Our home made Chinese recipes use many commonly available ingredients. However, some ingredients may be unavailable in your local grocery, or unfamiliar to Western readers.

Most of our recipes are very simple to prepare. Chinese people work hard, and often long days, and they tend to cook recipes with a few simple ingredients that are healthy, delicious and easy to prepare with a single wok. (Having a saucepan is helpful, especially if you do not have a rice cooker.)

You do not need to spend a fortune on exotic ingredients to cook our delicious recipes, but you may want to special order a few specialty Chinese ingredients to experience the true flavor of these dishes.

In this section we explain those ingredients, and where you can find them.

Real Soy Sauce

The single best purchase you can make is a quality, traditionally brewed light soy sauce. Nearly all of our recipes use light soy sauce as an ingredient.

Chinese Chili Peppers

Jing is from southern China, and many southern Chinese cuisines use chili peppers in some form. This is especially true for the single-most popular Chinese cuisine in the world: Sichuan.

Sichuan Peppercorns

If you like Sichuan food, like Kung Pao Chicken and Mapo Tofu, then you must have Sichuan peppercorns on hand. These are not actually a pepper. They are the seed husk of an ash berry. They are the “secret ingredient” that gives Sichuan food that “mala” flavor.

Chili Oil with Bean Paste

We use two types of Chili Oil with bean paste as ingredients in some of our Chinese home recipes. The flavor profiles are distinctly different, but both are readily available online and will really make your dishes come alive.

Other Spices

Most of the spices used are commonly available in better grocery stores. These include star anise, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, and green onion, for the most part. Black pepper can be substituted for white pepper if need be. Dark soy sauce is not used in many recipes, but for some it is essential. You can order quality dark soy sauce online. This is brewed longer than light soy sauce, and is typically flavored with molasses.