Chinese Cooking Recipes - 5 Great Vegetables For Chinese Food

Chinese food is becoming more popular but the flavors of Chinese cooking recipes differ from other cuisines. One of the biggest conflicts is which vegetables work well in Chinese cooking.

Bamboo Shoots
Bamboo shoots are the edible roots of the bamboo plant which is found almost everywhere in Asia. It has a crunchy snap and a light flavor. It has a slightly sweet taste and can be found sliced in the Asian section of most supermarkets.

Broccoli
There are many kinds of broccoli but the most traditional is Chinese broccoli. It is different than normal broccoli because it is a leafy green broccoli. Normal broccoli is typically used in Chinese cooking recipes if Chinese broccoli can't be found.

Water Chestnuts
Water chestnuts are actually an aquatic vegetable. It has a crunchy texture and a slight nutty flavor. It is usually found canned either sliced or whole in the Asian isle of most supermarkets.

Baby Corn
Baby corn is a small corn on an edible cob. It is firm but gives easily when chewed. It has a very mild corn flavor. Baby corn is typically found in the canned vegetables isle of grocery stores.

Mung Bean Sprouts
Also known as bean sprouts and are readily available in the vegetable area of your supermarket. Bean sprouts are the white sprouts of the mung bean and have a crisp texture with a sweet flavor. The trick to cooking bean sprouts is to not cook them too long. Cooking them for 30 seconds in a hot stir-fry is the general rule.

More Vegetables

Chinese vegetables are sometimes a variety to the common vegetables we usually think of for our dishes but can be radically different. Chinese cooking recipes use a variety of vegetables which has increased as trade has increased. Check out Chinese Cooking Recipes for more ideas or visit http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-cooking-recipes-the-best-places-for-recipes-of-chinese-cooking for more information.

Chinese Cooking With a Wok - Mum's Cooking Secrets That Last a Lifetime

My mother was of the idea that a man's place was never in the kitchen, and this was ingrained into us as she shooed us out of the kitchen every time whenever we tried to get into the kitchen to see what was cooking. It might not have been the best or correct thing to do, and as a result, her children -the sons, including me, grew up not knowing how to cook until we were college going kids and had to live away from home and to start to cook and fend for ourselves.

Disadvantaged as we were in cooking for ourselves, it made us more aware of the beauty in mum's cooking. Mum's prepared food that was absolutely marvellous, both in taste and smell. Meals prepared by her were never ordinary. They were a delight to behold, a pleasure to consume - no matter how simple the dish was.

Now in her twilight years, mum can no longer cook for herself. She has bouts of amnesia, and old age has taken a severe toil on her. Dependent on others to cook and serve her meals, she can sometimes struggle to the kitchen and still manage to prepare a ten minute fast cooking instant noodle, much to our chagrin and anxiety. The doctor orders were not to let her near a stove for fear of a fit or a fall, lest she burn the house down.

Just yesterday, in the quiet of the night, I was able to recall times I had with mum when I was about to go to college. Vivid in my mind, as history started to flash back, I remembered words of wisdom from mum on cooking. We were always profuse in our praise and bountiful in our appreciation for mum's fantastic cooking.And on one occasion, she revealed the secret formula that had always enveloped the food she cooked.

"In Chinese cooking," she said one day," the two most important things are to have a sharp knife and a hot stove. Always sharpen your knife so that you can slice through your veggie and your meat or fish. Cutting them up becomes a pleasure and not a task. Be sure to have everything prepared before you start cooking: the vegetables washed, drained and cut; the meat cut and marinated; the sauces prepared."

"And get yourself a good wok - It is the one piece of cooking equipment you may want to purchase before you start cooking Chinese food. Always heat up the wok. When cooking meat or poultry, make sure that the wok is very hot before adding the food. If you are going to stir-fried meat and vegetables, stir-fry the meat first and set it aside. Then return it to the wok with a sauce during the final stages of cooking. And use a little cornstartch as a binder at the end of your cooking, if it calls for that. Just remember how the dish tastes like, the way I cooked it", she said.

Throughout the years when I had to cook, her words of wisdom flashed back to me whenever I despaired over my cooking. I had seen my cooking improved, and had added more styles and recipes to vary my cooking in the later years.

"And the secret ingredient in all Chinese cooking is to add a little bit of inner joy to your dish as you cook. When you approach your cooking with this little bit of inner joy, you will have a song on your lips as you cook. Something mysteriously will spur you on to do your best and turn on the magic in your cooking," she added.

That day, last week, when I recalled those words of mum when I prepared a meal for her, I could only add not just a little bit of inner joy, I tried my best to give her a physical massive hug of love.

"Vary your ingredients to add textures, colors and flavors.Then it is possible to find harmony and balance in your meals. This is an important principle in Chinese cooking."

Mum may be frail and too old to handle a wok anymore, but her words of wisdom in Chinese cooking has helped us through the many years. Her simple tips for Chinese cooking may help you too.

In honor of my ailing mum who could prepare the best Chinese meals and dishes, a website providing free tips and cooking recipes with cooking videos, recipes and other resources is available for you. Visit Wok With Betty [http://www.wokwithbetty.com] to gain new skills in Chinese cooking and to obtain free cooking recipes covering the entire range of international cuisine.

Marinades in Chinese Cooking Recipes - A Quick Marinade

Marinades

Marinades are usually liquids you use on meats and vegetables before the cooking process. Many times this is done some time in advance up to a few days before the meal. Other times it is prepared just half an hour before you prepare one of your Chinese cooking recipes.

Flavoring Marinades

There are a few types of marinades you can use that do one of a few things. The flavoring marinade is to add flavor to the meat. In many Chinese cooking recipes this can be soy sauce, teriyaki sauce or other sauce such as fish, oyster or Hunan. Placing the meat in the liquid for anywhere from half an hour to overnight will flavor the meat. You can then add the meat and liquid all at once or take out the meat and just add it.

Quick Thick Marinade

One of my Chinese cooking recipes calls for a marinade that creates its own type of breading on the meat. It is one of the Chinese cooking recipes I use quite a bit. It coats the meat with a thick sauce that when cooked in a pan with a little oil creates a tasty skin on the meat.

Chinese Cooking Recipes Quick Marinade

It is suggested that this be done overnight or about 8 hours before you use it. It will still come out good if done only 30 minutes before cooking.

Ingredients

- 2 tablespoons of soy sauce

- 1 tablespoon of teriyaki sauce

- 2tablespoons of corn starch

Mix the ingredients together well and place the chicken in a zip top bag with it coating the chicken. It works best with cubed chicken rather than whole chicken breasts.

Cooking

Once you are ready to cook, heat a pan on medium high heat with a tablespoon or two of oil and pull the meat out of the marinade and place in the pan. Be careful as oil will splash a little burning you if it gets on you. Stir often until the chicken is cook all the way through.

Other Dishes

This marinade is great on meat and I have used it on vegetables from time to time as well. It is used in the Chinese cooking recipes I was taught as a child. There are many other ways to find recipes such as this one for Chinese dishes so visit http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-cooking-recipes-the-best-places-for-recipes-of-chinese-cooking for other tasty dishes you would like.

Chinese Cooking Recipes - How to Make Hand Pulled La Mien Noodles

Chinese food is becoming more popular every day and new dishes are being discovered at an alarming rate. La mien noodles are used in Chinese cooking recipes often and is the original Ramen in Japan.

Ingredients

6 cups of pastry flour

1 cup of enriched flour

3 1/2 cups of warm water

2 teaspoons of sesame oil

Making the Dough

Either on a clean surface or a large mixing bowl, slowly add 3 cups of the water to the flour. Only add a little bit at a time and kneed the mixture into a dough. This will take time but the flour should take all 3 cups of the water.

The dough needs to be smooth so add a little more water to the dough and kneed until it is a smooth feeling and looking dough ball. You may not use all the water.

After the dough is smooth, kneed the dough aggressively until it is soft. This can take 20 or 30 minutes and will give you a good workout. After the dough is smooth and soft you can begin to make the noodles. Be sure to have a pot of boiling water started because once the noodles are made they can go right into the water to get cooked.

Checking the Dough

First roll out the dough into a tube. The dough should roll easily and not spring back at all when pressed. To test if the dough is ready grab each end of the tube and stretch arm's length. The dough should easily stretch from hand to hand without breaking or having any thin spots in the middle. If this isn't the case then you need to add a little more water and kneed it again for 5 minutes.

Making the Noodles

If it does stretch effortlessly with a consistent thickness through the entire dough, you are ready to make the noodles. Roll the dough back into a tube again and this time add sesame oil to the outside. Just a little on your hands should be enough. Just rub the tube along the length.

To make the noodles first grab each end of the tube and stretch the dough arms length. Bring the ends together in one hand while hooking your thumb in the loop on the other end. Stretch again. Bring the loop to the other end and hook your thumb in the new loop that is created.

Continue doing this until you have the thickness of noodles you want. Once you have the thickness you want, tear off the end in one hand and the last loop you just made. It's alright to have dough you didn't use. Take the noodles and drop them into the boiling water.

The noodles cook fast and only need 5-7 minutes to cook.

More Chinese Cooking Recipes
Chinese cooking recipes have become very common place in the restaurant cuisine. Many people have been wanting more Chinese cooking recipes they can make at home without too much effort. There are many places to find these recipes such as http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-cooking-recipes-the-best-places-for-recipes-of-chinese-cooking. With thousands of recipes you can make at home, Chinese cooking recipes make a great addition to any cook's recipes.

Chinese Cooking Recipes - Ramen and La Mian - What the Difference is and Why It's So Popular

I am sure most of us have heard of ramen but did you know it started as la mian in Chinese cooking recipes? Ramen is that small packet of deep fried noodles that has been dried and packaged as a type of soup in our grocery store. It is also the main staple of many college kids diet.

La Mian Origins

There are many recipes for Chinese noodles. La mian literally translates into pulling noodles in Chinese and has one significant difference to ramen. La mian noodles are pulled and stretched to form a noodle. La mian is a staple of Chinese food and used very frequently in their dishes.

Ramen Origins

Ramen is a Japanese version of la mian that has been changed from the original Chinese cooking recipes for the Japanese pallet. The dish consists of noodles but they are cut rather than pulled and the broth they sit in has a different flavor than the Chinese broths.

Chinese Soups

The Chinese cooking recipes for la mian usually calls for beef or mutton-flavored soups. These soups, unlike the Japanese, can be compared to a generic soup. The noodles, vegetables and other flavorings are what create the dish and can vary greatly between different Chinese cooking recipes.

Japanese Soups

Japanese soups are typically made from chicken or pork stocks. Japanese soups fall into one of four main categories.

Shio - Salt soup

Tonkotsu - Pork bone soup

Shoyu - A combination of chicken and vegetable stock

Miso - Created with fermenting rice, barley, soybeans with salt and a particular type of fungus.

Why It's So Popular

La mien was just as popular as every other Chinese noodle recipe because the Chinese have so many recipes that include many different types of noodles. It became a street food and migrated to Japan where they loved the Chinese cooking recipes. Ramen was born for speed and convenience as the Japanese adapted the noodle recipe.

More Noodle Recipes

Chinese cooking recipes include a lot of noodle dishes as noodles are the main staple food for the Chinese, much as rice is for the Japanese. There are many Chinese cooking recipes from hot meals to serve your family to cool noodle dishes keeping you cool in the summer. To get more recipes and information please take a few moments to visit http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-cooking-recipes-the-best-places-for-recipes-of-chinese-cooking.

Chinese Food Recipes - Cooking Techniques

While Chinese food recipes may be specific to a certain region of China, cooking techniques often cross provincial boundaries. In a country the size of China, that's a lot of travelling.

Stir Frying

Stir frying is one of the favourite cooking methods. The actual cooking is very quick indeed so all the ingredients need to be prepared in advance. Many Chinese food recipes involve meat and vegetables being sliced into evenly sized pieces, so that they will cook at the same speed. Things like carrots, spring onions and courgettes look nicer if they're cut on an angle, giving an interesting shape.

All the spices and sauce ingredients need to be measured out and mixed before cooking starts.

The wok should be heated until it is almost smoking before the oil is added. The ingredients which take the longest to cook should be added first then the others progressively, stirring and tossing continuously, followed by the sauce which should be simmered for a minute before serving.

Stewing

Stewing is a bit more leisurely than stir frying. Chicken or meat can be used, together with vegetables, water, stock, beer or wine (or a mixture any of them) and spices depending on the individual recipe. For the method known as "red cooking", a lot of soy sauce is added which permeates all the ingredients. The whole lot is then simmered gently until cooked. The traditional utensils would be a clay pot over a charcoal fire but a saucepan or wok on a gas or electric cooker will produce much the same result. The sauce can then be thickened with a little corn flour mixed with some of the stewing liquid.

Alternatively, the meat and vegetables can be extracted to form the main course to be followed by the broth served over rice as a filler.

Roasting

Just as with our own "roast dinners" in the West, the Chinese marinade and roast large pieces of meat either in an oven or over a barbeque. These Chinese food recipes are often produced in restaurants and the marinade is key to the flavour, often containing five spice powder, star anise, chillies, garlic and ginger or a selection of these.

Whichever cooking method is used, preparation and presentation are the keys to a successful dish, as in Chinese cookery, aroma and visual pleasure are just as important as taste.

Liz Canham is a writer and a lover of Asian food. To learn more about Chinese food click here and visit Asian Food and Cookery.

Healthy Chinese Recipes - Cooking With Rice

Okay, let's start off with some simple healthy Chinese recipes, boiled rice and fried rice. One is the quintessential accompaniment to a Chinese dinner, while the other is your classic takeaway dish from the local Chinese restaurant.

But, with just a little tweaking we can make the former have a bit of life and color, and the latter an easy to knock up dish after a long day at work.

Now, these are both suitable for beginners and vegetarians.

Boiled Rice... with a difference

Right, this is using a rice cooker. All cup measurements refer to the rice cooker cup, which is about 3/4 size of a US measuring cup.


Measure the rice. 1 1/2 cups is enough for two people.
Wash the rice until the water runs clear.
Put the rice in the pot and add water. 2 cups of water per cup of rice is enough.
Add some extras - sweet corn, peas, sun-dried tomatoes, diced carrots, pineapple chunks. These will add flavor, color and nutrition to the rice!
Put the pot back in the cooker, close the lid and switch on the cooker.
Don't open the lid until the cooker switches itself off. That's right, it will do the rest of the work for you.
Dish up.
Please remember, if the cooker doesn't keep the rice warm, to refrigerate all uneaten rice ASAP.

Do you like your rice hard or soft? I'm a hard man myself, but enough boasting, ha-ha! Basically, if you like your rice soft then add more water, and vice versa.

Fried Rice

Right, this is great for using leftover rice. You can add loads of stuff. This recipe will be a simple, egg fried rice. For you meaties you can add pre-cooked shrimps or meat strips to the wok in step 5.


Prepare your ingredients - beat one egg per person, chop up some spring onions, dice up some veggies (or use canned or frozen ones).
Add a little oil to the wok (or large frying pan). Heat up high and when the oil is hot, add the eggs. Cook until set and then remove from wok and put to the side.
Add some more oil and let it get hot. Fry your onions until they just start to turn golden. Remove from wok and set aside.
Add more oil if needed and keep the heat medium-high. Put in your veggies and cook until tender, but not too long. We don't want to lose all their goodness!
Add a bit more oil. Throw in the rice, eggs and onions. Add a teaspoon of soy sauce (or more if you like it). Cook through, and make sure to keep an eye on the rice to stop it burning. You'll need to do lots of tossing and flipping with the rice to make sure everything is getting cooked through. It's sweaty work!
Serve.

Please note, many Chinese people like to add a teaspoon of crushed red chillies at step 5. If you're feeling adventurous or you've got a cold, I suggest you do the same!

What, no meat?

Now the beauty of rice is that apart from being a gorgeously healthy Chinese food, simple to cook, and cleverly versatile, it is also a perfect vegetarian food. So, the recipes above are all Chinese vegetarian recipes, too, though they can be easily adapted to include meat if that's your cup of... um... gravy?

So, there you go two healthy Chinese recipes that you can go and make straightaway!

The author has lived in China since 2004, which means in the last 6 years at an average of a couple of meals a day (excluding holidays and sick days) he has eaten about 4,000 Chinese meals/dishes/snacks. He thinks he can share some of that experience with you by introducing you to the incredible variety inherent in Chinese cuisine and also to show you how you these can be made. Read more to see how he's doing:

[http://healthychineserecipes.org/]

[http://healthychineserecipes.org/healthy-chinese-recipes/healthy-chinese-recipes-1-cooking-%C2%A0with-rice]