Beginners Guide to Chinese Cooking at Home
Updated: 20 August 2024
Do you like Chinese Food and have always wanted to learn to cook it? Let me show you. Many of your favourite takeaway recipes are really easy to recreate at home. And it is way cheaper too.
Chinese food is one of the most popular cuisines in the UK, as shown by the number of Chinese takeaways and restaurants all around the country. Cooking our favourite Chinese dishes at home is fairly quick and easy even if you have minimal cooking skills and don’t have a wok. Stir frying is not the only cooking technique. We like to steam, braise and even roast dishes.
As you can see from the various Chinese recipes on the blog, most of the recipes are not really recipes. You don’t have to follow the amount of ingredients precisely to get a great dish. You can easily swap the ingredients and just use what you have in the fridge and the store cupboard. Once you have a few of the basic techniques down, you can cook a multitude of dishes and create a meal in minutes.
In order to cook Chinese at home, you need some staple pantry ingredients and some basic equipment.
Chinese Kitchen Tools
The Wok
The best pan to cook with is the one you have at home. You can cook Chinese food without a wok, just use a large saute pan, but it gives you a much better result. A nice curved wok is essential for almost all Chinese cooking. One that is made from hammered carbon steel is the best choice as it will heat quickly and evenly. You need to season these carbon steel woks before you use them to make them non-stick. Do this by coating it with a thin layer of oil and heating it up. Wipe it off and repeat. After every use, just rinse the wok with water, dry it and wipe a coating of oil to prevent rusting.
This will evenly create a non-stick coating and a great cooking surface on your wok. Always pick a wok with a lid as this helps with cooking and steaming. You can also get a non stick wok that is easy to cook with and easy to clean too.
I really like this non-stick wok by Ninja Foodi. Their new Zerostick wok is made of a new nonstick material which is very tough and you can use metal utensils with it. It has a heat proof glass lid and works on all types of hobs including induction hobs. At 28cm, it is big enough to cook most meals for a small family. Besides using it for stir frying and steaming, I also use it cook all sorts of dishes. Even for making ragu and stews. It’s super versatile.
It is deep enough to steam fish and other dishes. All you need is a metal steaming rack to place your bowl or plate over and a secure lid. If you can’t find a steaming rack, just use some scrunched up foil paper to act as a rack instead. Some dishes you can make by steaming are steamed fish, steamed eggs and steamed pork ribs. Check prices for the Ninja Foodi Zerostock Wok 28cm here. 
Bamboo Steamers
Lots of Chinese dishes, like bao, fish, vegetables, dumplings, and rice are steamed. A bamboo steamer makes the task easy with the additional advantage of making you look like a pro when you have guests over to sample your creations. At home, we don’t always use bamboo steamers as they are not easy to keep clean. We use enamel bowls or an equivalent instead.
Wok Spatula and Cooking Chopsticks
A specially designed wok spatula is essential for working with the rounded edges of a wok or if you want to cook like the pros, they like to use a round ladle. I use a wok ladle with a silicon edge to make it easier to scoop out food and sauces. You can find these in Asian supermarkets where they sell woks. Cooking chopsticks are usually longer than the regular variety and make stirring and adding/removing items really easy. Although, we hardly ever use chopsticks when cooking but only when deep frying food in a wok.
Chinese Cleaver
Most Chinese home cooks prefer to use a Chinese cleaver instead of chef knives or paring knives. The cleaver can be used to chop ingredients, peel vegetables, smash garlic, scale fish and tenderise meat. It really is the one essential piece of kitchen equipment that every Chinese kitchen has. Once you get used to working with a Chinese cleaver, you won’t need other kitchen knives.
Wire Skimmer or spider
You’ll be using lots of hot oil to deep fry food, using a wire skimmer (or sometimes called a spider) makes draining the fried food very easy or scooping out noodles from boiling water. Not only do you leave the oil behind, you reduce the likelihood of oil burns on your hands. The ones I like are the ones with a bamboo handle and gold coloured wire.
Chinese Pantry Staples
Most Chinese foods use a lot of common ingredients. Here are some staples you should have in your pantry:
Soy Sauce
Soy sauce comes in several varieties. Light soy sauce is most commonly used for cooking as it adds umami and saltiness to dishes. Some recipes call for dark soy sauce and this is mainly for the colour. Dark soy is thicker, a darker colour, and has less salt than typical soy sauce. There is also kicap manis, an Indonesian version of dark soy that is quite sweet and should not be used as analternative to dark soy. The richer taste comes from the extra molasses or sugar that is added during the fermenting process. You can use either the Chinese, Korean or Japanese soy interchangeably, but do taste them as the flavours vary quite a lot.
Oyster Sauce
Oyster sauce is used as a flavoring ingredient in a lot of dishes. The best one is the Lee Kum Kee one as seen in the image above. The founder created oyster sauce by accident and since then has become a staple in Chinese pantries worldwide. If you are vegetarian, there is a version made with mushrooms instead.
Rice Wine and Rice Vinegar
Rice wine is frequently used for frying vegetables, marinating or braising meat. Pale dry sherry can be substituted for rice wine. A splash of rice wine in a stir fry dish adds an extra level of flavour to a dish. Rice vinegar, a derivative of rice wine making, is used quite often in vegetable dishes, some fish, and for salads.
In addition, there is also a black vinegar or Chinkiang vinegar which is similar to balsamic vinegar. It is used as a dipping sauce for Xiao Long Bao (Shanghainese soup dumplings), to make dressings for cold dishes and for braising meats, the most popular of which is the Pig trotters braised in black vinegar.
Shitake Mushrooms
Shitake mushrooms seem to make their way into a huge percentage of Chinese dishes. I always keep a stock of dried shitake mushrooms in my pantry as they are easy ingredients to add to dishes. They just take a few minutes to rehydrate when you want to use them in a dish. I use shitake mushrooms in braising dishes, sliced in noodles dishes or vegetable stir fries and also diced in dumpling fillings.
Five Spice Powder
Five spice powder is the most distinctive Chinese spice flavour and is used in a majority of dishes from roasted cripy belly pork to soups. Five spice powder consists of Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon, cloves and fennel. (Sometimes black pepper and ground ginger added as well.) You can make your own or you can buy this mix ready to use. Some places have added to this by adding local variations making up the more uncommon “thirteen spice”.
Fermented Black Beans (Douchi)
These are fermented dried soybeans which have a very concentrated flavour. This is the main flavour component in Chicken in Black Bean sauce, steamed pork ribs and many more dishes. It adds a real umami punch to dishes which is distinctly Chinese.
Cooking oil
For stir-frying, use a neutral cooking oil with a very high smoke point. Chinese cooks prefer peanut oil or cold-pressed rapeseed oil. These work best as both are flavourless and have a very high burning point. Olive oil is not a good choice for cooking Chinese food as it has a distinct flavour and also has a very low smoking point. At home, we use rendered pork lard as a cooking medium as it is delicious and much healthier and not ultra processed. Try doing a vegetable stir fry with pork lard and your taste buds will thank you.
Getting Started
One of the more fun ways to learn to cook Chinese food is through a bit of trial and error. Do a search of menus at your favourite Chinese restaurant or cook book. Decide on a dish that you would like to make based on what you have on hand. One bonus is that most of the menus you’ll find will have all of the ingredients listed.
Try starting off by cooking your favourite takeaway Chinese dishes. Some stir fries are very easy to cook. Sweet and Sour pork is a bit more involved as there are a few stages. You have to batter and fry the pork before you make the sauce that coats it. Once you’ve made your own, you won’t be ordering takeaway too often.
Some Chinese cooking tips
- Almost all meat that is stir fried is marinated first. Soy, ginger, and garlic is a good marinade. Any typical marinade works as well.
- Most sauces are thickened with slurry made with corn flour and cold water.
- When stir frying, you will typically season the oil with ginger and/or garlic before adding the meat and vegetables.
- Spring onions or green onions are added just before the meal is finished cooking. Chinese like to use both the white and green parts of the spring onion.
- Don’t be afraid to add or substitute vegetables. The recipes are endlessly versatile.
Recommended Chinese Cook Books
These are some books that I refer to for recipes and techniques that I am unfamiliar with.
- This is my Chinese recipe bible. A classic cookbook by Yan Kit So who distilled a lot of her own experience and family history into this book. In this book you will find a lot of classic Chinese recipes that you can cook at home. Most of these are Cantonese recipes but she also has some of the more common regional dishes too. Some of the recipes calls for unusual ingredients that might not be easily available unless you go to a good local Chinese supermarket.
- Ken Hom, the godfather of modern Chinese food. His cook books are very comprehensive and his recipes are written in a way that is easy for a home cook to recreate at home with ingredients that are easily available in any supermarket.
- Kwoklyn Wan’ takeaway cook book. Kwoklyn is Gok Wan’s brother and they both grew up learning to cook from their dad who ran a Chinese restaurant. This book has all the favourite Chinese takeaway dishes that you can easily recreate at home.
- Ching He Huang ‘s Food in Minutes. This is one of Ching’s earlier cook books, introducing dishes that a home cook can recreate in minutes. Again, written for an audience who are unfamiliar with Chinese cooking, using ingredients that are easily available.
- The Food of Sichuan by Fuschia Dunlop- If you like the spicy, numbing dishes of Sichuan, this is an essential book. Fushcia has created a book with all the most famous and recognisable Sichuan recipes. I have just started trying out the dishes in here and they are easy for the home cook too. You just need to buy some extra ingredients like the mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns.
If there is a favourite takeaway dish you would like to learn to cook, let me know in the comments.
