76 Chinese recipes. Page 1 of 4. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Pork Baozi (Chinese Steamed Pork Cabbage Bun).
Yeast-raised wheat dough wraps a filling of ground pork, cabbage and scallion seasoned with soy sauce and sesame oil, and the soft, light skin holds in the juices. The pleats at the top do more than shape the bun: they keep those juices from leaking out during steaming.
Lotus seed paste is wrapped in a dough of golden syrup, oil, and alkaline water, pressed into a patterned mold, and baked for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Here the crust and filling are close to equal in weight, and the syrupy pastry counts for as much as the smooth lotus paste. Fresh from the oven the crust is still firm; a day in an airtight container softens it until it melds with the filling.
A golden crust called fan jiu forms where the rice touches the hot clay, while the top layer stays soft and glossy with fat from sliced Chinese sausage. Hong Kong dai pai dong stalls and old Guangzhou restaurants have long served it as a winter dish. At the table, a mix of soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil is poured over and stirred through, turning the white rice amber. A sharp scorched smell means the heat must come down at once, since clay holds heat after leaving the flame and keeps toasting the bottom. Too much water, whether in the pot or clinging to the soaked rice, keeps the crust from forming.
This goes to the table the moment it leaves the pan. Bok choy stalks keep releasing water even on the plate, and the sauce thins as they do. A splash of water in the oyster sauce and soy lets the seasoning run down between the stalks.
Bite through the chewy rice skin and the sesame filling, softened with butter and sugar, runs out warm and nutty. The broth is not a sugar syrup: the dumpling cooking water is simmered with sliced ginger, so its mild heat cuts through the rich, sweet center.
In Hong Kong and Guangzhou, char siu hangs from hooks in roast-meat shop windows after roasting in a fire oven; this version gets its lacquered red-brown surface on a rack in a home oven. A spoonful of honey is held back and brushed on only after the first turn. The slightly charred edges are the prized bits, and the meat is sliced thin over rice or wonton noodles.
The heat in this soup comes from white pepper rather than chili, building slowly at the back of the throat after each spoonful. Vinegar layers sourness on top, and the broth, thickened with starch only until it turns glossy and translucent, holds wood ear mushrooms, tofu and thin ribbons of egg.
On the streets of northern China this crepe is made every morning: thin batter spread on a griddle, an egg cracked over it and smeared across, then sweet bean sauce, chili sauce, cilantro and a crisp fried wonton sheet before it is folded into a rectangle to eat by hand. Mung bean flour in the batter, alongside the wheat, gives it a nutty flavor. The wonton sheet goes in just before eating to keep it crisp.
Minced pork, crumbled fine, clings to thin glass noodles as they soak up a reduced doubanjiang broth, and those bits of meat on the strands give the dish its name. The liquid cooks down almost completely, so the result is moist and glossy rather than soupy. Glass noodles go in still slightly firm and finish cooking in the pan, absorbing the sauce without breaking.
Shredded daikon, carrot and cucumber are fanned out in rings with raw salmon in the middle, and everyone tosses the platter high with chopsticks just before eating. Plum sauce and lemon make the dressing sweet and tangy, and sesame seeds add a nutty finish. Pregnant people, children, older adults and anyone with weakened immunity should skip it, because the salmon is eaten raw and even fish sold for raw eating carries some risk.
When the white fish comes out of the steamer, a heap of shredded scallion and ginger goes on top and oil heated until it shimmers is poured over it so the aromatics sizzle. In Cantonese cooking the fish is usually steamed whole; this version uses a fillet, which is easier to handle at home.
Rice simmered low until the grains all but vanish forms a smooth base for cubes of century egg, whose white has set into amber jelly and whose yolk has turned creamy and dark green. The egg, a duck egg cured for weeks in clay, ash, and salt, brings a dense, faintly sulfurous richness that stands out against the plain porridge.
Dry-frying, gan bian in Chinese, means cooking the beans over high heat with very little stirring until the skins wrinkle and pick up brown spots. This home-style version seasons them with doubanjiang, garlic and ginger and leaves out ya cai, dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns, so the result is salty and gently hot rather than numbing. Crumbly fried pork settles in between the beans.
Douhua is traditionally set with a coagulant such as gypsum, but this home version uses gelatin to set the soy milk into a pudding. It wobbles on the spoon, and goes under a cooled syrup of brown sugar simmered with ginger.
This is Peking duck without the restaurant setup: no hanging the bird, just a rack in a home oven. The skin needs to dry overnight in the fridge, so it starts the day before, and the carved duck is wrapped in thin pancakes with cucumber, scallion and hoisin. Home ovens vary, so don't count on the paper-thin crackling of a restaurant duck.
Despite a name that means water-boiled fish, the bowl arrives under a layer of red chili oil. Thin slices of white fish, coated in starch, poach gently in a doubanjiang broth so they stay tender inside all that heat. Hot chili oil poured over Sichuan peppercorns at the end sizzles and releases the numbing aroma, and bean sprouts underneath catch the broth. It is intense enough that rice on the side is not optional.
Wide ribbons of hand-stretched dough, slapped against the counter as they lengthen, come to the bowl with chili flakes and garlic piled in the middle. Oil heated to just short of smoking is poured over that pile, cooking the garlic and chili on contact, while soy sauce and vinegar underneath turn it into a sharp, savory dressing. With all-purpose flour, resting does more of the work than kneading, and a strip that shrinks back or tears needs more time under cover, not a harder pull. The broad, thin ribbons get stirred the moment they hit the boiling water, before they can stick to each other.
Star anise and ginger are in the pot too, but what reaches you first from these ribs is clove, with a faintly medicinal edge. Cloves are strong, and the count stays at five. Before any soy goes in, the ribs are tossed in rock sugar melted to amber, which leaves a glossy dark-brown coat, and then they braise low with dark soy and Shaoxing wine until the meat slips off the bone.
Chicken thigh and shiitake are marinated in soy and oyster sauce, stir-fried, and wrapped in dried lotus leaves with sticky rice that has already been steamed halfway, then steamed again. Nobody moves it to a plate: the leaf is opened and the rice eaten straight off it, and the moment it opens, a rush of lotus-scented steam comes up. Cantonese dim sum restaurants bring it out in a bamboo steamer.
Dried fuzhu, folded sheets of bean curd skin, need at least 2 hours of soaking, so this dish starts well before the wok is hot. Once softened, their spongy layers soak up the store-bought mala sauce, numbing and chili-hot, and turn chewy.
A Sichuan fish soup that gets its sourness from rinsed pickled mustard greens and its heat from dried chilies and chili oil. Thin slices of white fish, lightly coated in starch, turn silky and soft in the red broth.
Translucent rice sheets come out of the steamer soft enough to roll around chopped shrimp, then get a lightly sweet soy sauce poured over the top. Hong Kong dim sum tables rarely go without them, and street carts there steam them to order, filling them with char siu or beef instead, or rolling them plain. This version uses rice flour with cornstarch rather than tapioca, and because the starch settles fast, the batter needs a stir before every pour. Too thick a layer makes the roll heavy and doughy, while too thin a layer tears during rolling. The shrimp are done only when firm and opaque all the way through, not when the sheet turns translucent.
Hot-water dough is rolled thin, brushed with sesame oil, salted and scattered with scallion, then rolled into a log, coiled like a snail shell and pressed flat. The oil-and-roll step happens only once, yet when the pancake comes out of a medium-hot pan and is torn open, it separates into thin layers, with edges that crackle.
The eggs are cooked first until barely set and lifted out, then large tomato wedges go into the same pan with soy sauce and a little sugar. Some of the tomato breaks down into a thin sauce and the rest stays in pieces. The eggs return for a quick fold, and whatever red juice is left in the pan goes over the rice too.