Tips For Preparing Chinese Cuisine

Learning Food Cutting Tricks For Perfect Chinese Cooking

In order to successfully cook Chinese cuisine, you must first learn the most important rule in food preparation - how to cut. If you don't cut it right, it won't cook right, which is what we're saying.

You will find in the earliest references to Chinese cooking, the cutting of the ingredients takes precedence over just about everything else. Cutting the pieces up properly not only is important for serving with chopsticks, it keeps cooking time down to a minimum. This both saves on fuel and maintains the delicate integrity of the fresh ingredients. Cutting food properly also maintains the harmony of the dish, which is so important to Chinese cuisine.

So, let's take the guess work out of cutting up the ingredients for your Chinese meal with these basic guidelines.

Cooking Method

You'll need to know which type of cooking method your recipe requires before cutting up the ingredients. Stir-fry dishes typically need thin strips of food, while braising may require a larger chunk of food. If the recipe calls for chunks or diced portions, you are most likely going to use those in a slower cooking method.

That is not set in stone, but generally speaking, the slower the cooking method, the larger the cuts. Keep this in mind with meats and vegetables, as well as noodles. Each require a different treatment when it comes to judging the appropriate size for the cooking method.

Ingredient Characteristic

Getting to learn and understand the differences in food characteristics is important when deciding how to cut. If, for instance, you are making a stir-fry with all celery, go ahead and cut it up into thin diagonal pieces all the same size. However, when you add onion to the mix, you know those pieces will have to be thicker if you are stir frying them at the same time.

 A dense food will take longer to cook than a softer, more delicate food. Also keep in mind the color changes inherent in different foods. Broccoli is a good example, as is pea pods. Both will be a brilliant green color if cooked just right. But overcook either one of these, and the color will turn a pale drab washed-out green.

Aesthetic Harmony

After considering the cooking method and ingredient characteristic, take another look at what you have in front of you. Can they all be cut into the same size and shape? Perhaps the cooking method allows for similar sized ingredients to be prepared in separate batches, such as a stir fry, so dense ingredients can be stir-fried first, then removed and tender ingredients stir-fried, and repeated until the meal is complete. Sometimes the aesthetic beauty of the meal is in the harmony of a variety of textures, colors, and flavors all being presented in the same shape.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider when cutting up ingredients for your Chinese dish. Start with the simplest thing you already know - carrots and celery take longer to cook than bean sprouts. Then, build on that knowledge and soon you'll be cutting and prepping like an expert chef.