Category: How to Cook With Soy Sauce

How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork

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...

Dongpo Pork

How to Cook With Shaoxing Wine / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / 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,...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Homestyle Suanni Bairou (蒜泥白肉): Sichuan Garlic Pork

A One-Night Homestyle Special~~ Consider this classic Sichuan dish the next time you want to impress a table: 蒜泥白肉 (suànní báiròu), thinly sliced pork (“white meat”) smothered in a red-oil garlic-paste concoction. The hardest part of suanni bairou is slicing the meat, and even then, the tantalizing red oil dressing hides any number of shoddy knife-work sins. Balanced by the fresh crunch of raw cucumber—or my favorite, spring celtuce, pictured above—your guests will be too busy sopping up every last drop of sauce to notice how simple suanni bairou really...

How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork / Restaurant Classics

Pressure Cooker Sichuan Rice-Steamed Pork Ribs (Fenzhengrou, 粉蒸肉)

Taste of Lunar New Year~~ Across South-Central China, just about every province cooks up some version of 粉蒸肉 (fěnzhēngròu), rice-steamed pork. In fenzhengrou, a special toasted rice powder coats the marinated pork before steaming and soaks up all the juices during. Despite originating in Jiangxi, Sichuan-style fenzhengrou with its Pixian doubanjiang base is arguably the most popular version today. Case in point: The China Cuisine Association named fenzhengrou one of Chongqing’s top 10 famous dishes and China’s 340 regional classic dishes in September 2018. Fenzheng dishes encompass rice-steamed beef, pork belly...

Posu Bao

Bao & Dumplings / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Pork

No Sweet Sour: Yunnan Posubao (破酥包)

Yunnan’s Flaky Baozi~~ Iconic 破酥包 (pòsūbāo), literally translated as “crumbly bun,” is a unique steamed 包子 (bāozi) from Yunnan province. Its flaky layered skin is stuffed with either sweet or savory fillings. The origin tale dates back to 1903, when the pastry chef 赖八 (Lai Ba) of Yuxi invented posubao by adding lard to his baozi dough. The addition of lard made the wrapper cloud-like, with a loose and mouth-melting texture. Unlike neatly folded 小笼包 (xiǎolóngbāo), or soup dumplings, posubao has almost no folds. Instead, it has a fragile appearance,...

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Plant / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Cured Pork Belly Stir-fry (Chao Larou, 炒腊肉)

Once-Cooked Pork, Revisited This pork belly stir-fry pays homage to an old series on the blog, Cooking with Pixian Doubanjiang. Longtime readers may notice the similarity to “once-cooked pork” in Sichuan bean sauces. While that used bacon as a stand-in for Chinese cured pork belly (腊肉, làròu), this features the real deal—if you missed it, big news! Kathy has been teaching readers how to make their own Sichuan wind-cured pork belly. Last month, we presented seven ways to smoke, boil, steam and stir-fry the finished product. Now, we’re bringing you the eighth way....

Three Umami Dumplings by No Sweet Sour

Bao & Dumplings / Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Non-Spicy / North (Shanxi, Beijing) / Pork

No Sweet Sour: Three Umami Dumplings in Emerald Jade Wrappers (Sanxian Jiaozi, 三鲜饺子)

Dumpling Lessons If you have followed this blog for long, you have probably noticed a conspicuous lack of dumplings. It’s not that we don’t like dumplings, but more that we’ve never mastered making them from scratch. We almost always use pre-made dumpling wrappers in our house, to less-than stellar effect. (Though we usually serve them in a Zhong dumpling sauce, which makes anything taste good.) Besides being less fresh and tasty, they are also drier and significantly harder to work with in folding and pleating dumplings than freshly made dough....

Clams in a Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chinese New Year / Fish & Seafood / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Clams in Soy Sauce and Sichuan Pepper Oil Broth

Chengdu Clams Fongchong and I have had a variation on this modern Sichuan clam dish twice in Chengdu. I can’t remember exactly what they were called, but they both had clams and a crunchy green veg counterpoint (once cucumber and once celtuce), and a simple but distinctly flavored sauce in which the high notes were soy sauce and green Sichuan pepper oil. Both times we ordered it from the picture menu and were slightly surprised when it arrived. The first time, in summer 2018, it surprised us by being a...

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,...

Yu xiang zucchini

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Gluten-Free Yuxiang Zucchini ft. Pickled Chili Sauce

Gluten-Free Yuxiang Sauce “Don’t mess with yuxiang!” my family warned me before I started experimenting with this gluten-free yuxiang zucchini dish. Yuxiang eggplant is one of their absolute favorite dishes, and they saw no need to change that beloved sauce even if it was being used with a different vegetable or a meat. But many of you do have a need to change this Sichuan super sauce to one that is gluten free or lower sodium, and Sichuan itself offers a solution. Yuxiang eggplant—usually translated as eggplant in garlic sauce...

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...

Sichuan sesame noodles

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Sesame Noodles in “Strange Flavor” Sauce (Guaiweimian, 怪味面)

Sesame Paste—Not Tahini or Peanut Butter—For the Win “Strange flavor” truly is the strangest name for the super Sichuan sauce on these guaiweimian noodles. If I were naming it, it would be glorious flavor, or addictive flavor, or just best flavor, because it takes the standard sauce for Sichuan cold dishes—chili oil, Sichuan pepper, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic—and adds nutty, toasty Chinese sesame paste, hitting every note in the Sichuan flavor spectrum in one life-changing pantry sauce that can be thrown together in minutes. Despite what McDonald’s would have...