Kitchen Essentials For Cooking Chinese Food

Cooking Chinese food at home can be a very healthy and different way for Americans to cook. But if you want to start cooking this way, you need to stock your kitchen with some Chinese cooking essentials. Don’t worry: You rarely need any ingredient that is hard to find or expensive. However, you will be much better off in your Chinese meal cooking if you have these essentials in your kitchen.

Chinese rice wine
Rice wine is a great way to add interesting flavors to many Chinese dishes, and it also works well to mask any strong odors in the food, such as fish. If you do not have rice wine available, you also can use dry sherry. Also, you can substitute rice wine for at least half of the oil in your Chinese recipes. It results in less fat and calories per dish.

Chinese black mushrooms – dried
You will find these tasty mushrooms in open bins in many Asian grocery stores and markets. It is fine to buy the cheapest black mushrooms available for your stir-fries and soups.

Garlic
Garlic is used all the time in Chinese cooking to season the oil in which you are cooking the ingredients. Fresh garlic is a staple of all Chinese dishes.

Oyster sauce
This sauce is made from oysters that are boiled, and several seasonings. This sauce is very savory and tasty, and is used in many Chinese meat and vegetable meals. Oyster sauce is a critical component of all Cantonese cooking.

Rice vinegar
Rice vinegar is very delicate in flavor and is not nearly as harsh as regular vinegar. It also can be used as a substitute for part of the oil that is called for in a Chinese dish.

When it comes to actually doing the cooking of your Chinese food, you are best off if you kitchen is stocked with a good wok. However, if all you have available is a frying pan, you still can make decent

Chinese stir fry if you adhere to a few guidelines:

• Your frying pan must be made out of a strong and heavy metal, such as iron, so that the heat is evenly distributed. If you use a cheap, lightweight frying pan, you will burn some of your dish.
• Your pan needs to have sides that are deep and sloping, as close as possible to the style of a wok. When you are frying, it is very easy for the ingredients to slop out of a regular frying pan and onto the burner or the floor.
• The frying pan must have a good lid, so that you can steam your Chinese ingredients. Even some of the most basic Chinese recipes require you to steam the food under the cover of a lid.
• It is a good idea to have a frying pan that has a handle that will stay cool. It is important when stir frying to move and toss the food about in the pan. This is a lot easier to do if you can hold the pan with one hand and toss with the other.
• Ideally, your frying pan should have a non-stick coating so that you can use as little oil as possible.
• Iron skillets work very well for stir frying, but you will want to stay away from anything Teflon. In our experience, Teflon does not do a good job of handling the high heat that you need to do a good Chinese stir fry.

If you have these basic ingredients, a good frying pan (a wok always is best), and a quality rice cooker, you should have great success with your Chinese recipes.