ChineseCookingDemystified

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Chinese "New Cook" Dishes (新手菜)

Ok, so I don't know how best to describe this one. We were mulling over the types of dishes that were popular with people new to the kitchen in China. It's a category of food that's not quite the same as "easy dishes" or "dishes that beginner cooks should master in order to g...

Early Look - Chili Tofu Rice: A Lunchtime Integration Initiative

Ok! Finished editing this one up. It was a bit of an intense edit (apologies for the extra long video), so I'll finish up with the CCs tomorrow morning.Now, we've already done Sichuan Tofu Rice before, but the idea with this video was trying to figure out how could we translate the culture o...

Poll: Upcoming video ideas for Jan

It's been a while! So yeah, we got some video ideas here and want to see what you guys think about them. This time, we want to do it a little bit differently. We'll look at the ranking of the final poll, and do the top 3 (or 4) video ideas for January and the up coming February.And here'...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #7: Laoyou, Ol' Buddy

Laoyou, the quintessential Nanning flavor 老友IntroductionJust like what we talked about in our Ol’ Buddy noodle soup video, the Ol’ Buddy combo is a flavor that, just works.I’d venture to say the one ingredient that infuse its unique “Guangxiness” to this flavor combo is fermented sour ...

How to Get That Achang People's Knife from the Videos

Ok, so we've gotten a lot of questions about the so-called "orc knife" that we've used from time to time in our videos - and a lot of people wondering where they could buy one themselves. It's something called a Husa knife from southwest Yunnan - the minority group there (the Ach...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #6: Furu, White Fermented Tofu

Furu, white fermented tofu 腐乳/白腐乳IntroductionFermenting soy bean is a corner stone in Chinese cooking, we have soy sauce, douchi fermented soy beans, minsi fermented bean soy bean paste and alike… and there’s also fermented tofu.Fermented tofu is known for its strong aroma and umami ta...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #5: Nanru, Red Fermented Tofu

Nanru, red fermented tofu - (南乳)IntroductionSimilar to douchi fermented soy bean, furu fermented tofu is another category of diverse fermented soy products that’s packed with umami.And similar to douchi fermented soy bean, furu fermented tofu is generally made by letting fungus, mucor, or bact...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #4: Cantonese Chuhou Paste

Cantonese Chuhou Paste – (柱候酱)IntroductionChuhou paste is a classic Cantonese fermented-soy-bean-based sauce for braising meat. Garlic, sesame paste, sugar, and spices are added to the bean paste base to create a unique and fragrant sauce that works well with many kinds of meat, traditionall...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)Bonus Recipe: Fried rice with douchi canned fish and preserved lemon 咸柠檬豆豉鲮鱼炒饭Word of warning, this is not necessarily "Cantonese douchi black bean sauce" in its most strict sense, but it's douchi, it's Cantonese, ...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)Recipe #2 Steamed ribs with douchi and preserved lemon 咸柠檬豉汁蒸排骨On top of the basic douchi sauce, other elements can also be added. You can finish it off by sprinkling in some deep-fried crispy garlic at the end for another layer of ...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)Recipe #1 Braised cracklin and lotus root 猪油渣焖莲藕Let’s begin with the most basic combo – only using garlic and douchi, plus a simple seasoning to make the sauce. This dish is very much simple home style cooking, it’s something I’...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #3: Douchi black bean sauce

Douchi black bean sauce – Cantonese style (豉汁)IntroductionDouchi (“豆豉”, Dousee in Cantonese) are often translated as 'black beans', but - to the confusion of many befuddled shoppers in the Anglosphere - have precisely zero to do with those sorts of black turtle beans that'd...

Upcoming Q&A Video(s) - Calling all Questions

Ok, so for the whole half a million subs marker, we'll be doing a pair of Q&A videos. They're not going to be taking the place of the normal recipe videos, so I'll be taking my time editing them (it'll be one of those 'release when it's done' sort of thing).Our concept fo...

[BOOK] Flavor Profile #2: Sesame paste

Northern-style Sesame sauce (麻酱)IntroductionWhat peanut sauce is to Fujian, sesame sauce is to Beijing. And just like how that Hokkein peanut sauce from the peanut noodle video relied on a thick, deeply toasted peanut paste, sesame sauce relies on… a thick, deeply toasted sesame paste.Now, the...

Vote on Video in February, 2021

Hey guys, I know it’s been too long since we’ve done one of these. Seriously, if I blank on it posting this poll don’t hesitate to bug me about it - sometimes we can get lost in the whirlwind when we’re planning videos. I know it’s something that I say we’ll do for you guys, so there’s...

Early Look: Cuishao, Guizhou Cracklins

Ok! This one is also finished editing. Another ingredient one, as I said a couple days ago :)

Early Look: Guizhou Pickled Daikon (酸萝卜)

Hey guys, early look it out. This is a quicker and easy one, mostly so that we can be sure that you can have it in your cupboard for some other Guizhou recipes :)The next video - Guizhou Cracklins - is another 'Guizhou pantry ingredient' one and will be released in the next couple days (look...

Plans for 2021 & Moving Forward

Happy end of 2020! We wanted to give you guys a quick update on what’s going on with us, the channel, and our plans for the future.Before we get into what we’ve got on the plate, I did want to answer two questions that I’ve heard pop up now and then:Question #1: Are there going to be those Red...

Early Look: Spam Oreo Burger at Home, but Better

I don't know what to say. It, uh... had to be done.

Early Look: Hong Kong-style French Toast (西多士)

Hey, just finished editing this one up. Three styles of toast are included: (1) peanut butter stuffed (2) ovaltine stuffed and (3) gooey salted egg yolk stuffed. Hope y'all like it... this style of French toast is awesome :)Coming up over the Christmas/New Year's Break, we'll be travelli...

Early Look: Guide to Tofu Sheets (with 3 recipes)

Just finished editing this one up. Another Steph narrated one, I feel like we're getting the hang of that style a bit :) Excuse the random street noise that seems to make it up here, the lav mic seem to pick up a lot of it - we've just bought a mic activator for our normal mic (which's m...

Cantonese Braised Pomelo Skin (feat. Papa Li)

Hey guys! New video is up. This's a super classic Cantonese dish showed to us by Dawei. He makes a very delicious version of the dish... and while I know this'll probably take a couple subs here or there, I do really hope you give this one a go. It's honestly much better than you usually...

Patreon only Non-Recipe: 'Sichuan-ish' Mixed Noodles

Ok, so on the Patreon Discord here, there’s one person – Neil – that no matter how hard he tries, just can’t get into Lao Gan Ma chili crisp. And while that sort of opinion tends to elicit furrowed eyebrows and shocked Pikachu faces, I’ll be honest – Lao Gan Ma wasn’t exactly love at f...

Early Look: Why Chinese Cuisine Uses So Many New World Plants

Ok! A purely food history one this week... I really hope you guys like this one. Over the years, we've gotten a lot of questions about how/why Chinese cuisine uses corn/chili/tomatoes/potatoes/etc, given that all of them are new world plants. Figured that with the American Thanksgiving coming up...

Early Look: How - and why - you should make hotpot at home

Just finished editing this guy up :) Starting to get to be hotpot season, hope this one can be a bit of help! We made the executive decision to not to cover how to make the spicy Sichuan hotpot base - which was heavily requested - simply because it's super annoying to make and other sources (e.g...

Early Look: Cantonese Swiss Chicken Wings (瑞士鸡翼)

Hey guys, this one's done editing. Will be making public the day after Halloween, so a proper early look this time :)Hope you like the video and that the recipe's not too confusing. I wanted to make it so that the recipe would be easy to execute whether you'd be making your own Canto-wes...

On Bon Appetit's return, plus some YouTube channels that I think you should watch

[Note: this was also posted on the YouTube community tab, but I wanted to share with you guys too... just in case you didn't use YT on mobile so much]So, Bon Appetit is back.We’re certainly not the best people to talk about what happened there – there’s a million other voices that have mor...

Shaxian Peanut Sauce Noodles (沙县拌面)

Apologies for the late-ish early look again :) Pretty easy dish this time, hope you guys like it! From my favorite fast food chain of all time.

Early Look: Three core stir-frying techniques, feat. Kenji

Ok! So this one was a lot of work. A couple weeks back we sat down and did a zoom call with Kenji - it was pretty awesome, I was like... geekily like star struck lol. Probably not the most interesting Kenji interview ever - our lack of media training (at least compared to the likes of Adam Ragusea) ...

Early(ish) look: Cantonese Chicken Cookies (鸡仔饼)

Hey, know this's kinda late for an early look. Was a bit unproductive yesterday, being the day after Mid Autumn and all.Next week we're off, then the week after we'll be finally releasing the Kenji collab :)