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How-to

With a few basic techniques, you can learn how to cook Chinese food at home. Most of our recipes are easy to prepare. They are delicious, flavorful, and healthy, and you do not need years of training or special utensils to cook these. With a little practice on a few basic techniques you can treat your family or friends to a tasty and distinctive dish. We will show you how to make even the basic ingredients from scratch.

Best Practices

Learning how to follow a few basic best practices will ensure you experience the true flavor bouquet of Jing’s authentic Chinese home recipes.

Use a sharp knife

If you want to learn how to sharpen a knife by hand, like Jing learned from her mother, we have an article that explains how. Glenn uses a commercial sharpener. Both of us sharpen the blades to a 15 degree angle. Many Western knives are factory sharpened at a greater angle, but this can be changed to 15 degrees.

A sharp knife is important for safety, and for cutting. A sharp knife allows mincing garlic and ginger with ease, and makes cutting meat, especially meat with bones like chicken wings a lot easier and safer.

Prepare ingredients before you start cooking

This is especially true when stir-frying. The heat cooks food quickly, and you want to have each ingredient ready to add and right at hand.

Buy a good wok

You can stir-fry in a cast-iron skillet. They take the heat well and when properly seasoned are non-stick. However, the flat pan makes it difficult to turn the ingredients and they can easily burn on one side. With the exception of rice, you can prepare all of these recipes with a single wok. Glenn uses a cast-iron Dutch Oven for braising and deep-frying, as this results in less splatter, and the pot full of hot oil can easily be set aside to cool, freeing the wok for immediate use.

Make your own lard

Most stores in the USA seem to be switching to hydrogenated lard. This is not as healthy as non-hyrdogenated fats. If you see a box of lard out on the shelves with other baking ingredients, instead of in the cooler section, then it has been hydrogenated. Pure lard must be refrigerated. We show you how to make your own lard it home, and it is very simple. You can either save the pan drippings from browning pork belly, or you can get your own pork fat and cook it down. Glenn stores lard in a #10 can in the refrigerator for handy use. If you choose to save your pan drippings, be sure to get some cheesecloth to strain the browned solid bits when pouring the lard into the storage can.

Use a good high-temperature oil

Peanut oil, soybean oil, or Canola oil will work. If you want an authentic Sichuan flavor, use Sichuan rapeseed oil (Caiziyou) combined 50/50 with rendered lard. Most of Jing’s recipes call for an oil temperature around 290 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature at which bubbles form around a chop stick inserted into the hot oil).

Invest in a few authentic ingredients for your pantry

We show you how to order quality ingredients from reputable suppliers. You do not need to spend a lot of money, but having the following on hand will give your dishes the authentic home-cooked flavor that families enjoy in China: