Category: How to Cook With Soy Sauce

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....

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....

Braises / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Instant Pot-Friendly / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Beer-Braised Pork Trotters (Zhuti, 猪蹄) ft. Dried Tofu Skin

Pig Feet, a Lip-Smacking Delicacy I took braised pork trotters for granted, once. This delicious phantasm of a previous life startled me into remembrance after an estranged adulthood. Its irreplicable mouthfeel transported me somewhere: that barely-there bite through gelatinized skin; the TempurPedic-like fat layers, soft and plushy yet bouncy with just a little give; oozing with juices and draped in a coat of dark, sticky soy sauce. Lip-smacking, if lip-smacking were a single dish. But where had I eaten it? Who made it? When? For the life of me, I...

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Plant / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Vegetarian

How to Make Chinese Tea Eggs (Chayedan, 茶叶蛋)

Marbled Tea-Boiled Eggs A skill I’ve gradually accepted as necessary in my life is learning how to make Chinese tea eggs. These fractured “tea leaf eggs”, 茶叶蛋 (cháyèdàn), continue brewing through an overnight marinade of black tea, aromatic spices and soy sauce that seeps into each crack, creating its beautiful stained glass veneer. Soy saucey and tea-fragrant without being overpowering, chayedan previously came to me by the dozen (if not hundred). Out of stockpots, massive vats of never-ending tea egg, volunteer aunties might dole one out on our post-service Sunday...

Bao & Dumplings / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Furu / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / South (Guangdong)

Chasiubao (叉烧包) BBQ Pork Buns: From Scratch

Red Chasiu Without Red Yeast Rice Powder or Food Dye Guangdong’s famous 叉烧包 (chāshāobāo/caa¹siu¹baau¹), aka chasiubao or “char siu bao,” are a dimsum staple!  Soft, fluffy buns envelop the chasiu—barbecue/roast pork—in these steamed bao that ooze with juicy filling. Although I didn’t grow up in a family that made or ate chasiu, we always bought chasiubao from Chinese bakeries. (Especially the “pineapple” bun version that took me 25 years to figure out had no pineapple whatsoever.) At home, Ma’s humble 包子 (bāozi) enclosed minced cabbage/chive and pork, a typical filling,...

Yu choy with furu sauce

How to Cook With Furu / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Vegetarian

Stir-Fried Yu Choy With Fermented Tofu (Furu Yu Choy)

The Versatility of Chinese Cheese Furu, or fermented tofu, is at first mysterious. Little cubes of noticeably fermented, yellowy beige or gray tofu come packed in shelf-stable jars with a flavorful brine. To the uninitiated, it can be scary. But those who have tried it know that furu is yet another in the vast Chinese cupboard of ultra-umami condiments. Furu is a product and flavor that Fongchong introduced me to not long after she became my daughter in 2011. In the first few months of her life in America communication...

Sichuan Steamed Pork Belly With Yacai

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Yacai / Instant Pot-Friendly / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Steamed Pork Belly ft. Yacai (Xianshaobai, 咸烧白)

Sichuan’s Ninth Great Bowl I rarely eat in my dreams. Even when I have been capable of lucid dreaming, I never recall eating. I do daydream, however—constantly—about the creamy, succulent slices of pork belly layered like so many perfect pleats across a steaming bed of Yibin yacai in traditional Sichuan 咸烧白 (xiánshāobái). Xianshaobai is a prayer sung in pork fat (too much lean meat and the magic disappears): classic, class-defying comfort food. No one is above xianshaobai. Xianshaobai is regional, like dumplings and 粽子 (zòngzi): The exact composition and style...

Dongpo Pork

Chinese New Year / East (Jiangnan, Shanghai) / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Ode to Dongpo Pork (东坡肉) | Zoe Yang

A Poet’s Ode to Pork and Hongshaorou Dongpo pork (东坡肉, dōngpōròu): pork belly cubes braised in soy sauce with ginger, scallions and other aromatics. If this is sounding a lot like red-braised pork (红烧肉, hóngshāoròu), don’t worry, it’s not just you. The number of Baidu search results for “difference between dongporou and hongshaorou” suggests that even Chinese people aren’t clear on the nuances. Here’s how I think about it: hongshaorou is your generic, workhorse pork braise. It can accommodate different cuts of pork; it can veer sweet, savory or spicy,...

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....

tossed reganmian in ceramic bowl

How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / South (Guangdong) / Vegetarian

Wuhan Reganmian Hot Dry Noodles (热干面) ft. Dried Jianshui Alkaline Noodles

Guozao With Wuhan’s Famous À La Minute Sesame Noodles In South-Central China’s landlocked Hubei province, the capital city Wuhan is beloved for its breakfast staples and snacks—chief among them 热干面 (règānmiàn) “hot dry noodles.”  Served steaming and soup-less in to-go bowls with a barely-saucy coat of ground sesame paste and simmered house stock, reganmian was invented and popularized around 1930 by two local noodle shop owners, Li Bao and his apprentice Cai Mingwei. Now, reganmian is regarded alongside Sichuan 担担面 (dàndànmiàn), Shanxi 刀削面 (dāoxiāomiàn) knife-cut noodles, and Beijing 炸酱面 (zhájiàngmiàn)—not to be...

How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / Plant / Poultry / Vegetarian

Classic Chinese Steamed Egg (Zhengdan, 蒸蛋)

Universal Chinese Comfort Food It doesn’t matter how far removed you are from the mainland in the Chinese diaspora: At some point, a relative made you this Chinese steamed egg dish, and now it reappears in your thoughts and dreams every time you’re sick or ailing. Flu? Steamed egg. Broken toe? Steamed egg. Strep throat in June the week before graduation? Steamed egg. Heck, I got a cavity filled at home last year and what did Ma make when I came back hungry and numb? Steamed egg. I grew up calling...

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Plant / Pork

Ants Climbing a Tree (Mayi Shangshu, 蚂蚁上树)

Another Homestyle Sichuan Dish In the anthology of childhood tastes, 蚂蚁上树 (mǎyǐ shàngshù) was long buried for me beneath louder crowdpleasers like 红烧排骨 (hóngshāo páigǔ) or 红油抄手 (hóngyóu chāoshǒu). “Ants climbing a tree,” its literal translation, are so named for the way finely minced accoutrements cling to the 粉丝 (fěnsī), gelatinous tendrils of mung bean starch noodles imitating tree limbs. Yet mayi shangshu took me years to miss, or even think about. It’s only now that its discreetness amid redder, oilier, spicier stalwarts appeals to me so highly. This is...