Top Tips For Making Tasty Chinese Food At Home

Chinese food is a great way to expand your personal recipe book, particularly if you love to use simple, fresh ingredients with short cooking time. These top ten dishes are favorites around the world, and are must-haves in your collection of Chinese recipes.

 Fried Rice - A must have dish in Chinese restaurants, fried rice is the ultimate Chinese food, and can be one of the most flexible in your cookbook because you can use leftover rice and ingredients to make it. Of course, you can use fresh ingredients but it’s recommended to use rice that has been kept in the fridge overnight for best results. Ingredients usually involved in making fried rice are eggs, spring onions, diced meat of either chicken, pork or beef, ham, shrimps and vegetables such as bean sprouts, peas, celery, corn and carrots. There are many varieties of fried rice but the more well-known ones are the Yongchow and Fukien fried rice.

 Kung Pao Chicken - Kung Pao chicken or Kung Po chicken is a Chinese dish from Sichuan cuisine and is considered to be a delicacy. The recipe for this mouth watering dish commonly calls for diced chicken that is pre-seasoned and quickly stir-fried with unsalted roasted peanuts, red bell peppers, sherry or rice wine, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and chili peppers. Alternatively, you can use pork, beef, shrimp or scallops in place of the chicken.

 Moo Shu Pork - This is a dish of northern Chinese origin and a favorite of many. Ingredients in a Mushu pork recipe usually include green cabbage, scrambled eggs, carrots, day lily buds, wood ear mushrooms, scallions, and bean sprouts. Bok choy, bell peppers, celery, Shiitake mushrooms, snow pea pods and onions are sometimes used. The vegetables are cut into long and thin strips before cooking, with the exception for day lily buds and bean sprouts. Fried Mushu pork is then wrapped in moo shu pancakes that is brushed with hoisin sauce and eaten by hand. Moo shu pancakes are thin wrappers made of flour that is easily available in supermarkets and steamed right before eating.

 Sesame Chicken - Sesame chicken or sesame seed chicken is a Chinese dish originated from Hunan and is very similar to General Tso's chicken. Its recipe calls for chicken pieces that are boned and battered, and then deep fried. It is then dressed with sauce made from chicken broth, Chinese vinegar or wine, cornstarch solution and sugar. Finally, top it off with toasted sesame seed generously on the dish and serve hot with white rice.

 Egg Rolls - Egg rolls are one of the widely loved Chinese foods, and for good reason. This delicious roll is made by wrapping a combination of chopped cabbage and meats and sometimes noodles in a sheet of dough. It is then dipped in egg and deep fried to perfection. Egg rolls have more filling and hence larger in size than its cousin spring roll. Its skin is crunchier and thicker.

 Fortune Cookies - Chinese cooking would simply not be complete without the addition of a recipe for fortune cookies. All you need to make these cookies are some sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla extract, making them a simple way to add some fun to your home cooked

Chinese meal. Beef and Broccoli - The key to producing a delicious Beef and Broccoli dish at home is to make an excellent sauce made up of thick soy sauce, light soy sauce, oyster sauce and cornstarch. Marinade the beef before stir frying with rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce and cornstarch solution. 

Sweet and Sour Pork - This savory-sweet highly popular Chinese dish is of Cantonese origin. It is a good dish to prepare when you are planning on having guests, who will be wildly impressed with your cooking skill. As with other Chinese food recipes, the key to making a great Sweet and Sour Pork dish is in the sauce made of sugar, ketchup, white vinegar, and soy sauce. Its ingredients include pork, pineapple, bell pepper and onion chopped into bite size pieces.

 Mapo Dofu - Mapo doufu or Mapo tofu is a well-known Chinese dish from the Sichuan province. Ingredients used for this recipe include tofu or beancurd, and minced pork or beef cooked in a bright red spicy sauce based on chili.

 Chop Suey - Chop suey or za sui or shap sui literally means mixed pieces’ is an American-Chinese dish usually employs leftover meats and vegetables stir fried quickly in a starch-thickened sauce. It is a great dish when you need to use up the last of yesterday’s chicken or pork roast and can incorporate meats of any kind such as fish, chicken, shrimp, pork or beef and various vegetables from celery to bean sprouts and cabbage. Chop Suey is often eaten with rice.