Cooking Techniques

Food Prepation  Stir-Frying   Deep-frying   Steaming   Shallow-frying  Blanching   Poaching   Slow-simmering
Steeping Slippery-frying

During 3000 years, the Chinese developed sophisticated cooking techniques to highlight the taste of the wide variety of food. There are over 100 different cooking methods, which are relatively uncommon in the West. Aside from stir-fry, other cooking methods and techniques including steaming, deep-frying, braising, stewing, and more... Sometimes several different cooking techniques are used in the preparation of a single dish, such as deep-frying bean-curd and then braising it. But for our common home cooking purposes, cooking Chinese food can be kept simple and straight forward. Following are some main Chinese cooking technique.

Food Prepation
In Chinese cookery, it is important to have all ingredients properly prepared before cooking. It is time-consuming. In stir-frying, for example, each ingredients must be chopped into properly pieces and put at hand. This will ensure even and quick cooking. for vegetable, cooking in this way can keep their crunchiness and retain their natural textures and tastes, and visual appeal. It also means that they can absorb the taste of the oil and seasonings. Food prepation mainly concern cutting up food. Cutting up food with Chinese cleaver is one of the most important skills to master in Chinese cooking.

Getting a Grip
Hold the cleaver in your writing hand. Move your hand all the way up the handle so that your thumb is on one side of the blade and your index finger on the other side. Curling your index finger slightly, grasp the blade firmly between your thumb and index finger. Prarice to get used to it.

Use your free hand to hold the food in place, curling your fingertips under. Use the flat side of the blade alongside the first knuckles of your free hand, and as you slice or chop, slide your free hand along to guide the blade and keep it vertical. To avoid cutting yourself, never uncurl the fingers of your free hand, and never raise the blade higher than the first knuckle. Use a firm downward and slightly forward motion

Slicing
Put the blade about 3mm from one edge and slice downwards. Regulate thickness by moving fingers further away from, or nearer to, edge being cut.

Shredding
Stack a few slices, and use the slicing technique, cutting straight down through the stack to create sticks.

Dicing
Line sticks up perpendicular to the blade, and slice straight down across them, creating cubes.

Mincing
Start by cutting the ingredient into thin strips, then dice the strips. Hold the knife handle in one hand and, with the other, hold down the tip of the blunt edge of the blade. Using the tip as a pivot, raise and lower the blade in a chopping motion, moving it from side to side to mince everything evenly. Scoop up minced ingredients occasionally, flip them over, and keep chopping to ensure even mincing.

Roll-Cutting
This technique is used for long vegetables, like carrots or zucchini. It makes attractive chunks and exposes more of the surface area of the vegetable. Hold one end of the vegetable firmly, make a diagonal cut. Then roll the vegetable a quarter-turn, and cut straight down again at the same diagonal angle. Continue rolling and cutting in this way all along the length of the vegetable.

Crushing
To crush ginger or garlic, place it near the edge of the cutting board, lay the cleaver blade flat over it with the blade facing away from you, and with the heel of your free hand, give the side of the blade a good whack, being careful to avoid the edge of the blade.

Finely chopped
After crushing, remove the skin, then chop repeatedly until finely minced.

Return to top

Stir-Frying
This is the most popular and classic Chinese cooking method and is used extensively. quick cook over high heat in a small amount of oil, toss and turn the food when it cooks. In stir-frying, the food should always be in motion. Spread it around the pan or up the sides of the wok, then toss it together again in the center and repeat. This method allows meats to stay juicy and flavorful, vegetables to come out tender-crisp. Two most important things to know about stir-frying is the oil temperature, and the cooking speed. Heat the wok or frying-pan until it is very hot before adding the oil. This prevents food sticking and will ensure an even heat. For a beginer, it is better to start to cook at medium-high heat and then adjusting the temperature up or down as needed. If you are flavouring the oil with garlic, spring onions, ginger, iried red chilli or other seasoning, do not wait for the oil to get so hot that It is almost smoking. It is very important that stir-fried foods should not be overcooked or greasy.

Deep-Frying
This is one of the most important techniques in Chinese cookery. This process is characterized by a hot fire and a large amount of oil. The trick of deep-frying is to regulate the heat so that the surface of the food is sealed but does not brown so fast that the food is uncooked inside. Be sure to dry food to be deep-fried thoroughly first with kitchen paper as this will prevent spluttering. If the food is in a marinade, remove it with a slotted spoon and drain before putting it into the oil. If you are using batter, make sure all the excess batter drips off before adding the food to the hot oil.

Steaming
Steaming is a traditional Chinese cooking method. Food is placed on a heatproof plate on a rack or in a steamer about 2.5cm-5cm above water in a covered wok or pan when cooking. For best results, the water should be boiling when the food goes into the steameer and the flame should be high enough to keep it boiling. Steamed food is ideal for today's trend towards healthy eating. It's good for fish, meat and dumplings. Compared with food cooked by other methods, steamed dishes are more subtle in taste and bring out the taste of the ingredients. So the fresher the ingredients, the better they are for steaming.

Shallow-frying
This technique is similar to sauteeing. It involves more oil that stir-frying but less than for deep-frying. Food is fried first on one side and then on the other. Sometimes the excess oil is drained off and a sauce added to complete the dish.

Blanching
Blanching in water is common with harder vegetables such as broccoli or carrots. The vegetable is plunged into boiling water for several minutes. It is then drained and plunged into cold water to arrest the cooking process. In such cases, blanching usually precedes stir-frying WhICh completes the cooking.

Poaching
This is a method of simmering food until it is partially cooked. it is then put into soup or combined with a sauce and the cooking process continued.

Slow-simmering
In slow-simmering, food is immersed in liquid which is brought almost to the boil and then the temperature is reduced so that it simmers, cooking the food to the desired degree.

Steeping
In steeping, food is similarly immersed in liquid (usually stock) and simmered for a time. The heat is then turned off and the residual heat ol the liquid finishes off the cooking process.

Slippery-frying
First deep-fry the main ingredient and then top it with sauce or mix the main ingredient in the sauce.

Return to top