Category: How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Foolproof Sichuan Tofu Pudding (Douhua, 豆花)

From Soy Milk to Douhua Tofu Pudding in Minutes (No GDL/Gypsum!) If you’ve eaten street foods in China (or Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and many others I’m missing!), there’s a good chance you’ve had 豆花 (dòuhuā), tofu pudding—or 豆花儿 (dòuhuā’er), as it’s called in Sichuan. Jiggly blocks of soy “pudding” cleave readily with just a spoon, each douhua bite as tender as the silkiest tofu. Fresh, just-barely-set douhua is backdrop to savory sauces and pickles in the North, sweet syrups in the South and spicy dressings in Sichuan....

Xi'an beef potstickers

Bao & Dumplings / Beef, Lamb & Game / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / Northwest (Xinjiang, Shaanxi)

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Xi’an Beef Potstickers (Guotie, 锅贴)

From the Streets of Xi’an Ten years after Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice was published, I am still finding new things to cook from it. The recipes are just as relevant and enticing  as they were when they were  written, which makes it a classic in the Chinese cookbook canon. Take these open-ended beef potstickers (guotie, 锅贴), which she learned from cooks in the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an. I’ve been to Xi’an, and I’ve still never seen anything like them! I don’t know how I missed them on my...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Jiujiu’s Sichuan Tangcu Paigu (Sweet and Sour Spareribs, 糖醋排骨)

Not Your Strip Mall’s Sweet and Sour Pork Everyone has That Dish they dream of reverse-engineering for themselves from a favorite restaurant or dinner party: Mine is this one, my dajiujiu’s 糖醋排骨 (tángcù páigǔ), or sweet-and-sour spareribs. I recall the vinegar-blackened, syrupy-sweet pork of a kind I’d never tasted in my mother’s economical, health-conscious cooking. I didn’t know ribs could be like this, glazed and decadent and sour-bright from the tang of aged vinegar. You’d be at a loss to find a gastrique as storied as my jiujiu’s in Paris....

Spicy cumin beef on knife-cut noodles

Beef, Lamb & Game / Braises / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Instant Pot-Friendly / Noodles / Northwest (Xinjiang, Shaanxi) / Restaurant Classics

Spicy Cumin Beef on Knife-Cut Noodles (Ft. Dried Daoxiaomian)

Handmade Noodle Nirvana, aka Northwest China This is another in our series about making famous Chinese restaurant noodle dishes not with the usual freshly made noodles but with premium dried noodles. If you have the time and skill to make hand-pulled, hand-ripped or knife-cut noodles on the regular, then you can stop here. But if you haven’t mastered Chinese noodle making and still want a damn good homemade version of spicy, tingly cumin beef on wide, ruffly noodles, then all you need is some high-quality dried mian in your pantry....

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / Non-Spicy / Plant / Poultry / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Vinegar Chicken (Culiuji, 醋溜鸡)

A Fully Stocked Pantry, So You Can Make Left-Behind Dishes Newly added to our blog trove of under-appreciated mainland dishes is this recipe for 醋溜鸡 (cùliūjī), Sichuan vinegar chicken. Not red, not hot, not numbing nor loud, Sichuan vinegar chicken speaks to the range of regional cooking often left behind in the diasporic new world.  No one is at fault for this. If you only eat Sichuan a couple times a year, I’m sure you want your favorites—the quintessentially, exaggeratedly, unmistakably Sichuan flavors everyone associates with the province. And if you’re...

sichuan chili oil liangmian in white porcelain dish with black backdrop

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Ma’s Sichuan Liangmian (四川凉面) Spicy Cold Noodles

Ma’s Signature Potluck Dish If there’s one dish my mother is known for at potlucks, it’s spicy Sichuan 凉面 (liángmiàn), “cold noodles” in translation. The nature of this beloved 小吃 (xiǎochī) snack in Sichuan is such that everyone knows the dish on sight—and taste. Chewy but not sticky, springy and not slick, sour and spicy and cooling and fragrant all at once, a simple bowl of Sichuan liangmian makes my mouth water just thinking about it. If you host often, bringing nothing but cold noodles as your contribution to a...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Wood Ear Salad ft. Pickled Chili (Liangban Mu’er, 凉拌木耳)

Introducing Cloud Ear Fungus~~ If I ever make a Chinese dinner spread with more than 4-5 dishes, 凉拌木耳 (liángbàn mù’ěr) wood ear salad is probably on the table. It’s served at room temperature, meaning I don’t need to time the cooking and plating. It’s fast to prepare on its own, so I can even get away with it as an afterthought. And it relies almost completely on shelf-stable pantry ingredients, so I always have them on hand. As a side dish, wood ear salad is sufficiently different to complement anything...

white dish with stirfried cabbage piled high

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Hand-Torn Cabbage Stir-Fry (Shousi Baicai, 手撕白菜)

Cabbage and Huajiao, Happily Ever After This Sichuan Hand-Torn Cabbage Stir-Fry is a homestyle classic beloved in and out of Sichuan. It’s cheap, vegetarian, comes together in minutes and requires no special ingredients outside of a standard Chinese pantry. Plus, keep reading for an easy way to elevate this cabbage stir-fry into a Sichuan pepper (花椒, huājiāo) tasting experience! Cabbage gets a bad rap in the U.S., but Chinese people love cabbage. We even have an idiom extolling its virtues—百菜不如白菜 (bǎi cài bùrú báicài), meaning “a hundred vegetables are not...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Hot and Sour Shredded Potato (Suanla Tudousi, 酸辣土豆丝)

Weeknight Shredded Potato There comes a time in every potato’s life when it graduates out of the larder to emerge peeled, quartered, cubed, sliced, hasselbacked, mashed, puréed, you name it. In China, you’ll also find Sichuan Hot and Sour Shredded Potato (酸辣土豆丝, suānlà tǔdòusī), a stir-fry mainstay in restaurants and homes. Though shredding is a common Chinese potato treatment, it remains a niche cut in the U.S., favored only for its breakfast potential. Yes, suanla tudousi’s closest living ‘Murican relative is the griddle-fried shredded potato hash brown at your favorite...

Suanla mian

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / Noodles / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

No Sweet Sour: Kunming Sour and Spicy Noodles (Suanlamian, 酸辣面)

Karaoke Noodles Unlike our recipe for Sichuan-style sour and spicy noodles, which features sweet potato glass noodles topped with a fried egg, this suanlamian noodle soup from Yunnan is made with wheat noodles. Not only does Michelle’s recipe produce a gorgeous bowl of noodles, it also includes an ingenious method of cooking the noodles and a bonus recipe for spiced pork tenderloin to be used as a noodle topping or served on its own as a cold (side) dish.~~Taylor Text and photos by Michelle Zhao I can’t think of anything...

Crunchy Lotus Root Salad

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

No Sweet Sour: Crunchy Lotus Root Salad (Liangban Cui Ou, 凉拌脆藕)

From Yunnan, With Love I am thrilled to welcome Michelle Zhao of No Sweet Sour as a new contributor to this blog. Michelle grew up in Kunming, Yunnan, and now lives in Bergen, Norway, so she is intimately familiar with one of China’s most diverse and delicious cuisines as well as with the challenges of trying to prepare regional Chinese food outside China. I’ve been following her on Instagram for some time, where every photo makes me wish I was eating what she’s eating. I think you’ll feel the same,...

Sichuan Red-Braised Ribs and Radish

Braises / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Instant Pot-Friendly / Plant / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Red-Braised Ribs and Radish (Hongshao Paigu, 红烧排骨)

Instant Pot, Or Not Tis the season for braises, soups and stews, and that’s as true for Chinese food as it is for Western cuisines. Americans tend to think of Chinese food as all stir-fries, all the time (Just try to find a braise or stew in a Panda Express!). But comfort food in Sichuan—especially in the winter, but even in the summer—almost always includes a long-braised meat of some kind, often with vegetables, in the kind of dish we’d call a stew. In fact, a popular type of homey...