Traditional Chinese Food

As with many places around the world the best traditional Chinese food is the peasant food. The leftovers, the fatty cuts of meat always taste the best. The flavour comes from the fat and meats that are close to the bone. The Chinese out in their vast lands in the wilderness made do with what they had. They had in abundance rice, probably the staple of every Chinese’s diet Boiled rice of course came first but after a while as we all know plain rice is well, dull. The next dish that came into existence was egg fried rice. Chinese food is part of Asian cuisine.

Chinese Resources

Regional Chinese Food

Again as within most countries around the world each region of china has its very own traditional Chinese food. It is only natural that they cooked with what they had the most of . While I do my own research and collect my recipes there is some great information below from. Common cooking techniques for Chinese recipes.

1. Guangdong/Cantonese Cuisine 粤菜 Yuècài

Making a great variety of soup is a feature of Cantonese cuisine.

Sweeter favouring braising and stewing, adding various mild sauces

Cantonese food is the most popular style internationally. Guangdong Province and Hong Kong are noted for fine seafood dishes and rice dishes. They eat a very wide variety of foods. The dishes they serve don’t have strong flavors since it is lightly seasoned, and they often tend to be a little sweet.

2. Sichuan Cuisine 川菜 Chuāncài

Spicy and bold, often mouth numbing using lots of chilli, garlic, ginger and peanuts.

Sichuan Province produced the most widely served cuisine in China. Their dishes are famous for their hot-spicy taste and the numbing flavor of Sichuan peppercorn that is rare in other regional cuisines. It is the food of Chengdu and Chongqing (which used to be part of Sichuan).

3. Jiangsu Cuisine 苏菜 Sūcài

Jiangu cuisine features sweet foods. Sweet and sour spare ribs is a famous dish from Jiangsu.

Fresh, moderately salty and sweet, precise cooking techniques, favoring seafood, soups and artistic, colorful presentation

Jiangsu Province and China’s biggest city, Shanghai, have a very refined gourmet cuisine that is often served at government banquets. What makes it special is the exquisite cooking techniques that produce richly aromatic and visually artistic dishes. Their chefs also focus on serving meals that promote health.

4. Zhejiang Cuisine 浙菜 Zhècài

Mellow, using fresh seafood, freshwater fish, and bamboo shoots, and a wide variety of cooking methods.

Zhejiang Province is the province south of Jiangsu, and it borders on Shanghai too, so their style is similar to theirs, but it is less elaborately prepared. They focus more on serving fresh food. The food is often served raw or almost raw and is fresh and crispy and seasonal. It is more like Japanese food. Ningbo cuisine is very salty.

5. Fujian/Min Cuisine 闽菜 Mǐncài

Lighter, with a mild sweet and sour taste, using ingredients from the sea and the mountains

Fujian Province is known for great seafood and soups and the precise use of scintillating but not tongue numbing spices. Adding much wild exotic delicacies from the sea and mountains makes their dishes have unusual flavors. It is like a culinary wild adventure.

6. Hunan Cuisine 湘菜 Xiāngcài

People in the Hunan region can’t seem to live without chilies; no dish is complete without chilies in Hunan cuisine

Quite spicy, with a hot and sour taste, favoring sautéing, stir-frying, steaming and smoking

If you like Sichuan food, you’ll probably like Hunan food too since it is even hotter. It is tastier and more delicious because they don’t use peppercorn that numbs the mouth. It is a rich agricultural area that produces a broad range of vegetables and herbs, and these are served up.

7. Anhui Cuisine 徽菜 Huīcài

Uses many wild plants and animals as ingredients, favoring stewing and more oil

Anhui cuisine is even wilder than Fujian cuisine. It is inland, and big mountains such as the Yellow Mountains are the source of lots of different wild foods and herbs. It is basically a hearty mountain peasant food. Some of the best dishes incorporate wild food for an unusual taste. Some dishes are sweet from added sugar.

8. Shandong Cuisine 鲁菜 Lǔcài

Salty and crispy, favoring braising and seafood

Shandong was one of the first civilized areas, and it set the pattern for northern styles of cooking. With a long coast, seafood is its forte. They preserve the original taste of the seafood by using simple ingredients and braising, and they like vinegar and salt. Unlike southern cuisines, they serve much more wheat food, including their noodles.

Traditional Chinese Peasant Dishes & Recipes

Char Sui

Probably the original barbecue, Char Sui literals means fork roasted. A traditional cooking method over an open fire with a seasoned marinade for flavour. The favoured meat for this dish is pork but originally the Chinese peasants would use any meat they could. It could have been wild boar or any other animal they could catch, marinading it in the Chinese ingredients would then make any meat taste similar

Chari Sui Recipes

Char Sui minced pork

traditional Chinese food sesame seed balls

Jian Dui (Sesame Seed Balls)

Jian dui (Mandarin) or jin deui (Cantonese), is a type of fried Chinese pastry made from glutinous rice flour. The pastry is coated with sesame seeds on the outside and is crisp and chewy. Inside the pastry is a large hollow, caused by the expansion of the dough. The hollow of the pastry is filled with a filling usually consisting of lotus paste (蓮蓉), or alternatively sweet black bean paste (hei dousha, 黑豆沙), or less commonly red bean paste (hong dousha, 紅豆沙).

Mainly found in Northern China