Hot answers tagged asian-cuisine
13
Like many crafts which originated in Japan, their sushi training more or less creates sushi artisans. If you just want to make a snack, you'll have plenty of ability given a basic review of techniques. You should focus your learning on understanding food-safety, getting the rice right, and making the roll not fall apart. The rest is just levels of mastery ...
13
You're close. In actual fact, however, most of the commercial soy sauces and other Chinese sauces you buy are not fermented at all; they're acid-hydrolyzed.
Fermented soy sauce (or other soy-based sauces) are actually translucent and fairly light in colour. But fermentation takes months, so manufacturers hydrolyze instead. The process is completely ...
13
I grew up with a Vietnamese mother that used to put fish sauce in nearly everything. While I can't exactly recommend all of her uses (she once used it in a texas beef chili -- was not good), there are a few techniques that are good to know.
A common method to create a savory sauce is to use fish sauce with sugar at a 2:1 ratio. For example, you can make Dau ...
12
Peanut butter is just ground roasted peanuts essentially. The american style peanut butter tends to be sweetened, as well as having extra oil and salt. But they are only slight flavour/texture enhancers (not that I think sugar enhances it, UK peanut butter is unsweetened usually).
Satay sauces are essentially just peanut butter sauces, roast some peanuts, ...
12
You would use the flat bottom spoon as you would use a regular spoon. The main different between the flat-bottom spoon and western spoons is as you can see the flat bottom and the fact that the flat bottom spoons are usually bigger and can hold more liquid. I'm not sure why it would be awkward to use it compared to a regular spoon. You don't need to stick ...
11
A few tips:
Marinate the meat first (after chopping, before stir-frying);
Mix the sauce first - don't just dump the ingredients separately into the wok;
Add corn starch or tapioca flour to the sauce to thicken it. I wouldn't even call it a sauce without any thickening agent. About 1 tbsp per cup of sauce should be alright. (Note: The sauce should be ...
11
I always go in this order:
Garlic/ginger/chili/spring onion whites
This is to infuse the cooking oil with these flavours. Cook for short amount of time ~30secs.
onions/peppers/carrots/harder veg
These need a little more cooking that the other bits, so I give them a bit longer.
mushrooms/sugar snaps/soft veg
These need less cooking, so bit less ...
10
This is a complex question, because there are several different ways to categorize soy sauces:
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN (Chinese and Japanese are the ones most commonly contrasted --but as you saw in Wikipedia, there are many more),
COLOR (light, dark, white),
VISCOSITY (thin, thick, jam), and
MANUFACTURING PROCESS (This has the most name variation, but there ...
10
I can't speak to your specific recipe, but I worked in a Chinese take-out restaurant for a few years, but that was a ways back....if I remember correctly, the process was extremely simple.
Start with a broth of hot water, white vinegar, salt and a drop or two of yellow food coloring (ancient Chinese secret - food coloring)
Get it nice and hot and add a ...
9
It becomes quite confusing when talking about the difference between chow mein and lo mein mainly due to the error in translation.
In Chinese chow mein literally translate as "fried noodles." However when buying chow mein at a chinese restaurant, you get vegetables with a side of deep fried noodles. Somehow the title of a dish is referring the to side ...
8
All the advice above is good, but let me add one more thing to consider: if you don't have a wok burner with the power of a fighter jet, you might want to not cook everything together at all. It often is best to cook one or two ingredients at a time, in a thin layer over the highest possible heat, until they are 20 seconds short of done, and then remove them ...
8
I have a bottle of San-J Tamari (black label) in my fridge and the back reads:
Tamari is a premium soy sauce made with more soybeans than ordinary soy sauce giving it a richer, smoother, more complex taste. Tamari has more flavor enhancing properties than salt. Add 1 tsp. (320 mg sodium) instead of tsp. salt (590 mg sodium) to reduce sodium intake. ...
8
The classic way to compensate for saltiness (especially in Asian cuisine) is to add something sweet (usually sugar), which tricks one's taste-buds into thinking that the food is both less salty and less sweet. (Ever wonder why a can of cola has 45+ mg of sodium? It's there partially to mask all the sweetness which gives you a sugar rush, and simultaneously ...
7
A general rule is put harder ingredients in first as they tend to require more cooking. Things you can eat raw can go in very late as the crispness can add to the meal.
So from your list, something like this:
Onion For a little while
Jalapenos (if not pickled)
Mushroom
Bell peppers
Sugar-snaps
bean-sprouts
It mostly comes down to personal preference. ...
7
Wash the shrimp and remove only the head.
Insert a bamboo skewer along the shrimp from head to tail, running along the legs without touching flesh
Drop into boiling, salted water for 3-5 minutes (do not put a lid on); after this period, they'll change color and rise to the top. If they feel firm, they are cooked.
Quickly place them into ice water, which ...
7
Sesame oil has such a distinctive flavour, I'm afraid there's nothing that will give you exactly the same taste. Many sites suggest peanut oil, but this is more or less tasteless in my experience.
I would suggest toasting some unsalted peanuts or cashews and adding them to the stir fry, to get that roasted, slightly smoky flavour. Just add them to a warm, ...
7
Unless you are getting your beef directly from a farm or butcher's truck, most blood will long have vacated the muscle. As the muscle enters rigor mortis and is (this is true for America and Europe, traditions and techniques are different in some parts of Asia and Africa) hung for the prescribed seven to ten days it loses almost all of its capillary blood.
...
7
I make stir fry all the time and do the same thing as you. I would make extra, enough for 2 - 3 meals.
The thing I do to prevent the vegetables from getting too mushy in the refrigerator is by cooking the stirfry about 75%(I make sure if I am doing this that the meat is fully cooked first) and then take out the portion that I intend to refrigerate. This ...
7
If it really is authentic, then it is soy sauce. Some recipes also use oyster sauce but I would not call that authentic or traditional.
Soy sauce can mean many things; it might just be a different soy sauce from what you're used to. There are light vs. dark soy sauces, and also fermented vs. hydrolyzed kinds. A naturally fermented light soy sauce would ...
6
If you're buying them from the store, any of the following are decent:
Teriyaki sauce/marinade
Chili garlic sauce
Chili black bean sauce
Hoisin sauce
Satay (peanut) sauce
However, it's really a lot tastier (and cheaper!) if you make it yourself. I usually use some variation on the following:
3/4 cup water
1-2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2-3 tbsp light soy ...
6
Peanut sauce is one of my very most favorite condiments, I practically consider it a major food group, and I moved from the US to live in another country where peanut butter is not available. Roasted & shelled peanuts are however bountiful and cheap, luckily, so I just learned to make my own peanut sauce. Here's how I make a simple and fast peanut ...
6
The Chinese use what is often referred to as black beans, but they're actually fermented soybeans.
Azuki/Adzuki beans are the beans used in red bean paste. Most often, they're sweetened and mashed. But I don't see any reason you can't use them in Hoppin' John. I'd temper the slight sweetness of the azukis with a bit of black bean paste to give a more ...
6
Let me share what I know about Japanese shoyu, from the viewpoint of someone who grew up in Hawaii (where we put it on everything) and is now living in Japan (where shoyu is on the same level as wines and whiskey)...
Koi-kuchi Shoyu (Rich-flavor):
This is the most commonly used shoyu in Japan, accounting for about 82% of all shoyu consumed. It imparts a ...
6
There are actually two kinds of tonghao (as it's called in Mandarin). The one that looks like arugula is called shantonghao (mountain tonghao). You can saute it with garlic. The 'regular' tonghao has rounder leaves.
Both types of tonghao are used in hotpots - you just cook them for a short while and they're done. Similarly, they're used in savory tangyuan ...
6
Fish sauce is used as a general flavor enhancer, as it is very high in glutimates, the so called umami flavor. As the Wikipedia article says:
In addition to being added to dishes during the cooking process, fish
sauce is also used as a base for a dipping condiment that is prepared
in many different ways by cooks in each country mentioned for fish,
...
5
I make sushi with friends about once a month, and it's not too difficult. The thing that took us the longest to get right was the rice, and we got that down after a few tries. It'll probably take a while to figure out the amount of vinegar you like in it, and how long to leave the seaweed in it while it's cooking.
For nigiri, I've got a little plexiglass ...
5
You want to use an oil that will handle the hotter temperatures of a wok. This list of oil smoke points suggests that most refined oils will work fine. Don't use unrefined oils or butter because they'll burn.
Once you've got an oil that will handle the heat, you want something that will taste good. I think that's the main issue with olive oil. There aren't ...
5
If you don't have a fry thermometer -- the important part of frying is the bubbles coming off the food in the oil. If you don't have bubbles, the oil's too cold. The trick I use for measuring the temperature (as I don't have a fry thermometer) is to dip the end of a wooden spoon into the oil -- the wood holds enough moisture that if the oil's hot enough, ...
5
The general rule is to put in aromatics first--stuff that contributes good smells. Traditionally that includes garlic, onions, dried spices, and celery. In oil,of course.
Then the hard to soft rule applies. The general idea is to have all of the food 'ready' at the same time, despite differences in cooking time. So you give the harder items, i.e. ...
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