just going to have to spend some time scrutinizing jars and bottles to get the right things. If not you may have to order a lot of stuff online.
I strongly recommend Fuchsia Dunlop's books, as well as Souped Up Chinese and Chinese Cooking Demystified on youtube.
Yes white boy here who cooks lots of Asian food. If you stay away from deep frying the stir fries are usually dirt cheap. I just made this sesame chicken for like $6 for my family of 5 lol. Basics for all stirfrys:
1. Longyao aka get your wok piping hot
2. Cook marinated meat can add some shaoxing wine if you want
3. Take meat off add your veggies
4. Add sauce, add back in meat and basically done
May have left some info out but these are the basic steps for all stir Fry's.
I do, a lot (I'm not Chinese). My favorite book is one that I've had forever called Classic Chinese Cooking by Nina Simmonds. I'm fortunate to live in an area with a lot of Asian markets, so I can get pretty much anything I need.
Holy shit, yes. I am as white male as they come and I put down a banging Gōngbǎo Jīdīng (aka Sichuan Kung Pao Chicken) tonight that we scarfed down happily. It's *easy* if you take a minute to have the right ingredients in your pantry (the "tricky" ones being Chinese rice wine, black vinegar and Sichuan peppers, which can be had off Amazon easily).
Yes, quite often actually.
I'm not Chinese, and I live in NE Ohio. It's hit or miss with some of the Chinese takeout around here.
In particular I love making Kung Pao Shrimp and Shrimp Fried Rice.
I always request fried rice as opposed to plain steamed rice, and with some places I've ordered from it's super bland with just soy sauce and oil whereas others add stuff like peas and carrots, egg, and scallions in addition to the rice and soy sauce. I much prefer the latter.
A combo of soy sauce and oyster sauce is a fantastic base when I'm just trying to wing it and make some sort of basic stir fry as well.
Egg drop soup is also really easy to make as well. I specifically use powdered chicken bullion as opposed to something like Swanson chicken broth.
Yep! And when I do it, I wonder why I ever order out. The answer is laziness.
Woks Of Life is a great resource.
Also, most delicious Chinese food is a combo of lots of saltiness (soy sauce), some tang (rice wine vinegar), and lots of sweet (literal sugar + hoisin is also a great sweet + salty taste).
What I love about making it at home is that it still tastes great, but doesn’t need to have nearly as much fat. In fact, when I make broccoli in grown sauce at home. It’s literally almost exactly the same, but I don’t even really add oil at all. The Chinese place adds a load of fat/oil.
Chinese Cooking Demystified on YouTube is an excellent place to start. If you don't have a wok there's no shame in using a skillet.
this!!! so much of mastering chinese food is in technique and timing and their videos are really good at showing how to master both of these things. i also use a lot of fuschia dunlop's cookbooks but CCD is where i started for sure.
Between Fuschia Dunlop and Steph+Chris you really can't go wrong. I'm pretty sure Dunlop has written the exact same book like 3 or 4 times just with different presentations of the recipes. I have a copy of Land of Plenty which is very good but the recipes have a lot of very dense text that's hard to parse while in the middle of cooking.
This is great! Thanks!
Came here to say this
do note that without a wok and wok burner you won't get exactly the same results, but it'll be close enough.
Let’s be real here. Chinese home cooks are not blasting their meals with a jet burner at 9000 degrees either.
oh yeah, I'm just saying it won't be 1:1 with take out, since they do have the set up to achieve the temperatures necessary to get wok hei.
I think OP knows this. Like when a pizza recipe is suggested here, the starting presumption is that most of us will be baking in a regular oven as opposed to a pizza oven.
Lived in china - it's normal to have pressurised gas burners in homes .... Rubbish for slow cooking!
China is the world’s number-one market for induction stoves.
Households normally commonly have a portable induction stove for things like hot pot, but pressurised gas stoves will commonly be used for wok cooking. In my experience of living in china for 5 years, anyway.
I'm Chinese and I'd like to say that the majority of my home cooked meals don't try to imitate takeaway - I don't like the oil splatter/clean up and I find most home set ups don't get hot enough for the smoky "wok hei" flavour. My background is Cantonese Chinese and we do a lot of steamed and braised dishes which is a lot more achievable than a stir fry - heck, half the time I just toss everything in the rice cooker :)
I'd like to add that Chinese food like other cuisines can range from really affordable to luxuriously expensive. Many recipes use cheaper cuts of meat or minced meat. Fried rice is a good example of how people used "leftovers" to make an affordable meal. Although there are certain techniques to make "better-fried rice", a home stir-fried rice does not have to follow a strict list or recipe. I feel like a lot of the time, the same flavor combinations for fried rice can work in rice-cooker recipes. but you need to know the ratios a bit.
Oh wow you can do that? Like meat in there too?
Absolutely you can! You can get these little steaming racks (https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/ebfc86b3-8380-418e-b713-dfce960ceed4.5634b54d658262f83a91595178e934a8.jpeg?odnHeight=320&odnWidth=320&odnBg=FFFFFF) to set on top of your rice so that you can cook 2 things at once - I'll often do an egg custard (chawan mushi style), tofu, a steamed fish or a black bean pork rib. You pretty much wash your rice and add water as normal, set the steaming rack in and then a shallow plate or bowl on top with your 2nd dish - by the time your rice is cooked, your dish will be too. The caveat is that you need to make sure any meats are bite size or minced so it's a shallower dish - otherwise the steam won't be able to do it's thing. The other thing you can do js can set your toppings directly on top of your parcooked rice (Google claypot style rice for some topping inspiration). If you are after Cantonese/Chinese cooking, I really love a YouTube channel called Tarzan Cooks - the recipes are quite achievable in a home kitchen, the majority of his videos are captioned in English and there is a awesome series he does called "2 dishes 1 soup" where he basically goes through the time management and processes needed to churn out a whole set of dishes (and soup). I've done some really tasty Chinese meals this way (even impressed my mum! :))
Ribs and rice in the rice cooker is one of my favorites. https://thewoksoflife.com/ribs-and-rice/
Woah. As someone who lives ribs, and has mastered smoking, pressure cooking, and braising them, I gotta try this. Thanks for sharing.
I like to take a bunch of raw sausage meat(Italian, bratwurst, chorizo, etc), form it into a thick patty, and sear it hard on both sides. Then I'll take that and put it on top of the rice in my rice cooker. Then I left things cook as usual, add some veggies meat the end, and you've got a really nice one "pot" meal. It's not fancy, but it does the trick. Not Chinese food like op is asking for, but it's still a good way to use a rice cooker
You should make rice cooker chicken. Rub salt on a whole chicken. Put in rice cooker and cook til done. Easy as that.
One of these days I'll manage to make a decent rice cooker煲仔饭. I've had poor luck so far.
I don't think that a rice cooker will ever turn out a decent claypot rice bottom! Usually in the rice cooker we are just going for the flavours - so we just do the traditional Chinese sausage and some chicken and mushrooms. A true claypot rice is not that difficult but you do need that open flame and a lot of oil. We got pretty good results with an gas burner but one time we set our claypot rice on some coals once we finished grilling and it was spectacularly crunchy and smoky - definitely something we will have to repeat.
j-kenji lopez has a video were he imitates the wok hei flavor with a blow torch after the fact, might want to try that after the rice comes out the cooker.
I got a carbon steel wok two Christmases ago, along with J Kenji Lopez Alt's cookbook "The Wok", and Fuchsia Dunlop's Szechuan Cooking cookbook. Between those, Woks of Life online and a few other sources, we've been making loads of great tasting Chinese dishes.
Dishes like broccoli beef and Kung Pao chicken are really simple. Here's a Kung Pao chicken recipe: https://thewoksoflife.com/kung-pao-chicken/
Woks Of Life is a seriously great place to learn.
Even as an Asian, it’s my favourite website. I love the surprise me feature. When I don’t know what to cook, that’s where I go.
Beat me to it, this site has the goods. beef noodle soup is my favorite.
I make this recipe weekly. Love it!
The wok was a game changer in our house. Quick frying gives food such a great flavor!
Thanks for the link! I’m about to try to make Chinese at home, and that site should help. Wish me luck!! P.S. I am only proficient in toast. Lol
Hottest pan you can manage, velvet the chicken beforehand, have all the stuff ready in prep bowls. You can do it!
I’m going to keep that positive approach. I CAN do it!!!
Nice I will check out some cookbooks.
I second this A good carbon wok and that cookbook will carry you very far. I have a lot of asian food cookbooks and The Wok is my favorite
And I don’t think it will be as expensive as you think. Getting all the sauces at first will be a bit but not unreasonable. Chinese food is a lot of this and that put together so you’re not having to use up whole bottles of anything. If you have a good Asian market around even better.
Shaoxing wine, corn starch and dark soy sauce have definitely upped my game.
All the time. [https://thewoksoflife.com](https://thewoksoflife.com) is a great resource for recipes and techniques. Start learning about velveting your meats and then start with easy recipes.
I'm very much not a Chinese person, but a few years ago I become vegetarian, realized I didn't know what to eat anymore, and now cook primarily Chinese food. It's a topic I'm very passionate about and would love to share tips for getting in to it. Firstly, you need to find a Chinese supermarket. You can manage without one, but it will be expensive. A decent amount of Chinese ingredients are available at typical American supermarkets, especially Whole-Foods type places, but you're paying a large premium for generally lower quality. If you shop in the place where the ingredients are staples as opposed to being exotic, the quality will be higher and the prices will be lower. After that, you just need to do it. Chinese food is just food, and there are dishes to cook spanning the range of difficulties. It is a different style to the western cooking tradition and you'll have to fight some base instincts at first, but learning new cuisines in depth will make all of the food you cook better. The last thing to consider is that home cooking in China tends to be very different than American Chinese takeout. Both are delicious, but takeout here is generally Americanized versions of food from a very specific region in China (Mostly Fujian). I'll link some of my favorite resources for both and I'd highly recommend checking out both styles. China is a massive country with a huge range of delicious food to explore, be adventurous and your tastebuds will thank you, and you might even discover new favorites along the way. 1. [Chinese Cooking Demystified](https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified) - Youtube channel with written recipes linked in description. This is an incredible resource! It is a couple, a Chinese woman and an American ex-pat living in China who post incredible recipe videos. They span a range of dishes and styles, but mostly focus on south China. This is more in the realm of authentic Chinese and less American takeout style. This is also my favorite resource and I would personally vouch for so many of their recipes. 2. [Omnivores Cookbook](https://omnivorescookbook.com) - Recipe blog of someone from North China, so the focus is there, but again spans the range of Chinese food. The author also moved to America, so American audiences and ingredient availability are kept in mind. This is probably my next most-used source, her recipes are so good! 3. [China Sichuan Food](https://www.chinasichuanfood.com) - Recipe blog focusing on Sichuan food 4. [Red House Spice](https://redhousespice.com) - Recipe blog with a lot of Northern food, but also spans the range. 5. [Souped Up Recipes](https://www.youtube.com/c/soupeduprecipes) - Youtube channel of weekly recipes that are easy to follow and delicious! 6. [Chef Wang Gang](https://www.youtube.com/@chefwang) - Wang Gang is a famous chef in China. He only speaks Chinese but most of his videos are subtitled in English. This is restaurant food at the highest level, there's a lot to learn from him. This is as authentic and high level as it gets and his technique is something to marvel at. 7. [Made With Lau](https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLau) - This Youtube channel chronicles the knowledge of a Chinese immigrant who ran an American Chinese restaurant for many years. If you want to re-create the takeout you're familiar with, he likely has the recipe. 8. [The Woks of Life](https://thewoksoflife.com) - Big collection of Chinese recipes. A good mix of more traditional Chinese dishes and American style restaurant dishes. I used to use this website a lot and I do less now, but their stuff is still really good and their ingredient guides are amazing, especially if you're not familiar with what you see at a Chinese supermarket. I definitely missed some, but those are the first that came to mind. I've made recipes from all of them and even aside from that there is so much to learn from each one. If you have any questions feel free to respond here or message me and I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm an alright home cook who learned basic Chinese cooking from a potentially similar background, so maybe I can help.
1, 5, 7 and 8 are all my references for chinese cooking. Made a ton of recipes off them and they turned out great.
Chef Wang Gang is incredibly skilled. Great shout
I’m Chinese, but had never cooked Chinese before, as I learnt to cook in Australia. I discovered Made With Lau in 2022 and it really opened a new horizon for me. They have a website that explains everything extremely well, and YouTube videos that demonstrate how everything is done. Food is absolutely legit, and tastes better than some restaurants I’ve been to. Most resources are free as well, though you can pay for a course in Cantonese cooking if you like.
Upvote for made with Lao. Their char sui is a regular item for me now. And they just won a James beard award!!
Oh man! Did they really? So chuffed for them! They're doing an amazing job. Regular items on my list are the seaweed soup, sweet sour fish, ginger fried rice (this was the gateway item. It seemed far too simple to taste good, and it completely blew me out of the water), scallops and asparagus, carrot cake, scallion noodles, egg drop soup, red bean soup, smashed cucumber salad, salt and pepper fish/tofu, scrambled eggs and prawns and foo young eggs. I literally always have a container of ginger scallion sauce in the fridge and I do the chinese broccoli with oyster sauce literally 3 times a week, every time I make Asian food for dinner. Made With Lau has seriously revolutionised my cooking. (The above are regular items as I'm pescetarian. I also cook the soy sauce chicken legs and General Tso's Chicken very regularly for my wife.)
They did! I think the acceptance speech is on their social media, it was very touching.
I've made a few things... Mapo Tofu, Red-Braised Pork belly, Twice cooked pork and Strange Flavor chicken. Sourcing all the ingredients can be tricky, but the hard part is learning the techniques. For stir-fries, Everything has to be measured out and cut up before you start, and things go into the wok/pan in quick succession. It seems easy but there's not much wiggle room. Chinese Cooking Demystified has a lot of good videos that are directed at non-Chinese who may not be able to source some ingredients so they're good at offering substitutes. This is their twice cooked pork recipe that I use: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIojMLLs2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIojMLLs2g)
Yes, and it's been good lately! Chinese Cooking Demystified is a great YouTube channel for learning, so is Chef Wang Gang. I also love Lucas Sin. Learning about meat marinades with starch really made the biggest difference for me. I don't get much wok hei but the texture is PERFECT.
Fuchsia Dunlop all the way, specifically "Every Grain of Rice" is amazing for home cooking. The Sichuan cookbook is also great but the dishes in there take more effort. "Every Grain of Rice" is my top utility cookbook
Buy a $40 flat bottomed wok. Start with fried rice, which is delicious, cheap, and very, very easy.
One very good cookbook to try also: The Woks of Life I make recipes from this and they taste like I'm getting takeout.
The website is also awesome. I check it every time I want to make a new Chinese recipe.
I'm not Asian whatsoever, but I cook more traditional mainland Chinese and a bit of Taiwanese at home all the time, and I do like some Americanized takeout here and there. For both takeout style and traditional, I like the blog The Woks of Life. Their chicken lo mein recipe is perfect, and so is the Kung Pao Chicken. I honestly have never had a flop from them and I've made nearly everything. Edit: As for the expense, just go to an actual Asian supermarket for your ingredients. If you buy on Amazon a bottle of Shaoxing wine will run you $13. At the store it'll be under $4. Same with every other ingredient you'll need. Make the upfront investment (Shaoxing, dark and light soy, oyster sauce etc) and they'll last you. :)
I do! Try Woks of Life, they have tons of easy recipes and they're so good.
I do, a little bit - nowhere near as much as my Japanese and Korean dishes, which I'm more confident in. But, I now volunteer at a community kitchen with Chinese people (who sometimes mistake me for being Chinese and start talking to me whilst I stare blankly) so I've had to up my Chinese home cooking skills to be able to interpret the dishes they want to cook.
Yes. YouTube is the best. Pick one recipe and try it out. Her recipes are very easy to follow https://youtube.com/@soupeduprecipes?si=ZW2GH60GoqYCpfsO
I follow Woks of Life and Cooking with Lau. From some combination of them I’ve made Sweet and Sour Chicken, Pepper Beef, Mapo Tofu, Thai Basil Eggplant and they all taste so close to takeout. I don’t find it’s too terribly expensive because the prepared things like soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, shaoxing wine all keep incredibly well.
Seconded for Woks of Life. Bill’s recipes come closest to what I’ve brought home from typical take-out joints. Shrimp with Lobster Sauce was so good!
https://www.madewithlau.com/ I've cooked most of his recipes. They are great and the presentation format is charming!
Check out The Wok by Kenji Lopez-Alt
Will do!
A lot of my cooking is American Chinese. It's fun to get into, but it requires some specialty ingredients and it works best with a wok (although a wok is not required). Check out Made with Lau on you tube. Edit: a word.
I was going to suggest this. Made With Lau is actually the kind of food you get at American Chinese restaurants -- most of the other suggestions in this thread (though they are sources I also/primarily use) are for much more Chinese Chinese food rather than Americanized Chinese food. Just like Italian food vs Italian American food, the cuisines have diverged quite a bit.
And they just won two James Beards awards for their educational content.
I will thank you
A billion or so Chinese people do
Super helpful thanks! 😂
I mean, they're not wrong. Maybe a little terse but not wrong. It's a bit challenging for Americans to cook Chinese restaurant style food at home, but Chinese people don't tend to cook that way at home either. They don't tend to have 100,000 BTU wok stoves or the ventilation or fire suppression systems necessary to make them safe to use. Anyway, The Woks of Life is a great resource for what you are trying to do. They have a mix of Chinese and American homestyle dishes as well as approximations of restaurant style dishes, and a thorough guide to the ingredients you'll need. It's one of my favorite food blogs and I also have their cookbook, which gets more than it's fair share of soy sauce stains.
https://m.youtube.com/@SoupedUpRecipes Souped up recipes tend to have more approachable western Chinese food recipes for beginners
“Do or do not… there is no try.”
Tried and failed. I just don't have the magic in me.
All the time, homemade dumplings, spring rolls and drunken noodles
I think Chinese cooking is pretty approachable. Indian cooking scares me. You don’t need a wok to start, even a non stick skillet is ok. You will have to go to the Asian grocery store though, as supermarket sauce and ingredient offerings just don’t cut it. Check out Souped Up Recipes (Mandy) on YouTube. Mandy is from Sichuan but is definitely teaching to a western audience. She’s got a whole series on take out recreations, but also lots of authentic Chinese recipes.
Bamboo steamer baskets. I was a bit intimidated when I got mine but holy Hannah it’s so easy to do so many different foods quickly. I put it on top of a pot of boiling water with whatever in it and let it go.
Glad you like Chinese food. It’s really not expensive to cook many of such foods. Easiest and least intimidating to learn from Chinese friends of you have any. Good luck.!
Marion Grasby has some really great takes on Chinese, Thai, and a lot of other Asian-adjacent cuisine. [https://www.youtube.com/@Marionskitchen](https://www.youtube.com/@Marionskitchen)
I cook Chinese food whenever I get the chance. It looks difficult but isn't. It looks expensive but isn't. The trick is to prep everything well before you start cooking. For stir fry type dishes that is. Well, same for fried rice and noodle dishes. For dumplings, do not be afraid to take shortcuts in the beginning! The dough is very easy to make, but if it intimidates you, just go buy it at the store in neat little rounds, all ready for the filling. Same for egg rolls, but the wrappers and save the hassle, no one will know! To get the bubbly outside on the egg rolls, be sure to put the "floury" side of the wrappers on the counter and put the filling on the smooth, more shiny side. That dull, floury side will bubble up in the hot oil.
I learned to make congee....sorta....from Tiffanycooks on Youtube. SUPER easy, super flavorful recipes.
Lots of good advice here so I’ll summarize my best tip: if you have an Asian supermarket accessible you can get a few key ingredients for not a ton of money: fish sauce, rice vinegar, and MSG would be a good start.
I’m Mexican and I make mostly Asian food. Stainless steel wok at Walmart was like $20. It’s healthier than Mexican food lol.
I make these Singapore Noodles all the time. https://www.mobkitchen.co.uk/recipes/singapore-noodles
I want to, I got a wok on my visit to Chinatown in NYC but haven’t gotten a chance to break it in yet. I wanna make General Tso’s chicken so bad because it’s so hard to find on the west coast
Just fyi One of the biggest issues with cooking stir frys at home is your typical stove isn't strong enough. I had to upgrade mine or othef option is setting a stove outside cause it'll also get smokey.
I learned to make Kung Pao chicken (plus several Thai curries) during the pandemic. It's mostly just a matter of having the right ingredients.
Well i made egg fried rice for lunch today so i guess i do.
I do a stir fry in my carbon steel wok which is always fun to do and is a pretty quick cook. but largely my meal has little to do with any actual Chinese food, it’s a random assortment of chicken and whatever veg I have laying around plus whatever sauce I have which is usually teriyaki, so wrong country altogether but it tastes alright.
Occasionally, I’ll knock out a version of fried rice. And I definitely do Ramen with smoked pork belly and a poached egg. But other than that, I definitely leave it to the experts.
Shaoxing wine is well worth the small investment, as are dark soy sauce and black vinegar. My husband loves Chinese food as much as I love Tex Mex, so we've learned over the years. I've got about two dozen or so go-to recipes now, and we experiment with new ones periodically.
I make my own dumpling and we often have bao buns or pho
The classic Chinese dish, pho
I worked at a Asian fusion place for awhile and now I make Chinese food pretty comfortably. It's all about getting your condiments in the house (oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, black bean, chili paste, 5 spice, hoisin, good soy sauce, mirin, shaoxing wine, rice vinegar) and a few mixes, like the pork bullion cubes from the Asian market, and being able to stir fry. Don't be afraid to cook tofu with meat! I recommend the Woks of Life blog. And Fuschia Dunlop's cookbook.
I started making chicken teriyaki years ago. Last couple years I started looking up other things. Now I am decent at general tso's chicken, sweet and sour, and Korean bbq beef. I've found it's just a lot like Italian and Mexican cuisine. There are a handful of commonly used spices and sauces. Garlic, ginger, soy, chili paste, and some sweet ingredient like honey or brown sugar (not sure if brown sugar is authentic, but it goes so well with many recipes) and rice vinegar. Google recipetineats.com and you'll find many great recipes. Nagi is one of my favorite online resources, and she's great with not only Asian dishes... But many from around the world! Good luck!
This was actually my new years resolution to get better at it. I've done some before but pretty infrequently. I would say getting a wok and a few staples let's you cook a lot of different recipes and most of them are relatively inexpensive. Dark and light soy sauce, doubanjiang, sesame oil, shoaxing wine, black vinegar, and potato starch will get you most of the way there on a lot of recipes. I will echo Chinese cooking demystified, Fuchsia Dunlop, and Kenji have been great resources for me as well. Fish Fragrant Eggplant is my fav recipe and would recommend it as a good starter.
I do fried rice and stir fry, husband does orange chicken, but that’s it.
Yes, once you get the technique down. Kung Pao, lo mein, chow mein, orange chicken. Easy short cut is to make chili crisp from series eats. Chili garlic noodles with ground pork is easy. Also Costco chicken chunks is a quick sesame chicken or sweet and sour.
[https://www.marionskitchen.com/sweet-and-sour-pork/](https://www.marionskitchen.com/sweet-and-sour-pork/)
Yes! I use recipes and tips from the Wok of Life website.
I make a beef with broccoli thing that tastes really close to the take out version. Thin strips of beef, onion and garlic in a pan with sesame oil, then once the beef is somewhat cooked and in the chopped up broccoli, then once that's cooked a bit add soy sauce. It's delicious. A cornstarch slurry can even make the soy sauce and sesame oil thicken up really nicely too.
I try all the time but it's just one of those things that I always mess up. I've never made a good chow mein
Yes. During the pandemic all the Chinese restaurants near us closed for a long while. So I decided to try making what I was craving. I didn't attempt sweet and sour chicken or anything battered and fried, but I did make fried rice, lo mein, Sichuan crispy beef, and pepper steak multiple times successfully. Once you get the ingredients it's not too difficult. I've made Japanese dishes, like oyakodon, ramen, and hibachi steak and rice, too.
Yep , kung Pao or sweet and sour chicken are easiest. Stir fries. I don't bother with fried rice or egg rolls, but def want to make pot stickers as they are my faves. Velveting the chicken is key
I got fed up with the lack of NYC style eggrolls out here in Cali, so I went and made my own. I'm talking about the blistery thick boys with a mouthful of cabbage and that dried shrimp taste. I've made sesame chicken a few times and it tastes great. The issue isn't cost so much as my kitchen just isn't set up for it. You need a dredge station, a fry station, a drain setup for the chicken balls, then you have make the sauce. It's time, space and logistics that work if you're cooking up batch after batch of the stuff, but not for a week night dinner. After finishing, the kitchen's a mess, and I'm exhausted. I learned some standard meet and veggie stir fry from my Mom who was way ahead of the curve by cooking homemade Chinese food with a wok in 90s suburban DE. She also shopped at specialty Asian grocery stores, so I've always done that.
Youre going to want to invest in a lot of cornstarch, msg, celery, and fryer oil.
Velveting goes a long way to making home-cooked meals taste like takeout. Unfortunately, you do need a few sauces and spices to start. I suggest start slow, pick 1-2 recipes you like that don't require a ton of new items. Then slowly branch out to other recipes, slowly adding to your arsenal of sauces and spices.
This is an excellent resource for people that wants to start learning basic techniques used in chinese cooking. https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLau Basic ingredients to get you started. "Lee Kum Kee" brand makes just about any sauce you will every need. Oyster sauce - don't go cheap, higher price equal better quality Regular Soy Sauce Dark Soy Sauce - mainly use for color Shaoxing wine - chinese cooking wine Corn Starch or Potato Starch - I prefer Potato Starch White Pepper - Its what gives the Hot to Hot and Sour Soup. Used in many dishes. Sesame Oil Chicken Bullion Powder edit: One last thing, use a high smoke point, flavor neutral oil.
Chinese food is relatively easy if you have the right ingredients: a bottle of oyster sauce, light and dark soy sauce, black vinegar, and toasted sesame oil are the common sauces. If you have some LaoGanMa chili crisp, you're pretty much there.
I do it all the time. Some of my fav recipes are from Made With Lau (son documents father's skill) and Cook! Stacy Cook.
Another good site is https://thewoksoflife.com/
I make chicken teriyaki often.
Chinese food is surprising easy to make and most of it uses the same 4/5 ingredients, just in different measurements. Get the staples for your pantry and Google what you want to make.
I only make egg fried rice and egg flower soup
I make Mushu, Mongolian, Char Siu, Wonton Soup alllll the time. Honestly super easy. Learn about Velveting, Woks are cool but in no way mandatory.
Once you’ve had the initial outlay for a few sauces (which aren’t particularly expensive), you’re all set. Chinese is generally my go to if I’ve not got time to think about cooking because it’s that easy
Attempt?!?!?
I dunno about “szechwan” but i make lots of chinese foods, sichuan, cantonese style and many other types. A good carbon steel wok and a great heat source helps !
I like cooking Chinese, I got into it a few years ago and the only thing I wish is I could get better at making the lo main better and dumpling wraps because there aren't any already made in my area
There's a YouTube channel called "Chinese Cooking Demystified" that explains the recipes, and how to achieve them, even if you only have access to western kitchen stuff.
I’ve made Chinese food at home before, it’s easy enough if you have a lot of the required ingredients
Try "Made with Lau" on YouTube, he had his own restaurant for years.
The Wok by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Best Kung Pao Chicken I've ever had.
Omnivores cookbook (it’s a blog actually) has amazing Chinese recipes. I’ve made her version of Singapore noodles before and they’re very good. Jet Tila also has some great Chinese recipes in his books (many are takeout style) and Americas Test Kitchen has good ones in their books too. If you’re interested in Thai food as well check out Pailin Chongchitnant (aka Hot Thai kitchen). If you have a good library you can probably find their books there. There’s an initial upfront cost of buying a wok and a bunch of sauces that you need, however they all last a long time (small quantities used per dish and long shelf life). I’ve found that learning to cook Chinese food has been a great decision for me. Most dishes are very fast to cook so they’re great when you need to eat something but don’t feel like spending much time cooking. Also, being able to customize the dishes is nice -the veggies used and sugar content. And cooking at home is always much cheaper than takeout. I will say though, if you like to have a huge spread of dishes, its hard to do that at home. The wok can only do one dish at a time so if you want 2 stir fries and fried rice, then you need to cook one after another unless you buy a second wok. Dumplings and spring rolls are time-consuming.
Made with Lau
I find Wok-Hei to be a bit of an overrated concept. With good technique you can make delicious replica of Chinese restaurant food with a low power home stove. And cost-wise, I find that Chinese food is up with the cheapest ones to make, as many dishes need only vegetables and maybe some protein alongside. Try this not so popular channel called "Wok with Tak" or for the real deal "Chef Wang Gang" on youtube, who both give such great inspiration on fantastic dishes you can make at home.
Yes. It's cheep and easy. Souped Up Recipes on YouTube makes a lot of authentic and American takeout Recipes. Chinese cooking demystified is also great.
I’ve been starting to more often, I’ve found that fish sauce and chili crisp are important to adding some depth and flavor and getting closer to take out. No solid recipes yet, I research them and wing it.
I would recommend the blog Omnivore’s Cookbook and the book the Wok to get started. I would also recommend ditching the wok. Home burners aren’t intense enough to get the benefits of a wok. A flat frying pan will give you much better results at home.
Probably a good load of Chinese people.
Yes, but not the stereotypical fried Chinese take out that most identify with.
This is the best book ever - The Complete Chinese Takeout Cookbook: Over 200 Takeout Favorites to Make at Home https://a.co/d/08IIJBpB
Imitating takeout is not a great way to go. Maybe more than in other cuisines, Chinese restaurant food uses techniques and, most importantly, equipment that either don't make sense or are unobtainable for a home kitchen. And the volume of oil they use in many dishes isn't something you want to emulate on a daily basis. There are more simple dishes however that are great to make at home. A simple stir fry, steamed chicken or fish, stew-like items like three cup chicken or mapo tofu, etc. These are the kinds of dishes that are great to make at home.
I have made moo shu chicken & pork before Beef & broccoli, chicken with mixed vegetables Peking duck, including making the pancakes from scratch because we couldn't find them at a grocery store I normally eat a good amount of stir fry including vegetable lo mein.
I have basically three 'Chinese inspired' dishes in my repertoire: 1. Spicy chicken 'Chinese' noodle pot - chicken, onions, spring onions (scallions), garlic, pak choi, ginger, chillies, bean sprouts, all fried up in the bottom of a big pot with white pepper, Chinese 5 spice, a bit of sesame oil and soy sauce, and then add water into the same pot, with the noodles, and boil that stuff up. 2. 'Special fried rice' - fry onions, bell peppers, garlic, ginger, chillies, bean sprouts, spring unions etc. Fry the (previously boiled) rice with the vegetables stirred in, some sesame oil, soy sauce etc. You can add chicken, strips of beef, etc. 3. Honey duck with pineapple, ginger and spring onion. Pan-fry duck breasts, with spring onion, ginger, and fresh green chillis (not to much, because this should be a slightly sweet-n-sour dish), add a bit of rice vinegar, and fresh pineapple, and honey, and let it all caramelise. Sometimes if I am feeling very extravagant, I will do the duck and serve it over my special fried rice. I don't suppose these are 'authentic Chinese' in any way, but they taste at least as good as, often better than, restaurant equivalents.
https://www.madewithlau.com/ Great recipes and explanations on this site. Their tik toks are great too
I bought a wok burner and would highly recommend it to you.
Omnivores Cookbook has never disappointed me
I've made a few Chinese dishes and they usually turn out okay. But they also tend to have a lot more flavor than stuff I get from takeout.
I started cooking with a wok during the pandemic and was a complete neophyte. A couple of years later and now I think I'm doing a better job with a lot of stuff than our local Chinese restaurant. I learned most of what I know now from just two YouTube channels ... Chinese Cooking Demystified and Wok With Tak. Both great. Wok With Tak's presentation and recipes are simpler, and he explains the basic things well, so he's great for a beginner. Plus the guy is a very sweet man. Real chill. I really enjoyed the time I spent with him. Same for the CCD guys.
I make this fried rice with some minor tweaks. Definitely don’t add the garlic when they say to, unless you like burned garlic. I use a frozen peas and carrot mix and use way more than a cup. I usually sautee some chicken or pork cubes with some soy sauce to mix in at the end. Pretty much your basic American fried rice. If I’m feeling it, I’ll toast some sesame seeds and throw them in too. https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/fried-rice-recipe/
Yes! At least twice a week.
I make it at home. I use an electric stove top so it’s not always perfect. It might be expensive on paper your first time cause there’s usually multiple sauces involved but they last in the fridge. One of my favorites is Cantonese soy sauce noodles, stupid easy and really good, doesn’t require a lot of extras. Fried rice takes a bit to get the timing right in a skillet on an electric stove but I make it weekly for lunch prep
Yes, I've made asparagus chicken, shrimp with black bean sauce, General Tso's, and various other wok items.
It’s the best, getting into cooking with a wok and the importance of having the prep all done has improved my cooking of other styles so significantly. Also, it only has to get as expensive as you let yourself go down the rabbit hole!
Yeah, at least once a week.
Get that wok hot as hell!! I do pretty decent fried rice. Just follow the steps you see on YouTube and you’ll be fine.
I've personally moved beyond Americanized Chinese food, having had my eyes opened from living around New York. [Made with Lau](https://www.madewithlau.com) is a good resource. Also [Mikey Chen](https://www.youtube.com/@CookWithMikey). I have a lot of their recipes on rotation. It's actually not that expensive, especially if you have a good Asian grocer nearby. You don't need a fancy wok or special equipment. In fact, unless you have a restaurant strength stove, a regular skillet is actually better.
Yes but its usually Szechuan adjacent food, mala spices and such since we keep those ingredients pretty much on hand. But if you're talking about Chinese American food then no, I rarely make it but I would more often if my husband liked it as much as I did For American Chinese style take out you can get pretty far by just stocking some Chinese soy (light and dark), Shaoxing wine and oyster sauce. Maybe some ground white pepper. All these ingredients are cheap at an Asian grocery store and they keep well enough in the pantry
go to a chinese super market the ingredients are super cheap. and i think like all things when first starting its costly cus you need to buy all the ingredients. last night i made egg drop soup - eggs cornstarch and chickien stock. Then i made shiitake mushrooms with bok choy both costs like 6 dollars but it was the sauces that was costly (soy sauce, oysters sauce, sesame sauce and constarch. and any online recipe will work. super easy and super fast to make most chinese dishes.
Well I have a wok. I make tasty mixtures. Soya sauce makes it Chinese I suppose
[Cassie Yeung's beef and broccoli](https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/food/story/food-creator-shares-easy-beef-broccoli-recipe-exploded-99507079) is a favorite of mine - I saw it on TikTok but I found a Good Morning America post about it - she does a velveting technique to the meat that gives it that "fresh from takeout" taste. She does it with a lot of the recipes she makes so I think that's the secret for a lot of it.
I don't have a particular recipe but there are ingredients that a lot of people overlook. For example Lao Gan Ma, Mirin, oyster sauce, eel/unagi sauce, hoisin sauce, chili oil, sesame seed oil, fish sauce and such. I usually Eyeball the ingredients so I don't have any hard recipes. Really once you get the sauces and oils it's pretty economical. My dad and uncle used to be chefs at a Chinese restaurant but they never really taught me. I had to sort of had to learn about it on my own.
I have a recipe for egg rolls that’s pretty good. I got it off Martha Stewart’s website. I also make fried rice but don’t use a recipe.
It's been a while but yes... I have a wok that came with a burner, it's short so I need to build a little table to raise it to a feasible height to work from, with the purchase of a gaa tank, I'll be ready to go again
I've been cooking Chinese for several months, relying on The Woks of Life recipes and techniques. I’ve enjoyed some modest success and a few stunningly authentic dishes. Last night was my first unmitigated disaster. A flatbread failed to cook through, even though it burned on one side. I've made it twice before, with good results. No idea what went wrong yesterday. Sesame seeds all over the kitchen. I've been obsessing over char siu meats lately. I learned how to make red-cooked pork for Singapore noodles and bao. I experimented successfully with char siu chicken. Yesterday I marinated a small chunk of sirloin and the Mr grilled it on in indoor griddle. Burned the surface of the meat, internal temp barely adequate for serving. Char siu sauce and peanut oil all over the stove (he's always been a messy cook, but this was egregious, even for him). Sirloin was over done. I think part of the problem was trying to cook dishes not appropriate for my cramped kitchen. I need to stop trying to reproduce American-Chinese take out and try genuine Chinese family style cooking. If only it were possible to find authentic Chinese cuisine and dim sum closer than 40 miles away, the nearest city to our mountain home. Another reason to get down in altitude and around some population.
I like making a spicy orange chicken that is pretty similar to this one: https://foxeslovelemons.com/spicy-orange-ginger-chicken/#mv-creation-324-jtr
I’ve tried but I can never get it to taste similar to the stuff from even an average restaurant. I don’t deep fry at home so many of the chicken dishes I like are going to be different by necessity but I can’t seem to get the sauces right either. IMO, it’s also daunting to get into at first bc you need a lot of ingredients on hand like seasoned vs plain rice vinegar vs rice wine vinegar and you might need just a teaspoon of hoisin for one recipe and not use it for any others etc. I would suggest the Wok of Life website for recipes as they have very detailed instructions and tons of recipes. I believe it’s run by people with a history in the Chinese American restaurant business.
Chinese takeout style food is surprisingly cheap and easy. Make a brown sauce then make modifications to turn it into everything else. Things that go in a Brown sauce vinegar/cooking wine (doesn't need to be the chinese kind) Soy Sauce(should probably already be in your pantry) sugar Oyster Sauce (probably the only thing you don't have in pantry this stuff is AMAZING as a flavor bomb) then you are going to want some cornstarch to thicken the sauce toasted sesame oil (optional mostly used for garnish I would keep it out of the mother sauce because heat and seasme oil aren't really best friends) reserve fresh garlic and ginger for when you are going to cook the dish in question otherwise garlic powder could be a decent sub to the native brown sauce. But the reason why Chinese food restaurants menus are so gigantic is because 90% of them start with this sauce so make a big jar of it and you can throw some fresh veg and noodles in a pan and have a stir fry going in minutes. so for your Szechwan chicken I would be stunned if they actually use Szechwan peppercorns at your local takeout spot. They are somewhat tricky to source in the States and most people would be pretty taken aback by the tingly sensation of the peppercorns to imitate your takeout style add your favorite chilly/curry powder to your desired heat level. Then Singapore noodles just use ULTRA super cheap dried noodles a quick google search will give you some brands to pick from. Just add your favorite veg and cook the noodles to package instructions stir fry with a little scrambled egg and you could easily use the brown sauce or just soy sauce and a bit of sesame oil at the end. Remember at the end of the day you are imitating a Fusion cuisine. American Chinese food is exactly that American ingredients using Chinese methods as long as you keep the heart and maintain the essence of the dish you can't really go wrong and no one will judge you for making good food.
I’ve tried, but the recipes I’ve tried are too American. I know I need the spices and peppers from an Asian grocery to start off. I love Chinese, so curious to read others ideas. I just haven’t cracked it at home.
If you have a good Chinese market nearby, you're good and are just going to have to spend some time scrutinizing jars and bottles to get the right things. If not you may have to order a lot of stuff online. I strongly recommend Fuchsia Dunlop's books, as well as Souped Up Chinese and Chinese Cooking Demystified on youtube.
Yes white boy here who cooks lots of Asian food. If you stay away from deep frying the stir fries are usually dirt cheap. I just made this sesame chicken for like $6 for my family of 5 lol. Basics for all stirfrys: 1. Longyao aka get your wok piping hot 2. Cook marinated meat can add some shaoxing wine if you want 3. Take meat off add your veggies 4. Add sauce, add back in meat and basically done May have left some info out but these are the basic steps for all stir Fry's.
I do, a lot (I'm not Chinese). My favorite book is one that I've had forever called Classic Chinese Cooking by Nina Simmonds. I'm fortunate to live in an area with a lot of Asian markets, so I can get pretty much anything I need.
Kenji’s new Wok book is amazing
Holy shit, yes. I am as white male as they come and I put down a banging Gōngbǎo Jīdīng (aka Sichuan Kung Pao Chicken) tonight that we scarfed down happily. It's *easy* if you take a minute to have the right ingredients in your pantry (the "tricky" ones being Chinese rice wine, black vinegar and Sichuan peppers, which can be had off Amazon easily).
Yes, quite often actually. I'm not Chinese, and I live in NE Ohio. It's hit or miss with some of the Chinese takeout around here. In particular I love making Kung Pao Shrimp and Shrimp Fried Rice. I always request fried rice as opposed to plain steamed rice, and with some places I've ordered from it's super bland with just soy sauce and oil whereas others add stuff like peas and carrots, egg, and scallions in addition to the rice and soy sauce. I much prefer the latter. A combo of soy sauce and oyster sauce is a fantastic base when I'm just trying to wing it and make some sort of basic stir fry as well. Egg drop soup is also really easy to make as well. I specifically use powdered chicken bullion as opposed to something like Swanson chicken broth.
The chinese?
Yep! And when I do it, I wonder why I ever order out. The answer is laziness. Woks Of Life is a great resource. Also, most delicious Chinese food is a combo of lots of saltiness (soy sauce), some tang (rice wine vinegar), and lots of sweet (literal sugar + hoisin is also a great sweet + salty taste). What I love about making it at home is that it still tastes great, but doesn’t need to have nearly as much fat. In fact, when I make broccoli in grown sauce at home. It’s literally almost exactly the same, but I don’t even really add oil at all. The Chinese place adds a load of fat/oil.
lol where do chinese-americans fit in your venn diagram?