ChineseCookingDemystified

Chinese "New Cook" Dishes (新手菜)

Ok, so I don't know how best to describe this one. We were mulling over the types of dishes that were popular with people new to the kitchen in China. It's a category of food that's not quite the same as "easy dishes" or "dishes that beginner cooks should master in order to get a solid basis". They're dishes that're popular on the website Xiachufang (the Chinese AllRecipes), and were common sites at potlucks and dinners in our 20s here in China.

There's some indulging in nostal...

Early Look - Chili Tofu Rice: A Lunchtime Integration Initiative

Ok! Finished editing this one up. It was a bit of an intense edit (apologies for the extra long video), so I'll finish up with the CCs tomorrow morning. 

Now, we've already done Sichuan Tofu Rice before, but the idea with this video was trying to figure out how could we translate the culture of Sichuan douhuafan into something... workday lunch-able. So for this one, we got a little more creative/played a little more fast and loose than we usually do in order to try to hit ...

Poll: Upcoming video ideas for Jan

It's been a while! So yeah, we got some video ideas here and want to see what you guys think about them. This time, we want to do it a little bit differently. We'll look at the ranking of the final poll, and do the top 3 (or 4) video ideas for January and the up coming February. 

And here's what these concepts are gonna be:

a. Cantonese sweet soup "tong sui". 

A couple weeks back I posted a picture of a bowl of sweet potato sweet soup to IG and people seem to be ve...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #7: Laoyou, Ol' Buddy

Laoyou, the quintessential Nanning flavor 老友

Introduction

Just like what we talked about in our Ol’ Buddy noodle soup video, the Ol’ Buddy combo is a flavor that, just works.

I’d venture to say the one ingredient that infuse its unique “Guangxiness” to this flavor combo is fermented sour bamboo shoots, which is an ingredient that you’ll find in many famous Guangxi r...

How to Get That Achang People's Knife from the Videos

Ok, so we've gotten a lot of questions about the so-called "orc knife" that we've used from time to time in our videos - and a lot of people wondering where they could buy one themselves. It's something called a Husa knife from southwest Yunnan - the minority group there (the Achang people), have historically be renowned for their knife and sword production. Wikipedia actually has a pretty decent discussion if yo...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #6: Furu, White Fermented Tofu

Furu, white fermented tofu 腐乳/白腐乳

Introduction

Fermenting soy bean is a corner stone in Chinese cooking, we have soy sauce, douchi fermented soy beans, minsi fermented bean soy bean paste and alike… and there’s also fermented tofu.

Fermented tofu is known for its strong aroma and umami taste, which (to put it overly simplified) comes from mucor and bacteria digesting protein into amino acid and ester. And here’s a general look into h...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #5: Nanru, Red Fermented Tofu

Nanru, red fermented tofu - (南乳)

Introduction

Similar to douchi fermented soy bean, furu fermented tofu is another category of diverse fermented soy products that’s packed with umami.

And similar to douchi fermented soy bean, furu fermented tofu is generally made by letting fungus, mucor, or bacteria grow on smaller tofu cubes for 7-10 days, then mixed...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #4: Cantonese Chuhou Paste

Cantonese Chuhou Paste – (柱候酱)

Introduction

Chuhou paste is a classic Cantonese fermented-soy-bean-based sauce for braising meat. Garlic, sesame paste, sugar, and spices are added to the bean paste base to create a unique and fragrant sauce that works well with many kinds of meat, traditionally including beef, chicken, baby pigeon, big river eel (Japanese eel), pig head, and softshell turtles. And interestingly, it may be one of the few condiments...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)

Bonus Recipe: Fried rice with douchi canned fish and preserved lemon 咸柠檬豆豉鲮鱼炒饭

Word of warning, this is not necessarily "Cantonese douchi black bean sauce" in its most strict sense, but it's douchi, it's Cantonese, and it's tasty, so why not?

Our favorite dim sum restaurant in the neighborhood has a very legit Cantonese fare. In addition to dim sum and some old school Cantonese d...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)

Recipe #2 Steamed ribs with douchi and preserved lemon 咸柠檬豉汁蒸排骨

On top of the basic douchi sauce, other elements can also be added. You can finish it off by sprinkling in some deep-fried crispy garlic at the end for another layer of garlicky flavor, or you can add in some depth by adding in some citrusy component, the classic option is chenpi aged tangerine peel.

Douchi and citrus pair amaz...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)

Recipe #1 Braised cracklin and lotus root 猪油渣焖莲藕

Let’s begin with the most basic combo – only using garlic and douchi, plus a simple seasoning to make the sauce. This dish is very much simple home style cooking, it’s something I’d see on a workday's lunch table when we would be hanging out at a friend’s place back in school and the mum asked us to stay for lunch.

My dad taught me how ...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

 Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)

Introduction

Douchi (“豆豉”, Dousee in Cantonese) are often translated as 'black beans', but - to the confusion of many befuddled shoppers in the Anglosphere - have precisely zero to do with those sorts of black turtle beans that'd go in something like a Brazilian feijoada. Douchi are fermented soybeans, and could perhaps be thought of as a cousin of soy sauce.

Much like soy sauce, dou...

Upcoming Q&A Video(s) - Calling all Questions

Ok, so for the whole half a million subs marker, we'll be doing a pair of Q&A videos. They're not going to be taking the place of the normal recipe videos, so I'll be taking my time editing them (it'll be one of those 'release when it's done' sort of thing).

Our concept for the video is going to be a pair of 'podcast-esque' videos, one where I - Chris - will be the 'podcast host' and asking Steph questions (while also giving my two cents/having a proper discussion/etc), and one wher...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #2: Sesame paste

Northern-style Sesame sauce (麻酱)

Introduction

What peanut sauce is to Fujian, sesame sauce is to Beijing. And just like how that Hokkein peanut sauce from the peanut noodle video relied on a thick, deeply toasted peanut paste, sesame sauce relies on… a thick, deeply toasted sesame paste.

Now, the ‘sesame paste’ that many people in the West are most familiar with is probably Tahini paste. But if you charge into these recipes with your Middl...

Vote on Video in February, 2021

Hey guys, I know it’s been too long since we’ve done one of these. Seriously, if I blank on it posting this poll don’t hesitate to bug me about it - sometimes we can get lost in the whirlwind when we’re planning videos. I know it’s something that I say we’ll do for you guys, so there’s not really an excuse to me not following through. Really sorry it’s taken this long to do again.

The list is basically the same as what as we proposed last time. Knocked a couple off the l...

Early Look: Cuishao, Guizhou Cracklins

Ok! This one is also finished editing. Another ingredient one, as I said a couple days ago :)

Early Look: Guizhou Pickled Daikon (酸萝卜)

Hey guys, early look it out. This is a quicker and easy one, mostly so that we can be sure that you can have it in your cupboard for some other Guizhou recipes :)

The next video - Guizhou Cracklins - is another 'Guizhou pantry ingredient' one and will be released in the next couple days (looking at Sunday evening, NA-time). Then the following week we'll be getting back to our normal schedule and showing you how to make the Guizhou breakfast chili rice bowl, which uses these two ingredie...

Plans for 2021 & Moving Forward

Happy end of 2020! We wanted to give you guys a quick update on what’s going on with us, the channel, and our plans for the future.

Before we get into what we’ve got on the plate, I did want to answer two questions that I’ve heard pop up now and then:

Question #1: Are there going to be those Reddit posts anymore?

The short answer is… maybe, but probably not. I know in our ‘about the project’ description up in this Patreon we talk about a...

Early Look: Spam Oreo Burger at Home, but Better

I don't know what to say. It, uh... had to be done.

Early Look: Hong Kong-style French Toast (西多士)

Hey, just finished editing this one up. Three styles of toast are included: (1) peanut butter stuffed (2) ovaltine stuffed and (3) gooey salted egg yolk stuffed. Hope y'all like it... this style of French toast is awesome :)

Coming up over the Christmas/New Year's Break, we'll be travelling to Guizhou (again, haha). Currently, our plan is to do a quick Q&A/future plans the channel video ~12/30, but we'll see what the exact timing looks like. Then the week coming back from break, we'...

Early Look: Guide to Tofu Sheets (with 3 recipes)

Just finished editing this one up. Another Steph narrated one, I feel like we're getting the hang of that style a bit :) Excuse the random street noise that seems to make it up here, the lav mic seem to pick up a lot of it - we've just bought a mic activator for our normal mic (which's much quieter), so that'll be a bit less of a variable next time.

Hope you enjoy this one, tofu sheets are one of our favorites.

Cantonese Braised Pomelo Skin (feat. Papa Li)

Hey guys! New video is up. This's a super classic Cantonese dish showed to us by Dawei. He makes a very delicious version of the dish... and while I know this'll probably take a couple subs here or there, I do really hope you give this one a go. It's honestly much better than you usually get at restaurants these days :)

Patreon only Non-Recipe: 'Sichuan-ish' Mixed Noodles

Ok, so on the Patreon Discord here, there’s one person – Neil – that no matter how hard he tries, just can’t get into Lao Gan Ma chili crisp.  And while that sort of opinion tends to elicit furrowed eyebrows and shocked Pikachu faces, I’ll be honest – Lao Gan Ma wasn’t exactly love at first bite for me, either. In my early days living out here, I just wasn’t overly into the idea ...

Early Look: Why Chinese Cuisine Uses So Many New World Plants

Ok! A purely food history one this week... I really hope you guys like this one. Over the years, we've gotten a lot of questions about how/why Chinese cuisine uses corn/chili/tomatoes/potatoes/etc, given that all of them are new world plants. Figured that with the American Thanksgiving coming up around the corner... this might be a nice time to cover the topic. 

I know this is a different sort of video, we'll be filming a braised Pomelo skin recipe with Dawei this week, and be rele...

Early Look: How - and why - you should make hotpot at home

Just finished editing this guy up :) Starting to get to be hotpot season, hope this one can be a bit of help! We made the executive decision to not to cover how to make the spicy Sichuan hotpot base - which was heavily requested - simply because it's super annoying to make and other sources (e.g. Wang Gang and ChinaSichuanFood) have done a good job covering it already. 

Instead, we wanted to focus on the general culture of hotpot and why you should be making it at home. We covered ...

Early Look: Cantonese Swiss Chicken Wings (瑞士鸡翼)

Hey guys, this one's done editing. Will be making public the day after Halloween, so a proper early look this time :)

Hope you like the video and that the recipe's not too confusing. I wanted to make it so that the recipe would be easy to execute whether you'd be making your own Canto-western stock, using a homemade Western stock, or using a box stock.

On Bon Appetit's return, plus some YouTube channels that I think you should watch

[Note: this was also posted on the YouTube community tab, but I wanted to share with you guys too... just in case you didn't use YT on mobile so much]

So, Bon Appetit is back.

We’re certainly not the best people to talk about what happened there – there’s a million other voices that have more educated, more personal, and much more theoretically sound opinions about structural racism in the West, and how it relates to food media. Was Conde Nast’s apology was good enough? I ...

Shaxian Peanut Sauce Noodles (沙县拌面)

Apologies for the late-ish early look again :) Pretty easy dish this time, hope you guys like it! From my favorite fast food chain of all time.

Early Look: Three core stir-frying techniques, feat. Kenji

Ok! So this one was a lot of work. A couple weeks back we sat down and did a zoom call with Kenji - it was pretty awesome, I was like... geekily like star struck lol. Probably not the most interesting Kenji interview ever - our lack of media training (at least compared to the likes of Adam Ragusea) is pretty apparent.

The full interview with Kenji will be over on his channel, but because I was the one that cut it... you guys also get an early look here for that one if you like.

2020-10-18 08:09:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Early(ish) look: Cantonese Chicken Cookies (鸡仔饼)

Hey, know this's kinda late for an early look. Was a bit unproductive yesterday, being the day after Mid Autumn and all.

Next week we're off, then the week after we'll be finally releasing the Kenji collab :)