Chinese
Tieguodun (Iron-Pot Stew with Corn Bread on the Rim)
Dongbei's iron-pot stew: pork ribs, potato, green beans and mushrooms simmered a long time in a big cast-iron pot, with rounds of corn dough slapped onto the sloping wall above the liquid and cooked under the lid at the same time. The face of the bread against the iron crusts; the face turned into the pot is steamed by the stew. One pot gives you the stew and its bread together.
Popiah (Fresh Spring Rolls in a Griddle-Rubbed Wrapper)
A fresh, unfried spring roll from Fujian and Chaoshan, and the wrapper is the whole of the craft. The dough is almost as wet as a batter, but it is beaten long enough to build all the gluten it can, so it hangs off the hand in one piece. Rubbed in a circle on a hot plate and lifted away, it leaves behind only the film the iron has caught, which cooks to a sheet like paper. A moist filling of braised jicama goes in at the table.
Jiaohua Ji (Beggar's Chicken Baked in Lotus Leaf and Clay)
Hangzhou's whole chicken, marinated, stuffed, wrapped in lotus leaves and then coated thickly in clay and baked slowly in the fire for hours. The hardened shell is cracked at the table and the bird comes out in its own juices, scented with the leaf. A leaf on its own lasts minutes in a fire; here the clay takes the fire and the leaf, inside it, gives its aroma instead of burning. At home a flour-and-salt dough makes the same shell.
Wu Gok (Fried Taro Dumplings with a Lace Crust)
A Cantonese dim sum: steamed taro mashed into a dough with wheat starch and lard, wrapped round pork and prawn, and fried until the surface stands up in a honeycomb lace. Bugak has to dry its starch hard before it will foam in oil; this paste is wet. What it has instead is lard worked all the way through, so the steam leaving the surface pushes apart a paste the fat has already loosened.
Mianwo (Fried Rice and Soybean Batter Rings)
Wuhan's breakfast fritter: a thin batter of soaked, ground rice and soybeans poured into a ladle-shaped iron mould with a raised centre and lowered straight into the oil. The mould holds the shape, so the batter never has to hold a ring by itself, and the raised centre means it lies thick at the outer edge and thin round the hole — one fry, one fritter, a soft outside and a crisp inside.
Ma Tai Go (Steamed Water Chestnut Cake)
A Cantonese steamed cake of translucent water chestnut starch gel set around pieces of chopped water chestnut. The same plant is in each slice with two textures. The flour sets soft and springy; the chopped corm is still crunchy after being boiled in syrup, steamed and fried, because heat does not loosen a water chestnut’s cell walls.
Lau Sa Bao (Steamed Buns with a Molten Salted Egg Yolk Filling)
A Cantonese dim sum bun filled with salted egg yolk beaten into butter. Break it open and the orange filling runs out like sand, which is what the name means. It looks like a custard, but there is no egg in it for the heat to set: the salt set the yolks long before, and what flows is the butter. So the filling is wrapped cold and solid, and the steamer melts it again.
Wotou (Steamed Cornmeal Cones)
Cornmeal mixed with boiling water, shaped by hand into hollow cones and steamed — the everyday bread of northern China. The name means "nest-shaped thing", and the hollow is the whole design. Corn has no gluten, so nothing rises and the dough cooks at the thickness you built it; a fist-sized lump never gets steam to its centre. Take the centre out and the inside becomes a second surface, so the same size cooks from two faces at once.
Reganmian (Hot Dry Noodles with Sesame Paste)
Wuhan's breakfast noodle, and it sits in a gap the site's other noodles leave open: not a soup, and not a cold dressed bowl either, but hot with no broth at all. The noodles are boiled the day before, tossed in oil and fanned cool, then dipped for ten seconds in boiling water and dressed with sesame paste. The noodle rules say never to oil a strand, because the film keeps sauce off it. That rule quietly assumes the sauce is water-based, and sesame paste is not.
Luosifen (River Snail Rice Noodles)
Rice noodles from Liuzhou in Guangxi. It is named after river snails and there are no snails in the bowl — they are simmered with pork bones for hours and then lifted out. What makes the bowl what it is instead is suan sun, bamboo shoot fermented in water. Every other strong ferment on this site has a handling rule: rinse the salt out of it, or cook the volatiles off. Luosifen does neither. The smell is not a by-product the cooking removes; it is the state the bowl is served in.
Laziji (Fried Chicken Hidden in a Wok of Dried Chillies)
A chicken dish from Geleshan in Chongqing. Chicken is chopped small on the bone, fried hard, and then tossed into a wok holding far more dried chilli than chicken. The chilli here is not a seasoning but the bulk of what is in the pan, and it is not there to be eaten: the form of the dish is hunting through the pile with chopsticks for the pieces of chicken.
Hot and Sour Soup (Suan La Tang)
Tofu, wood ear, bamboo shoot and pork cut into matchsticks in a broth thickened with a starch slurry, finished with egg poured in as threads and with the vinegar and white pepper stirred in off the heat. The dish is the order of the last three minutes: the starch has to go in before the egg or the egg sinks instead of hanging in ribbons, and the vinegar and pepper go in away from the boil because heat takes their aroma away.
Fu Pei Kuen (Fried Tofu Skin Rolls)
A Cantonese dim sum of pork and prawn rolled in tofu skin and fried. The wrapper is not rolled from a dough at all: it is the film that forms on the surface of hot soy milk as water leaves, lifted off and dried. No coagulant, no acid, and neither starch nor gluten.
Cong You Bing (Layered Scallion Flatbread)
A Chinese flatbread: a rolled sheet smeared with a flour-and-oil paste, scattered with scallion, rolled into a rope, coiled, and then flattened again with a rolling pin before it is shallow-fried. Other layered breads treat the pin as forbidden, because it presses the layers back together. This one uses it and keeps them, because what holds its layers apart is not a film of liquid oil that a pin can squeeze out but a solid it cannot move — a flour paste and chopped scallion, whose own water turns to steam in the pan and pushes the layers up from the inside.
Chunbing (Thin Wheat Pancakes for Wrapping)
Wheat flour mixed with boiling water, two discs oiled and pressed together, rolled out as one, cooked as one and then peeled apart — the thin pancake of northern China. It began as the bread for the first day of spring, wrapped around new greens, and now it is the wrapper for stir-fried vegetables and meat. The boiling water is there to put some of the gluten out of action, and the doubling is there to reach a thinness you cannot roll on your own.
Bingfen (Chilled Ice Jelly with Brown Sugar)
A summer jelly from southwest China, set from the mucilage rubbed out of plant seeds in cold water with a pinch of slaked lime. Nothing in it is heated at any stage; it is served cold under brown sugar syrup with whatever toppings the stall has.
Basi (Sweet Potato in a Molten Sugar Shell)
Sweet potato fried, then turned in sugar melted in oil — a sweet course from northern China. The name 拔丝 means "pulling silk", and the thread that follows a piece off the plate is not a garnish but the signal that the sugar is ready. Because the sugar is melted over oil rather than dissolved in water, there is no water to drive off at any stage, and the setting is done at the table by the person eating, in a bowl of cold water.
Beef and Broccoli
Thin-sliced beef and crisp broccoli stir-fried fast in a glossy oyster-sauce glaze — the Chinese takeout classic. Piled over rice it's a full meal, and a cornstarch marinade makes the beef remarkably tender.
Lo Mai Gai (Glutinous Rice and Chicken Steamed in Lotus Leaf)
A Cantonese dim sum of glutinous rice, chicken, shiitake and lap cheong folded into a dried lotus leaf and steamed. The usual leaf wrapper is banana leaf, which is chosen for being broad and hard to tear -- a container. The lotus leaf is chosen for its own smell, which is why the dish has a second name, ho yip fan, that names the leaf and not the filling. And because there is no water inside a sealed parcel, the rice has to go in already cooked.
Century Egg (Alkaline-Cured Duck Egg)
The Chinese cure in which duck eggs spend two months in ash, lime and salt and come out cooked without ever having been heated. Everything this site does with an egg stands on two numbers — white begins to set near 62°C and yolk near 68°C — and every recipe is about not overshooting them. A century egg does not need them. Above about pH 12 the same proteins unfold and link up again, and because the network they form is coarser it scatters much less light, so the white sets not opaque and white but clear and amber.
Liangpi (Cold Wheat-Starch Noodles, and the Gluten That Came Out of Them)
The cold noodle of Xi'an, made by rinsing a wheat dough apart into starch and gluten and then eating both. This site's har gow page states flatly that without wheat starch you cannot make that dumpling, and explains wheat starch as "what remains after flour is washed to remove the gluten." Liangpi is the dish that does that washing at home, as step one — and it does not throw the gluten away. The settled starch water is steamed into translucent sheets and cut into noodles; the gluten left in your hand is steamed into a sponge called mianjin and piled on top of them. One dough, separated into its two components, both on the same plate.
Daoxiaomian (Knife-Shaved Noodles)
The Shanxi noodle shaved straight off a lump of dough with a blade, held on the forearm, into boiling water. This site already has five ways to make a noodle and this is the sixth. Kalguksu is rolled thin and then cut, and lamian is stretched thin; here the blade sets thickness and width in one stroke — each piece comes off as a wedge, thick down the middle and thin at both edges, so one noodle carries two levels of doneness inside it.
Dongpo Rou (Braised Pork Belly Squares)
Hangzhou's signature dish: pork belly cut into large squares, tied with string and cooked for over two hours skin-side up. The technique is entirely a matter of not disturbing it — the liquid must never reach the skin, the piece is never turned, and a bed of spring onion and ginger keeps the meat off the metal. The skin has to cook in steam above the liquid, not in it, or it will not turn to translucent jelly.
Lo Bak Go (Steamed Radish Cake, Chilled and Pan-Fried)
A Cantonese dim sum cake of shredded daikon set with rice flour. The trick is that no water is added at all: daikon is about ninety per cent water by weight, and what comes out of it while it cooks is what hydrates the flour. So the ratio cannot be measured out of a jug — it has to be judged from how much liquid the radish gave up. Steamed, it then has to be chilled overnight before it will slice, and only then does frying give it a skin.
Huiguorou (Twice-Cooked Pork Belly with Bean Paste)
Pork belly boiled whole, chilled, sliced thin and returned to the wok — the name says the meat comes out of the pot and goes back into it. The reason for cooking it twice is not flavour but the knife: hot belly is too soft in the fat to cut at 2mm, and only when it is thoroughly cold does it slice like paper. And because the slices are that thin, the fat renders fast in the wok and the lean and the fat contract at different rates, so each piece curls into the shape the Sichuanese call a lamp shade.
Douhua (Silken Soy Curd Set with Gypsum)
The silken soy curd eaten across the Chinese-speaking world: fresh soy milk, one pour of coagulant, and then nothing. The one recipe on this site that curdles dairy on purpose is rasgulla, and that uses acid to make curds you lift out. Douhua uses a calcium salt instead, and the difference is structural: calcium ions bridge between soy proteins and set the whole pot as a single gel, so there are no curds to lift — the soy milk becomes a pudding where it stands. Which is why, once it is poured, you do not touch it.
Tea Egg (Marbled Egg Steeped in Tea and Soy)
Boiled eggs cracked but not peeled, then steeped for hours in black tea, soy and five spice. The shell works as a mask: the liquid gets in only where the shell is broken. Peel one at the end and the pattern on the white is an exact map of where you tapped it. The tea is not there for flavour so much as for its tannins, which bind to protein — they firm the outer layer of the white and are what makes the brown.
Paocai (Sichuan Brine Pickles from a Perpetual Jar)
The salt-brine pickle of Sichuan. What matters here is not the vegetables but the brine left in the jar. You do not make a batch and empty it: you take vegetables out, put new ones in, top up the salt, and keep the same brine going for years. An old jar ferments faster and more reliably because its lactic population is already established. So the first batch is the worst one you will ever make, and the dish comes with a rule no other recipe on this site has — the thing you are finishing is not a side dish but a culture.
Shaobing (Layered Flatbread)
The layered Chinese flatbread, baked against the wall of an oven. This site’s dough guide uses a croissant to make its point: the layers survive only if the butter stays cold enough not to melt into the dough. Shaobing does the opposite. Flour and oil are cooked together first into a paste with no water in it at all, and it goes in warm and soft. With no water there is no steam, so the layers do not lift and puff — they shatter. What protects them is not cold but the flour in the paste holding the oil where it was put.
Youtiao (Fried Dough Sticks)
Chinese breakfast: dough cut into strips, two of them stacked and pressed together down the middle with a chopstick, then fried as one. That single act of pairing is the whole dish. In hot oil every exposed surface sets within seconds, but the two pressed faces never touch the oil and stay soft the entire time. They are the only thing left that can still stretch, so the pair inflates like a balloon and the finished stick is hollow. Fry a single strip alongside and it barely swells at all, which is the whole argument in one test.
Pai Huang Gua (Smashed Cucumber Salad)
A Chinese cold dish in which the cucumber is smashed rather than sliced — the name means "beaten cucumber". A fracture runs along the cell walls and leaves a torn, irregular face, unlike the flat plane a knife makes, so there is far more surface and the inside is open. That is why the dressing goes in instead of sliding off. The garlic is the same story: allicin, the sharp smell of raw garlic, is not sitting inside an intact clove — it is manufactured the moment the cells break.
Lanzhou Lamian (Hand-Pulled Beef Noodle Soup)
The beef noodle soup of Lanzhou, in which one lump of dough is folded and stretched over and over until it is hundreds of strands. Every fold doubles the count, so eight folds is 256. What separates it from a rolled and cut noodle is not the absence of a knife but that the dough has to be taken in the direction of stretch rather than spring. And the broth has to stay clear, which is exactly why these noodles are boiled apart from it and rinsed.
Cheung Fun (Steamed Rice Noodle Rolls)
Cantonese dim sum: a rice batter as thin as milk, poured into a shallow tray and steamed for two minutes into a sheet like paper, then rolled while hot and dressed with a light sweet soy. There is no gluten anywhere in it, so starch alone holds the sheet together. Which is why the batter has to be stirred again before every single pour — rice flour does not dissolve in water, it only hangs in it, and a minute standing still is enough for it to settle to the bottom.
Mooncake (Lotus Paste and Salted Egg Yolk)
The Cantonese mooncake shared at the Mid-Autumn Festival: a thin pastry shell around white lotus paste with a salted duck egg yolk at its centre. On the day it is baked it is hard and dry and looks like a failure. Sealed in a box for two or three days, oil migrates out of the filling into the shell and it turns soft and glossy — miss that resting stage and no amount of following the recipe tells you whether it worked.
Char Siu Bao (Steamed Barbecue Pork Buns)
Cantonese dim sum: char siu tossed in a sweet-savoury sauce, enclosed in a leavened dough and steamed. A good one splits open into three at the top so the filling shows, and that split is not luck — it comes from using yeast and baking powder together and steaming over very hard heat. It shares a steamer with har gow and siu mai but belongs to another family entirely: those are thin wrappers, this is risen bread.
Wonton Noodles (Prawn Wontons over Thin Egg Noodles in Clear Broth)
Prawn wontons and very thin egg noodles in a clear broth, from Guangdong. Two rules make it Cantonese rather than generic: the noodles boil for only 20-30 seconds and are shocked in cold water to set their spring, and the wontons go into the bowl first so the noodles sit above them, out of the soup.
Menbosha (Deep-Fried Shrimp Toast Cubes)
Chopped shrimp packed thickly between two squares of crustless white bread and deep-fried. A Chinese dish, brought to Korea by Shandong immigrants. The only hard part is oil temperature: too low and the bread drinks the oil, too high and the outside burns before the shrimp is cooked. Frying twice — low to cook, hot to crisp — is the answer.
Stinky Tofu (Changsha-Style, Deep-Fried from Fermented Tofu)
Fermented tofu deep-fried and dressed with garlic and chilli — Chinese street food. The fermentation itself needs a brine kept for months, so this recipe buys the fermented tofu rather than attempting it: here the ferment is the ingredient, not a shortcut.
Tanghulu (Fruit Skewers in a Hard Sugar Shell)
Skewered fruit rolled in sugar syrup that sets glass-hard — Chinese street food. Two things have to be right, the syrup temperature and how dry the fruit is, and failure is almost always one of them.
Siu Mai (Open-Topped Pork and Prawn Dumpling)
The dim sum that is not closed at the top. Instead of sealing it like a dumpling, you push the wonton wrapper down through a ring of your fingers to make a cup and pack the filling in. So the skill is not in the pleating but in the springiness of the filling, and that comes from salting it first and then slapping it against the bowl.
Har Gow (Crystal Shrimp Dumplings)
The Cantonese dim sum whose wrapper you can see the shrimp through. The translucency is not a technique but an ingredient: only wheat starch, with the gluten washed out, turns clear as it steams. Plain flour gives you a white dumpling skin no matter what you do to it.
Dan Dan Noodles (Sichuan Noodles in Chilli-Sesame Sauce)
Sichuan noodles built over a spoonful of sauce — sesame paste, soy and chilli oil sitting in the bottom of the bowl — with dry-fried minced pork on top, tossed at the table. It is not a soup: the sauce goes under the noodles rather than over them, and that arrangement is the dish.
Guobaorou (Crisp Sweet-and-Sour Pork Slices)
Wide slices of pork in a potato-starch batter, fried twice and tossed for ten seconds in a syrup of reduced sugar and vinegar. No starch slurry goes into that sauce — the point that separates it from Korean tangsuyuk, and the reason the coating stays crisp as it cools.
Mala Xiang Guo (Dry Spicy Stir-Fried Pot)
The same ingredients as malatang, stir-fried instead of simmered. Everything is blanched or fried dry first and then tossed over high heat for well under a minute, so the chilli oil and spices coat the food directly rather than sitting in a broth.
Peking Duck (Lacquered Roast Duck with Pancakes)
A whole duck scalded to tighten the skin, painted with maltose water, dried for a day and then roasted, so the skin shatters like glass inside a thin pancake. The crispness comes from the drying, not the roasting — with moisture left on the surface, no oven setting saves it from turning to leather.
Huoguo (Sichuan Mala Hot Pot)
The Sichuan and Chongqing hot pot: a red broth built by frying doubanjiang and whole spices slowly in beef fat, then used to cook whatever you dip in it. Frying the bean paste long and gently without scorching it, and adding the peppercorns last, are what keep the heat and the numbing separate.
Char Siu (BBQ Pork)
Cantonese barbecue pork (siu) marinated in a sweet-savory glaze and roasted until glossy and lightly charred. Tender inside with that signature red sheen, it is sliced over rice and noodles or piled onto ramen.
Chow Mein
Chinese stir-fried noodles — boiled noodles tossed over high heat with vegetables and meat in a glossy soy-based sauce, laced with smoky wok flavor. A 15-minute one-pan dish that's perfect for clearing out the vegetable drawer.
Orange Chicken
American-Chinese favorite: crispy fried chicken tossed in a glossy sweet-and-sour orange sauce of orange juice, soy, sugar, and vinegar. Crunchy on the outside, sticky-glazed all over — irresistible over a bowl of rice.
Hong Shao Rou (Red-Braised Pork Belly)
Pork belly braised low and slow in caramel and soy until red and glossy — one of China's most-loved dishes. The fat melts to a silky jelly and the meat turns tender, all wrapped in a sweet-savory sauce made for rice.
Yuxiang Eggplant (Fish-Fragrant Eggplant)
A Sichuan dish of tender eggplant tossed with garlic, ginger, and doubanjiang in a sweet-sour-spicy 'yuxiang' sauce. 'Fish-fragrant' refers to the garlic-ginger-scallion aroma, not fish — superb over rice.
Kung Pao Chicken
A Sichuan stir-fry of diced chicken with peanuts and dried chilies in a sweet-savory-tangy sauce. Premix the sauce and it's a 20-minute wok dish — superb over rice.
Egg Fried Rice
The foundation of Chinese fried rice — made from just day-old rice and eggs. Stir-fry the grains loose over high heat, coat them in egg, and finish with soy and scallion. Add whatever's in the fridge for endless variations; the easiest, most satisfying meal.
Tomato & Egg Stir-fry
China's everyday home dish made with just tomato and egg. Fluffy scrambled egg meets sweet-tangy tomato, perfect spooned over rice. Few ingredients, minimal technique — in China it's often the first dish people learn to cook.
Xiaolongbao (Shanghai Soup Dumplings)
Shanghai-style soup dumplings — a thin wrapper enclosing pork filling and a 'stock jelly' that melts into hot broth as they steam. Bite in and the soup bursts out, which is why they're called soup dumplings. Eaten with slivered ginger and black vinegar.
Malatang (Spicy Numbing Soup)
Chinese build-your-own spicy-numbing soup — pick your ingredients and simmer them in a mala broth of Sichuan peppercorn, doubanjiang, and chili oil. Load it with sweet-potato noodles, bok choy, meat, and mushrooms; today's hottest bowl.
Mapo Tofu
China's classic Sichuan dish — tofu and minced meat simmered in a fiery doubanjiang sauce fried until red, finished with tongue-tingling Sichuan peppercorn. Spoon it over rice and a bowl disappears.