Tips For Understanding The Methods Of Chinese Cooking

Learning about Chinese cuisine involves not only understanding the harmony of ingredients and flavors, it also requires some knowledge of the methods used in cooking the food. If you dig deeply, you will find several dozen specific techniques for cooking, but each falls under a simple category.

Let's take a look at the basic four categories and a few specifics under each method.

Oil

You will probably be familiar with oil cooking first, as you will likely try your hand at stir-frying when you begin cooking Chinese cuisine. But oil cooking also encompasses the methods of deep-frying, shallow-frying, and braising.

Stir-frying is done with only a little oil at a very high, fierce heat. Deep-frying uses more oil, heated at a medium to high heat. The food may be coated with dry ingredients or a wet batter, or may be left as is with no coating. Shallow-frying is done using medium to low heat. You'll often see whole fish fillets cooked in this method.

Braising is a little bit different from these other methods as the ingredients may be cooked separately first by stir-frying, then added back together and combined with a liquid and thickening agent to create a sauce. The dish is still cooked quickly and removed, not allowing the ingredients to stew.

Water

Cooking with water also means cooking with other liquids. You'll be boiling, poaching, or simmering ingredients in water, broth, tomato juice, wine, etc., and in a wok, most likely.

Boiling is often done rapidly over high heat to create stock, cook soup, or to blanch vegetables. Poaching is done at a medium to low heat to cook fish, for instance. Often, broth or other liquid is used to poach foods in order to add more flavor.

Simmering is done at low heat and is used to stew foods and flavors together. A recipe may call for ingredients to be stir-fried first, then brought together in the wok and put over low heat, covered, and simmered until the ingredients are tender and soft. Gravy and sauces are usually produced this way.

 Steam

This method is favored by many health conscious folks who want to avoid oils in their cooking. Steam is produced by rapidly boiling liquid, then the food is suspended in some fashion over the boiling liquid and allowed to steam until tender.

There are steamers you can use just for this purpose, or you can suspend a basket over the liquid in a wok. Steaming is used to cook food entirely, but may also be used to prepare food for cooking. Some vegetables in particular may benefit from steaming before they are stir-fried. Dense vegetables such as carrots will cook faster in the stir-fry method after they have been steamed.

Steaming is also a preferred method when cooking tougher cuts of meat. The meat becomes tender when steamed and is then ready to braise, fry, or add to soup.

Fire

Not all Chinese cooks had ovens available, so this method was often more like a barbecue over an open flame or in a fire pit. Meat would typically be seasoned or marinaded, then put into a heavy pot with a lid, and roasted. The pot was basically an oven. Roasting or baking could also be done in a tightly sealed pot submerged into a fire pit.

Smoking food was also accomplished with a fire pit, sometimes with a grill of some sort suspended over the fire. Depending on the flavor the cook wants to infuse the food with would determine what fuel was used to burn in the pit. Items like bamboo leaves, tea leaves, and bundles of herbs would be favorites to smoke and flavor the food.

Of course, this is just a snapshot of the techniques used to create Chinese cuisine. There are dozens more, but this list will get you started. Once you master these few, go ahead and explore the others and enjoy!