Category: How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / Poultry

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

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / Noodles

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...

Wood ear salad

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / Plant

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...

Suan La 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...

Wok-Fried Snapper in Chili Bean Sauce

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Cooking With Pixian Doubanjiang: Wok-Fried Fish in Chili Bean Sauce

Fish, A Wok-Fried Wonder A few years ago I posted a similar recipe to this wok-fried snapper for fish in chili bean sauce (doubanyu), but with the rather odd point of view of someone who struggled to make it, made a lot of mistakes, and put it on view anyway as proof that it ended up tasting good despite the mishaps. I have now made this popular Sichuan dish enough times that I don’t make all those errors. But instead of updating and replacing that post, I’ve decided to leave it....

Suan La Fen (Sour and Spicy Sweet Potato Noodles) by The Mala Market

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Chongqing Suanlafen (酸辣粉) Sour and Spicy Sweet Potato Noodles

Lameizi’s Noodles: A Spicy Girl Graduates Suanlafen, or sour and spicy soup with sweet potato noodles, always makes me think of Fongchong. We share a belief that spicy and sour, in that order, are the two best tastes, and nothing embodies those tastes better than suanlafen. Not only is it my daughter’s go-to soup in Sichuan restaurants, but one particular memory of her having it in her homeland always makes me smile, reminding me that my spicy girl (lameizi, as they’re known in Sichuan) knows her own mind and will always...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / Non-Spicy / Plant

Itty Bitty Baby Bok Choy in Vinegar-Oyster Sauce

Gilded Bok Choy So I made some itty bitty baby bok choy stir-fried with loads of garlic and drizzled with Zhenjiang vinegar, oyster sauce and soy sauce for dinner not long ago. Before we pounced on it, I took a throwaway (neither styled nor lighted) photo of it and later posted it to Instagram. Whereupon, everyone else seemed to want to pounce on it. It reminded me that to most of us, even those of us who are avid meat eaters, there’s nothing more enticing than a plate of well-cooked...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork

Sichuan Spareribs With Mala BBQ Sauce (Mala Paigu): Cooking With Grace Young

Happy Year of the Pig! I can’t help myself each year from trying to match a recipe with the Chinese New Year animal. Some years are a stretch—dragon, monkey—but pig, the meat supreme of China, has to be the easiest. Chinese spareribs are a pork dish I’ve never tackled, so I went whole hog, calling on Chinese food authority Grace Young for some guidance on Chinese BBQ and making oven-roasted Sichuan spareribs two distinct ways. We have Grace to thank for this wet-rub rib based on Cantonese barbecue spareribs. She...

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

Liangfen of Happy Tears (Shangxin Liangfen, 伤心凉粉) From NYC’s Málà Project

Great Sichuan Restaurant Recipes: Tears of Joy or Heartbreak?  A Controversial Jelly Noodle Have you ever been to a Sichuan restaurant and seen a bowl of something that looks like big fat noodles but on closer inspection is actually jiggly strands of jelly? Ranging from translucent to opaque white or yellow, they usually glow with a chili-oil sauce and fresh and crunchy garnishes. When you manage to capture these slippery guys with your chopsticks, they slither down your throat so easily. They are an enigma, at once hot and spicy...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Restaurants, Travel & Interviews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Roasted Chili Eggplant (Liangban Qiezi, 凉拌茄子) from Chengdu’s Ying Garden

Great Sichuan Restaurant Recipes: Green Food vs. Red Food When people think of Sichuan food, they think of red. The three ingredients most identified with the cuisine—red chilies, red Sichuan peppercorns and red chili bean paste—present a united front of red in the bowl or plate when they are all in use. But what the West tends to forget is that Sichuan has some magnificent green food. Not just green leafy vegetables, which make up the majority of any full meal, but green chilies, green Sichuan pepper, green onions and...