The Chinese food that you get in Chinese restaurants may seem simple,
but trying to make the same dishes at home often yields
umami-less results. Is it the soy sauce, is it the wok, or is it something more?
Most people only have a few Chinese sauces in their pantries when attempting to make
Chinese food at home. The husband of a Chinese restaurant owner said that
he was always perplexed by the thousands of different sauces his wife used in her
restaurant. Maybe a thousand sauces is an exaggeration, but as he described on Quora:
"She has a range of about 10 different soy sauces for different dishes,
many different oyster sauces, black bean sauces, [and] vinegars of all sorts.”
Shaoxing wine, rice wine, or black vinegar will also make Chinese dishes taste more
authentic. Not all Chinese sauces are of the same quality, though. For example,
when you look at popular soy sauces that you might encounter at the grocery store,
some barely even qualify as soy sauce, so keep an eye out for chemical soy sauces that are made
from ingredients like hydrolyzed soy protein rather than fermented or brewed soybeans.
MSG is an ingredient that Chinese restaurants commonly add to their foods to give them a deeper
flavor. There's a myth that MSG in Chinese food causes all sorts of physical problems,
ranging from headaches to numbness and chest pains. However, researchers according to Mayo
Clinic haven't found a clear link between MSG and these symptoms. So, with the fears at bay,
you might consider MSG as a possibility for bringing more flavor to your home Chinese cooking.
“The MSG is delicious today!”
The Japanese chemistry professor who first created MSG, Kikunae
Ikeda , discovered it in his search for a fifth flavor beyond sweet, salty, sour,
and bitter. We now know this flavor as "umami". According to the FDA, MSG is the:
"Sodium salt of the common amino acid glutamic acid."
MSG actually occurs naturally in some umami-rich foods we eat regularly,
like tomatoes and cheese. So, while it has a chemical-sounding name,
MSG is not unnatural, and the FDA considers it "generally recognized as safe.”
Most commercially-available MSG comes from fermenting starches or
sugars like sugar beets or sugar cane. The fermentation process
for making MSG is similar to the process for making wine and vinegar. Our bodies
metabolize MSG the same way they metabolize the chemical when it occurs in food naturally.
“The final element of Wok Hei, has to do with the way you add the sauce to it.”
The flavors of authentic Cantonese stir-fries are achieved through "wok hei." Wok hei translates to
"breath of a wok" and presents itself in the smoky flavor that comes from using a searingly hot wok.
The smoky flavor comes through the caramelization of the foods' sugars
through the Maillard reaction, which doesn't occur until the food reaches
temperatures that aren't possible with an ordinary home stovetop.
To accomplish wok hei, it's essential to wait until your hot wok begins to smoke
before adding oil. That way the food won't stick and it will taste smoky.
It's also necessary to avoid crowding the wok and to toss the ingredients nonstop
so they don't end up steaming instead of browning. Some exceptional Chinese chefs
even allow the cooking flames to enter their wok as part of the cooking process.
Cooking enthusiast Ming Liu says that typical home stoves are only rated at about 5000 BTUs,
whereas the stoves in commercial Chinese restaurant kitchens are around 15K
BTUs. To use a commercial stove at home that can reach temperatures high
enough for achieving wok hei, you'd also need an industrial-level venting system.
Western cooks are familiar with Chinese cooking methods like frying, boiling,
braising, and roasting. However, its other,
less-familiar cooking methods like stir-frying, steaming, and red stewing
can throw us for a loop because they're not a part of our normal cooking techniques.
Stir-frying at home can be tricky because it's impossible to reach the
temperatures on standard home stoves that professional Chinese chefs can.
We commonly make stir-fry mistakes like overcrowding our woks and not having the
wrist strength to continually toss the ingredients. Because of this,
as Michelin describes, we may end up with steamed rather than truly stir-fried veggies.
Chef Jeremy Pang tells MyLondon that stirring ingredients,
adding cold ingredients to the wok, and even flipping the wok
too much can cool the wok down when it's important to keep it as hot as possible.
One of the biggest mistakes we make when we steam foods is overcrowding the steamer.
Chinese cooks often use stacked bamboo steamers to be able to cook more food at
a time while also giving the food enough breathing room to truly cook properly.
Red stewing, or red cooking, is a technique Chinese cooks use to soften tough meat cuts.
The meat cooks for several hours in a sauce made from soy sauce, sugar, wine,
broth, and spices. You either start out blanching or browning the meat
before braising it in the simmering sauce according to Gourmet Traveler.
“Do you own a wok? Because what’s really…”
If you're trying to stir-fry vegetables in anything other than a wok, you won't get
results even close to what you find in a Chinese restaurant. When picking out a wok to use,
the best type is made of carbon steel with a long handle on one
side and a helper handle on the other side to assist with flipping the wok ingredients.
You should be sure to season your wok to help create a nonstick cooking surface for
your stir-fry. Some people mistakenly think that seasoning means they shouldn't scrub
their wok clean after each use. However, you want to build the patina naturally,
over years of gentle seasoning; it shouldn't be from old food.
According to The Woks of Life, after you buy a new carbon steel wok you should wash it with
soapy water. Then place it over high heat until it starts smoking and turning dark,
tilting it toward the heat to darken the whole surface.
After it's cooled down for a minute, you'll add about a cup of hot water
to the wok before washing it with soap and water at the sink. Dry it on the stove on
medium-high heat before lowering the heat and adding about a tablespoon of vegetable
oil. Then wipe the oil around the wok with a paper towel and heat until smoking. You
should repeat the washing and oiling process every time you use your wok.
The typical major American chain grocery store – even those with
a good-sized Asian section – won't have the ingredients necessary for
restaurant-level Chinese food. To find the authentic Chinese sauces, spices, noodles,
and other ingredients you need, you'll want to locate an Asian grocery store.
Since many vegetables in the produce section and products
on the shelves may not have English labels, if you do not know Chinese,
you may want to do a little research ahead of time to know what the different vegetables or
popular product brands look like. Otherwise, you can use apps on your phone to help.
Taking a photo with Google Lens can help you identify unfamiliar produce,
while the camera function in Google Translate can assist with reading Chinese labels. Neither
of these provides 100% accurate results, but if you don't have a
friend who is familiar with Chinese cooking ingredients to go with you to the store,
it can prevent you from being overwhelmed. Of course, you can always ask someone who works
at the store for help, which is a far more efficient method than relying on phone apps.
“Look out Asian carbonated beverage market. Here comes trouble.”
Chinese cooks use some types of sugar that may be familiar, like white granulated sugar,
brown sugar, and molasses. However, others may not be as familiar. For example, Chinese cooks
use Chinese brown sugar, Chinese rock sugar, palm sugar, coconut sugar, maltose, and rice sauce.
Chinese brown sugar, also known as black sugar, has different flavor profiles depending on the
region where it's grown. Chinese rock sugar isn't quite as sweet and overwhelming to
the tastebuds as regular white sugar and it comes in a variety of forms including
polycrystalline rock sugar, monocrystalline rock sugar, and brown rock sugar bars.
Rock sugar helps provide a shiny appearance and delicate flavor for braised meat and a
delicate sweetness to drinks. Palm sugar and coconut palm sugar can substitute
for Chinese brown sugar in recipes. Rice sauce, also formally known as Jiuniang,
is a fermented rice and yeast sweetener that Chinese cooks often use for soup desserts,
or that may be used as a sweet flavoring in Sichuan recipes according to Malafood.
Even if you don't live anywhere near the ocean, it's possible to use fresh seafood in your Chinese
dishes. The longer that seafood is dead, the more bacteria it acquires, which may give it a fishy
taste and smell. So it's important to find a fish market with fresh seafood for your Chinese dishes.
If you live hours from the coast, you'll want to find a source that flies in fresh seafood or
keeps seafood fresh in tanks. Often, some of the freshest fish in your city will be at an Asian
market. In fact, many times, you can choose from a variety of tanks of live fish on the premises.
However, you will want to avoid purchasing fish from tanks with
a number of dead fish in the water. Many fish markets smell fishy because of the
sheer amount of fish they process daily. However, the important thing is that the
seafood you buy is fresh so you can have the best-tasting Chinese seafood dish possible.
Different soy sauces have different uses and flavor profiles. Regular soy sauce works for
most types of cooking to help deepen the umami flavor and saltiness of any
dish. You're more likely to encounter dark and light soy sauce in Cantonese cooking.
Dark soy sauce belongs in braises or adds color and strong and salty flavors, while light soy
sauces are more appropriate for dishes that need to stay light in color. South Central Chinese
cooks are the most likely to use sweet soy sauce, which includes caramelized sugar and spices.
Some serious Chinese cooks use finishing soy sauces to add an interesting final flavor layer
(often sweet) at the end of cooking. Other types of Chinese soy sauces you may encounter include
mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce, double black soy sauce, and seasoned soy sauce.
Keep in mind that if you're using Japanese or Thai soy sauce for your Chinese food,
you're not going to end up with a dish that tastes the same as one made with Chinese soy sauce. So,
if you've always defaulted to a Japanese soy sauce like Kikkoman, that's one reason your Chinese food
doesn't taste right. And if you've been using a chemical-based rather than soybean-based soy
sauce like La Choy, it's certainly not going to taste as it should. So, next time you see…
“Non-soy, dairy-based soy sauce.”
It’s probably best to avoid it if you're going for authenticity.
If you visit an authentic Chinese restaurant, even cooks with the most attuned palettes may
not be able to guess which spices created the most memorable flavors.
Five-spice powder contains common spices like cloves and cinnamon,
but it also contains star anise, fennel, and Sichuan peppercorns.
Sichuan peppercorns leave your tongue feeling pleasantly numb and tingly,
while star anise and fennel have licorice-like flavor notes. You might encounter spicy fermented
bean paste in dishes like mapo tofu. Other spices may include specific types of chili
flakes or powder, dried mandarin orange peels, coriander seeds, or cumin seeds.
Chinese chefs also often use three types of cardamom: black, green,
and white. Curry powder is featured in some dishes. And, in addition to ginger and turmeric,
Chinese restaurants sometimes use ginger and turmeric’s relative,
galangal Don't forget the MSG to add deeper, umami flavors to your food!
If you're health-conscious, it's entirely possible that you're not using enough fat
in your Chinese cooking to produce food as flavorful as you'll find in
a Chinese restaurant. No two fats or oils taste the same, so the types of oils you
choose can make a profound difference in how your home-cooked Chinese food tastes.
Different oils have different purposes in a Chinese restaurant. You should never
use olive oil for your Chinese food because it has such a low
smoke point and doesn't go well with Chinese cuisine. Instead,
you'll want to use oils with a high smoke point for frying, like peanut, corn, and coconut oil.
Soybean and safflower oils are also common in Chinese cooking, but they can develop a fishy
flavor. Many home cooks overuse sesame oil when trying to mimic Chinese restaurant food
at home. One Chinese restaurant secret is to use sesame oil for flavor rather than cooking because
using too much sesame oil or burning it can ruin your Chinese food according to The Woks of Life.
Other oils you might encounter in Chinese cooking include lard, chili oil, or Sichuan pepper oil.
You may think you know how to cook rice, but do you know how to cook sticky rice? Cooking
Chinese sticky rice is different from cooking some other types of rice. Many Chinese restaurants use
a rice cooker to make the process foolproof, but some make it on the stovetop instead.
Most Chinese restaurants use sticky rice, which is short-grained rice. You may see it
labeled as "sweet rice" or "glutinous rice." If you use parboiled rice (like Uncle Ben's),
you're not going to end up with the same flavor or texture.
If you don't have a rice cooker and plan to use a steaming basket, you should always soak your
sticky rice before you cook it. You'll want to ensure that you cover the rice with at
least three extra inches of water to account for expansion over the six to 24 hours you soak it.
While some rice cookers have programs for glutinous rice that don't require pre-soaking,
some people still find that you end up with a better rice texture that's
not too wet or sticky if you pre-soak your rice.
To ensure you've added enough water to your rice once it's in the rice cooker,
you'll want to use the "knuckle method" to measure the water. Basically,
the water should come to the line of your first knuckle according to NextShark.
Velveting is a Chinese cooking technique that can help you achieve the most tender
meat possible. According to Michelin’s discussion with Chinese chef Liu Ching Hai:
"Other than locking in flavor, it also enhances the texture and fragrance of the finished dish.”
It provides a protective coating for heat control, which helps to capture the
smoky essence of "wok hei" in Chinese food you find in Chinese restaurants.
Liu says that there are a variety of ways to velvet meat. You start with
a marinade of ingredients like soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, and seasonings like garlic. However,
the most essential ingredients are starch flours (like potato starch or corn starch) or egg whites,
which provide a protective coating to prevent the meat from overcooking and becoming tough.
According to Liu, you should marinate your meat for 10 minutes to an hour, depending on
how tough the meat is. Then you'll par-cook the meat in oil or water until it's about 70% done.
Frying the meat at temperatures between 140 and 160 F is the best
choice for maintaining the taste of the marinade,
but you can also try blanching it in boiling water. Then it's ready to add to your stir-fry!