28 recipes. Page 1 of 2
As an Amazon Associate, we may earn from qualifying purchases.
There are no noodles in this high-heat stir-fry of chicken breast, bok choy, carrot, mushrooms, and bean sprouts; it sits beside rice, with a light brown sauce that coats rather than pools. The carrot is cut thinner than the softer vegetables so everything finishes at once while the bok choy stems keep their crunch.
Bok choy usually ends up in stir-fries, but blanched and dressed with doenjang (Korean soybean paste) it becomes a namul with crisp stalks and an earthy, salty seasoning. Rub the dressing right into the hollow of each stalk with your fingers.
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.
Shiitake and oyster mushrooms simmer first until the broth turns light brown, then tofu, enoki and lengthwise-halved bok choy are arranged neatly on top. Ground perilla seed is stirred in a little at a time two minutes before serving, and there is no meat in the pot.
Thick white bok choy stems stay crunchy while the green leaves soak up the brine and soften, so one piece holds two textures. Cheongyang chilies are sliced with their seeds and layered through the jar, leaving a clean, lingering heat in every stem. The ginger comes out after a 2-minute rest so its scent stays faint. Well-drained heads keep the brine clear, and turning them once after two days evens out the seasoning.
Sesame paste, chili oil, soy, and vinegar sit in the bottom of the bowl, and once hot noodles are tossed through them, richness and direct heat come first while the tingle of Sichuan pepper arrives a beat later. Because that numbness builds fast, only half the ground peppercorn goes into the sauce, with the rest added after tasting. The ground pork is left untouched in the hot pan until it forms a brown crust, and that roasted flavor carries the whole sauce. Noodles that are not drained thoroughly thin the sauce until it no longer clings. Blanched bok choy adds a clean, green break from all the oil.
The sauce is peanut butter melted into beef shank broth: nutty, smooth, and very mildly seasoned on its own. That is why Filipinos traditionally serve it with bagoong, a salty fermented shrimp paste, to spoon on to taste.
There is no stock here, only water, but onion and ginger sautéed in sesame oil before the rice goes in keep the porridge from tasting flat. Flecks of red crab and green bok choy show through the white rice.
Doubanjiang, the Chinese fermented chili bean paste, is salty and hot, and how salty depends on the brand. So the soy sauce here is not poured by the recipe; it is decided after tasting the sauce. There is no meat, just pan-browned tofu and bok choy.
Bok choy turns up more often in Chinese cooking, yet it suits doenjang soup well. It sits in supermarkets all year, which makes it a handy replacement when there is no napa cabbage, and zucchini and tofu fill out the bowl alongside it.
Bok choy makes a lighter, crunchier kimchi than napa cabbage, ready to eat within a day. The salt goes mainly on the thick stems, and 20 minutes is the limit before the stems toughen. The halves drain thoroughly in a sieve after rinsing, because leftover water thins the paste until it slides off the leaves. Blending the salted shrimp and fish sauce into the sweet rice paste first makes the seasoning easy to spread thinly between leaves. Julienned carrot and scallions add color and a varied bite. After 4 hours at room temperature it moves to the fridge.
Wide, thick noodles take on the numbing tingle of Sichuan peppercorns, the heat of chili oil, the tang of black vinegar and the fermented saltiness of doubanjiang (chili bean paste) all at once. The numbing note comes from warming the peppercorns briefly in chili oil over low heat, pulled off before they darken or smell scorched. Heat is best adjusted with the amount of doubanjiang rather than more chili oil, which keeps the flavor clean. Because the noodles are so broad, a sauce with oil floating on top seasons them unevenly, so the sauce gets stirred to the bottom and the noodles are tossed hard. Boiled 1 minute short of the package time, they stay chewy to the last bite. Bok choy blanched in the noodle water adds a crisp, green bite between the oily strands.
Halved lengthwise and laid cut side down in a very hot pan, the bok choy cooks stalk first and only then gets flipped so the leaf edges char a little. The oyster sauce, loosened with soy sauce and a splash of water, is just enough for a thin, glossy coat on the stalks. Properly cooked, the leaves have wilted but a stalk still pushes back with some crunch when bent.
Hard scorched rice dropped into hot seafood broth starts out crisp, turns chewy, and if left a while longer softens into something like porridge. It goes into each bowl at the table rather than into the pot, and how long you wait decides which version you eat.
Black vinegar and chili oil hit at the same time, sour and hot, over a chicken stock with slippery, springy sweet potato starch noodles. Both are added to the bowl rather than the pot, leaving each person free to tune the sourness. The noodles turn clear before they are fully done; the real signal is when the firm center disappears but the bounce remains.
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.
The wide Chinese glass noodles need about two hours in lukewarm water and should be put to soak well before any cooking starts. Mala sauces vary in salt and oil from brand to brand; stir some into the beef-bone broth first and taste before deciding whether to add more.
Beef shank, first fried with doubanjiang (fermented chili bean paste), simmers in a soy broth until it splits under a chopstick, then goes over wheat noodles in big chunks. The broth is dark with soy and only gently hot, and a few blanched bok choy leaves add some green.
Mala xiangguo takes the numbing, spicy flavors of Sichuan hot pot and puts them into a dry stir-fry: beef, lotus root, shiitake, and bok choy get only a thin coat of mala sauce, with no broth at all. Everything is patted or shaken dry first: with nothing simmering, any water left on the ingredients just pools in the pan.
There is no chili flake or gochujang anywhere in this pot. Big dumplings cook in a clear anchovy and kelp stock flavored by shiitake, oyster mushrooms and napa cabbage, and any seasoning still needed at the end comes from salt alone so the broth stays pale. Some people finish the leftover broth with a scoop of rice.
Sesame paste whisked into chicken stock turns the broth thick, tan, and nutty, and a spoonful of crumbly pork plus a drizzle of chili oil sit on top as separate layers of salt and heat. Doubanjiang, a fermented chili bean paste, gives that pork its savory backbone, and the pork is fried until its moisture is gone and the edges brown and crisp. Stirring the bowl gradually blends the chili oil into the sesame broth, changing the taste of the soup from the first sip to the last. Peanut butter can stand in for half the sesame paste, and the amount of doubanjiang sets the heat. The noodles come out a little before the package time so they stay firm in the hot soup. Blanched bok choy adds a crisp, green bite against all that richness.
Once the pan is hot, the heat stays high until the end. Pork goes in first, then shrimp and squid, then the vegetables, roughly a minute apart, with no gap for chopping or drying anything, which is why everything is prepped and lined up beside the stove. There is no starch at the finish: oyster sauce and water boil for 2 minutes and leave only a thin coat.
Each thin slice of beef is held with chopsticks and swished through gently simmering dashi for a few seconds. The name comes from the sound of that swishing. As the napa cabbage, tofu, shiitake and bok choy cook, their flavor builds up in the broth, which gets richer toward the end of the meal, and the last of it takes rice or udon.