Mastering the flavour of Chinese food just requires a few essential ingredients from your pantry and fridge. Let's go over some essential items you need, in order to get the authentic taste!
This post is all about how to make homemade chinese food. With some essential ingredients you can master the flavour of homemade chinese food.
We will be looking at some essential ingredients that you need to make authentic Chinese food! Some could be a brand of a bottle, or some could be ingredients you get at the produce area in the grocery store.
There are certain ingredients and brands we rely on to make amazing Chinese food. We will be taking a look at some of those items that you may be able to find at Asian grocery stores or even online like Amazon! Maybe you will recognize some and maybe some of these items are new to you. Nevertheless, I believe they are the bare essential items you need to make great homemade Chinese food.
Cooking Chinese Food Abroad
Now that I am living abroad in Mexico, I narrowed it down to some basic essential items! I seriously cannot live without them when I make my Chinese food.
When I am not working on the blog, I moonlight as a chef for a Chinese food dark kitchen. The customers that have travelled abroad and have tried real Chinese food come back to me and thank me for reliving a nostalgic memory by tasting my food. It's a pleasant feeling knowing I had the opportunity to bring back some fond memories they had by tasting and smelling my homemade Chinese food.
It is not a simple feat to say I could mimic some great Chinese chefs around the world. Therefore, I will be showing you some of the essential items I really cannot live without!
Essential Ingredients on How to Make Homemade Chinese food
Chinese Food Essential Ingredients in the Pantry
light soy sauce
"ain't no party like a SCLUB party" you know that song? I'm from the '90s. Well, let's say there's ain't no Chinese food party without soy sauce dosing.
Soy sauce is the oldest Chinese condiment in the WORLD!
Soy sauce is the breath; the soul; the holy grail of Chinese food cooking. Have you ever smelled fried noodles and started to salivate? That's soy sauce you're smelling, my friend. We use soy sauce like how Tinkerbells like to sprinkle fairy dust. It goes on everything and everywhere. We use it to flavour, marinate, and use it as a dressing for almost all Chinese food.
Soy sauce was invented back 500BC, and I don't see it going away anytime in the future.
dark soy sauce
The purpose of dark soy sauce is more about the colouring it gives to food than taste. Dark soy sauce has flavour (like mushroom flavour), but we rely flavour more on regular light soy sauce.
Dark soy sauce use is more for colour. We use dark soy sauce for Soy Sauce Fried noodles, Soy Sauce Chicken, and so much more! When you see the beautiful colour in Chinese food, you can bet there's some dark soy sauce in it.
red vinegar
We use red vinegar a lot in Cantonese food and dim sum. It adds flavours and zest to the food. We pair it with fried noodles in dim sum, fried spring rolls, dumplings, etc. We use it more for dipping than cooking.
black vinegar
In Chinese cooking, there four main tastes we try to put in our food which are: fat, sugar, savoury, and acid. Acid is very important to a balanced taste, and to get you craving more! In Cantonese, we say acid helps you 開胃 (hoi1 wai6). Direct translation is "open stomach" which means get you want to eat more.
This is my favourite black vinegar I use for noodles and dumpling sauce.
rock sugar
We always add a little bit of sugar to some dishes to balance the salty and acidic taste. Rock sugar used in Chinese cooking isn't to sweeten the food necessarily but to balance the flavour. We use a lot of rock sugar than regular processed sugar because its more natural and not sweet like granulated sugar.
fermented beancurd
The smell of this might make some people turn heads. It's strong and pungent. Fortunately, I'm used to this smell and I think it smells fantastic! And like all Chinese flavour agents, a little goes a long way. We use this cubed fermented beancurd for stir fried water spinach, and we use it to marinate pork loin to make cha siu.
hoisin sauce
This deliciously sweet and savoury sauce is used a lot for marinating meat, flavouring stews and sometimes stir-fried food. Hoisin sauce is made from fermented soybeans, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil, chili and sweetener. I use hoisin sauce to marinate my pork chop for my Hong Kong Style Pork Chop Fried Rice, and occasionally to stir fry vegetables or tofu.
Shaoxing Cooking Rice Wine
Like Western and French cooking, they add wine to give sauces more flavour. In Chinese cooking, we do the same but we use rice cooking wine. It is not a beverage we occasionally drink. We use it strictly for cooking so please do not be confused because we say wine.
We use rice cooking wine a lot to deglaze a sauce and to marinate meat. It definitely has a different taste compared to your regular white wine.
doubanjiang
A tasty thick chili sauce made with fermented broad beans and chilli. A little spoon of this goes a long way, and we love adding this to flavour soup and dishes like beef noodle soup, mapo tofu, etc. For the spicy level, I don't find it very spicy, but it is very salty and it is meant to be mixed with something else.
Doubanjiang is more famous used for this popular tofu dish called Mapo Tofu. It gives it that brilliant red colour and unique taste of the dish.
dried shitake mushroom
Shitake mushroom adds a lot of umami flavour without using meat. My father is a vegetarian for 30+ years using shitake mushroom as a flavouring agent for food. He also eats it to get the essential nutrients vegetables can't give him.
dried shrimp
In Hong Kong, you see a lot of shops selling dried shrimp outside the sale with an employee carefully watching for potential customers or even shoplifters. Dried shrimp can sell for various prices depending on the size of the shrimp. It adds seafood umami flavours, and we use it a lot in Chinese food cooking. For example, steamed custard egg, wonton soup, shrimp noodles, stir-fried soupy tofu dish, and so much more!
msg
Let's be honest, Chinese food has some MSG. You know the dry mouth feeling after eating at a local Chinese food joint? That's the after effect of MSG.
Although homemade Chinese food doesn't have any, it's an option if you want restaurant flavour. We sometimes add it to soup and main courses to give the dish more flavour.
sesame oil
My favourite thing to add last minute to the dish. Sesame oil is soo delicious and you have to try it if you haven't. We like to add it last minute to a dish like mapo tofu, Hainanese Chicken with Ginger Rice and we like to use it to marinate meat like sweet and sour pork.
white pepper
Western cooking uses a lot of black pepper. Chinese cooking uses white instead of black. There's also a huge debate in the Chinese culture about where the best white pepper is.
I remember when my uncle comes back to Vancouver to visit from Hong Kong he will go on a 15-minute speech about this special white pepper he brought back before he hands it to my mom. White pepper is used a lot in cooking to marinate food and added last minute to food as a garnish like congee.
sichuan peppers
My all-time favourite Chinese chili pepper. Besides the unique flavour it brings, it also has a numbing effect I love. It's not that common in Cantonese cooking, but I see the popularity is growing in that community. We use Sichuan peppers in a lot of cooking like hot pot and meat dishes.
Feel like a lot? I know, but every one of them serves a purpose and one cannot replace another. Once you start to collect these items and build your confidence in more complicated recipes, you will realize this is just the beginning.
We can dive in deeper into a Chinese pantry and realize you can collect over 50 different products like white fungus, dried bamboo leaves, dried orange peels, and so much more!
Chinese Food Essential Ingredients in the Fridge
ginger
There's hardly any Chinese food we do not use ginger. Ginger is the center flavour we use in all our cooking. It brings freshness and spiciness to a dish. It helps bring out other flavours in a dish. In meat, it takes out the "stinky" pork taste and enhances the better flavour of pork.
garlic
Garlic is not just used in Chinese food, but is common in a lot of other ethnic food. Garlic we use a lot to stir fry initially. For example, to stir fry vegetables we always fry the garlic first, add the vegetables, and then the cornstarch slurry.
green onion
Also known as spring onions, we like to chop it finely and use it as garnish for food. We put it in soup to add flavour to the soup. We add a bit into dipping sauces. Not only does it gives it a refreshing onion taste (not as strong), but the green colour adds contrast to the dish. This is why green onion is used a lot as garnish.
tofu
The best vegetarian option. We use a lot of tofu in Chinese cooking. we mince it with meat, fry it in cubes for dim sum, make a main dish out of it like mapo tofu, and so much more. Tofu comes in many forms like fried puffy tofu, soft, medium, hard tofu, tofu pudding, etc. We also make tofu pudding desserts. It's endless what we use tofu for!
bok choy
One of the favourite greens we like to add to our dishes. We also gave gai lan, choy sum, and water. Bok choy we add it to noodle soup, stir fry it, hot pot, just everything.
Red Eye Chili Peppers
Cantonese cooking is not known to be very spicy, but when we do add a tiny bit of spice, red eye chili is our favourite. In Sichuan province, red eye chili and Sichuan peppers are also the province's favourite (maybe the whole country of China). It's spicy and stays well in the fridge for a long time. It gives well a very good heat.
In Conclusion