A pictorial guide to Chinese cooking ingredients

[liuzhou]

Yes.. Saf is almost everywhere.

[liuzhou]

Of course, yeast needs something to raise, so...

 

Wheat (小麦 - xiǎo mài) in China tends to be lower in gluten than most western strains, so I tend only to buy high-gluten flour (高筋粉 - gāo jīn fěn) or ‘bread flour’, (面包粉 - miàn bāo fěn).

 

Twenty years ago, this was mostly imported from the USA, but various trade wars, tariffs and quotas have scaled that back dramatically and China is now growing western cultivars alongside its own varieties.

 

I use very little flour, usually only for bread and for batters. Mostly, I buy this “goldfish*” brand, as it’s widely available.

 

 

Many types of flour are used here, wheat and rice flours being the most common. For a bilingual list of flours in China, see this website.

* Commonly called “goldfish” brand but the Chinese, 金龙鱼 (jīn lóng yú, literally ‘golden dragon fish’) actually means golden arowana, a similar looking species.

Edited April 1 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

汤 (tāng), not to be confused with 唐 (táng) is ‘soup’ or ‘stock’ or ‘broth’ or just ‘boiling water’. (唐 (táng) is sugar, sweets, candy).

 

Soups are a frequent part of meals, but unlike in western countries aren’t necessarily served at the beginning of a meal in China. As in the west, however, the best soups depend on the quality of the stock used to prepare them and top Chinese chefs go to extreme lengths to achieve perfection.

 

On the other hand, the lazy or incompetent or uninterested or all three take shortcuts and there are companies ready to take advantage. Factory made soup bases 汤底 (tāng dǐ) are sold in most supermarkets.

 

Here is a selection.

 

Hong Kong Style Golden Chicken Flavour Soup

 

Nanyang Seafood Shacha Flavor Soup

 

Cantonese Pepper Pork Belly Chicken Flavour Soup

 

 

Yunnan Precious Agaricus Blazei Flavour Soup

 

Thai Style Seafood Tom Yum Goong Flavour Soup

 

I have never eaten any of these so can't vouch for any of them, but I can say I avoid anything described as 'flavour' XXXX. It's usually a guarantee that it contains zero XXXX. Unusually, the ingredients are not listed. Instead they list  all the things it doesn't contain to  make a decent soup and suggest you buy them, too!

 

Here is a computer translation of the instructions on the foil bag containing the 'soup'.

 

 

 

Edited April 1 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

I’ve mentioned before on eG my bafflement by ‘garlic powder’. I only normally hear reference to it on American websites or television shows etc. It isn’t a thing anywhere else, so far as I can determine. I could buy it in China online, if I chose but it’s imported and I don’t choose. That said, it is made here but mainly for export or for processed food manufacturers. Yes; it is exported and re-imported! I don’t know anyone who uses it.

 

The only garlic product that I do see regularly is this 蒜蓉酱 (suàn róng jiàng), minced garlic sauce or paste). It costs between $2 and $3 for a 320g jar,  depending on brand.

 

 

 

This is sometimes used as a dip with hotpots but more often slathered over oysters in the shell before grilling. I only eat my oysters raw.

 

 

Fresh garlic is ubiquitous and dirt cheap.

 

 

[liuzhou]

Here, I am looking at (C6H10O5)n,  a polysaccharide comprising glucose monomers joined in α 1,4 linkages. Extracted from the roots, tubers or seeds of various plants this tasteless white powder is used in kitchens worldwide to thicken sauces, tenderise meats and coat foods to be fried. Its friends call it S: 淀粉; T: 澱粉 (diàn fěn) or starch.

The most common is found as 玉米粉 (yù mǐ fěn) in Chinese 🇨🇳, cØrn starch in American English 🇺🇸 or cØrnflour in British English 🇬🇧 and is widely available both in the west and in China. However, cØrn is far from the only source.

 

I always use S: 马铃薯粉; T 馬鈴薯粉 (mǎ líng shǔ fěn) or 土豆粉 (tǔ dòu fěn), potato starch, as do the Sichuanese.

 

 

S: 木薯淀粉: T: 木薯澱粉 (mù shǔ diàn fěn), tapioca starch, made from cassava, is used some places as are 葛粉 (gé fěn) Pueraria montana, kudzu or 竹芋 (zhú yù), Maranta arundinacea, arrowroot.

 

Tapioca Starch

 

Kudzu Starch

 

Anonymous starch is also sold as 生粉 (shēng fěn) often also labelled in English "Edible Starch". This is sometimes cØrn but there are no guarantees. The cØrn starch pictured above is labelled as both 生粉 and 玉米 meaning, cØrn.

 

The above starches are also used to make noodles as are rice starch and S: 绿豆粉; T: 綠豆粉 (lǜ dòu fěn), mung bean starch.

 

 

Edited April 10 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

Here’s something I haven’t seen before.

 

S: 陈皮;T: 陳皮 (chén pí), dried orange or tangerine peel is a common ingredient in Chinese cuisine. Every supermarket has it, although most people dry their own, including me. It keeps for decades in a sealed container in a cool dark cupboard.. In fact, for most people, the older it is; the better. It is possible to buy peel up to 80 years old. That is expensive, though. More than $5 USD a gram.

 

These three jars in my local supermarket hold (left to right) 15-year-old peel ($77.39 USD / 500g), 10-year-old ($46.99), 3-year-old ($24.88).

 

 

The Woks of Life site goes to its ludicrous lengths as usual, explaining how to dry it. One sentence would do. “Remove peel and dry it in the sun.”

 

 

It is used medicinally, but also in both sweet and savoury dishes. It is used in hot pot bases, in soups, stocks, and especially, braised dishes.

 

So, I’m well used to the ingredient. What I found yesterday was powdered peel in sachets. I totally fail to see the point. The stuff comes free with every tangerine you buy!

Dried tangerine peel powder

 

 

Edited April 10 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

Two more starches used in the kitchen.

 

1) S: 红薯淀粉; T: 紅薯澱粉 (hóng shǔ fěn), sweet potato starch.

 

 

2) S: 马蹄粉; T 馬蹄粉; (mǎ tí fěn) Chinese water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis or E. congesta) starch.

 

 

 

[liuzhou]

北海 (běi hǎi, literally ‘north (of the) sea’) is a city on Guangxi’s southern coast on the Gulf of Tonkin near the border between China and Vietnam. It gets a large number of domestic tourists looking for its beaches and seafood ; few foreign. The city and especially 外沙岛 (wài shā dǎo), Waisha Island, connected to the city by a short bridge, gets the bulk of the visitors and is full of seafood restaurants. Most of my fish and seafood (and all seawater species) come from there.

 

One special attraction is S: 北海沙虫; T: 北海沙蟲 (běi hǎi shā chóng), Sipunculus nudus, Beihai sandworms. a local delicacy. They are also referred to in English as ‘peanut worms’.

 

 

These on average, 15 cm / six inch long, unsegmented worms are picked from Beihai’s beaches early in the morning when they emerge from the sand. Fried until crispy, they have a pleasant umami-laden flavour. They are often added to congee, which is how I have eaten them.

 

Today, they are being cultivated in limited but growing numbers. Away from their natural habitat of Guangxi, they are sold dried. I can buy them fresh. $9.00 USD per 250 grams.

 

Need I mention, they are also used in TCM? In that context they are sometimes called ‘sea cordyceps’ as they are claimed to have similar medicinal benefits to those parasitic fungus infested worms?

 

 

Edited June 15 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

北海 (běi hǎi, literally ‘north (of the) sea’) is a city on Guangxi’s southern coast on the Gulf of Tonkin near the border between China and Vietnam. It gets a large number of domestic tourists looking for its beaches and seafood ; few foreign. The city and especially 外沙岛 (wài shā dǎo), Waisha Island, connected to the city by a short bridge, gets the bulk of the visitors and is full of seafood restaurants. Most of my fish and seafood (and all seawater species) come from there.

 

One special attraction is S: 北海沙虫; T: 北海沙蟲 (běi hǎi shā chóng), Sipunculus nudus, Beihai sandworms. a local delicacy. They are also referred to in English as ‘peanut worms’.

 

 

These on average, 15 cm / six inch long, unsegmented worms are picked from Beihai’s beaches early in the morning when they emerge from the sand. Fried until crispy, they have a pleasant umami-laden flavour. They are often added to congee, which is how I have eaten them.

 

Today, they are being cultivated in limited but growing numbers. Away from their natural habitat of Guangxi, they are sold dried. I can buy them fresh. $9.00 USD per 250 grams.

 

Need I mention, they are also used in TCM? In that context they are sometimes called ‘sea cordyceps’ as they are claimed to have similar medicinal benefits to those parasitic fungus infested worms?

 

 

 

<joke> these look a lot smaller than the ones on Arrakis </joke>

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

<joke> these look a lot smaller than the ones on Arrakis </joke>

 

I was searching earlier for their scientific name which I'd forgotten and a couple of websites mentioned Dune, without which I wouldn't have understood your reference. I've never seen the movie or read the book.

Edited April 3 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

This ingredient contains ingredients but doesn't contain one ingredient in its name.

 

S:猪血豆腐; T: 豬血豆腐 (zhū xuè dòu fu) is 'pig blood tofu' and the ingredients are water, blood, salt and preservatives. No tofu, but is so named as it resembles tofu in texture and can be used in the same ways. It is also a common addition to soups and hotpots. For those who’ve never tasted this coagulated blood, it is naturally slightly sweet, with little metallic taste.

 

 

Best washed down with snake’s blood wine, perhaps.

 

 

[liuzhou]

Beer (啤酒 - pí jiǔ) 🍺 is used as an ingredient in many recipes around the world, but I don’t think many people associate it with Chinese cuisine as an ingredient. They’d be wrong. There aren’t so many dishes use it, but two are well-known throughout the country. I’ll came to those in a bit. First I need to look at the ingredient itself.

 

Although not traditional, beer consumption in China is massive and its not just me consuming it. In the early 2000s, China passed the United States to become the world’s largest producer with an average of 42.20 billion litres per annum – it would be higher but Covid and the associated lockdowns bit hard. Most of this production goes to the domestic market, export still being extremely limited but growing.

 

Besides innumerable Chinese manufacturers, the world’s brewing giants are also here both operating on their own and in joint ventures with Chinese companies.

 

It would be a mammoth undertaking, if even possible, to list every type of beer available so I’ll just mention a few of the better known brands.

 

Probably the best know outside China is S: 青岛啤酒 Trad. 青島啤酒 (qīng dǎo pí jiǔ), made in Qingdao in Shandong Province. This is one of only two products in China permitted to use the original transliteration as its name, so it is marketed as Tsingtao Beer.

 

 

Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. was established in 1903 by German and British merchants as Germania-Brauerei Tsingtao Co., Ltd. In 1916 Qingdao fell into Japanese hands following their invasion of NE China and the company was compulsorily sold to Dai-Nippon Brewery, the producer of Asahi beer, but soon taken back after the First World War in 1918. It then remained in Chinese hands apart from another brief Japanese take over in WWII.

 

After Mao’s revolution and declaration of the People’s Republic in 1949, it was nationalised as a state controlled enterprise as Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited. Today it is the second biggest seller in China.

 

The largest is 雪花啤酒 (xuě huā pí jiǔ), literally ‘snowflake beer’ but usually referred to simply as Snow Beer. This is from Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province in north -east China, and the company, founded in 1993, is owned by China Resources Enterprise, which has over 90 breweries across China. Heineken holds a 40% stake in the brand. You may not have heard of it, but this is the best selling beer in not only China, but the world.

 

Snow Beer

 

Another giant is 燕京啤酒 (yān jīng pí jiǔ), literally Beijing beer, Yanjing being an old name for China’s capital. Yan is pronounced ‘yen’ in Chinese. The company was established in 1980 and is owned today by Beijing Yanjing Beer Group Corporation. Besides their own brand, Yanjing beer. They have also acquired other brands across China, including my local brand.

 

漓泉啤酒 (lí quán pí jiǔ) is now made by Yanjing Beer (Guilin Liquan) Co., Ltd. in Guilin, an hour up the rail tracks from Liuzhou. In 1998, then US president, Bill Clinton visited Guilin and they launched a commemorative beer, 漓泉1998 (lí quán 1998), Liquan 1998, which has since become their largest seller.

 

 

One unusual beer you are unlikely to find outside China for now comes from China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far west. Despite being predominantly Muslim, they like a beer or three in the desert and top-ranking is S: 乌苏啤酒; T:烏蘇啤酒 (wū sū pí jiǔ) named after the town of Wusu where it is brewed. Despite its exotic location, the Wusu Group is 100% owned today by Carlsberg. The beer, Xinjiang’s best-seller by far, has a reputation of being easy to drink, but with a potent intoxicating effect that hits the drinker unexpectedly. That reputation has been exaggerated by Carlsberg's marketing people.

 

 

Finally, wheat white beers are becoming popular with a recent newcomer brand, 杰克相貌啤酒 (jié kè xióng māo pí jiǔ), Jack Panda Beer entering the fray in 2020 with their original wheat white beer.

 

 

They have somewhat spoiled their image among serious beer drinkers though, by also producing fruit flavoured wheat beers – Mango beer? Passion fruit beer? Lemon beer⁈⁈ Beer for people who hate beer!

 

Jack  Panda Lemon Beer. No thanks.

 

Like all almost Chinese beers these above are all light lager types, great for drinking in China’s blistering hot summers. And are cheap. American and European beers, including some which I barely classify as beers, are available and popular – but at a premium price, even when brewed here. They are seen as sophisticated by the poser set.
 

I can buy 吉尼斯黑啤酒 (jí ní sī hēi pí jiǔ) in cans, but rarely do. I save my Guinness fetish till I go to Shanghai or Hong Kong, where I hit the Irish bars. When I do buy it in cans, it’s usually to cook with.

So, now on to the food.

 

For the last 28 years, I’ve lived in Hunan and Guangxi. Both the dishes I’m about to mention are from those two provinces, but are popular across China and maybe abroad. Please tell me which, if any, you can find.

 

啤酒鸭 (pí jiǔ yā), Beer Duck comes in different versions. My favourite is from Hunan but there is also a good version from Sichuan which uses 魔芋 (mó yù), konjak Amorphophallus konjac, the corms of a plant which are used to make a stiff edible jelly.

 

In both versions the duck is chopped (on the bone) into chopstick friendly pieces and braised with chillies in beer. The Hunan version is the simpler of the two, but in my view, the better. Where Sichuan uses doubanjiang and konjac as in this recipe, in Hunan the duck is cooked with fresh green and red chillies (lots), Chinese celery, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaf and star anise and onions.

 

Hunan Beer Duck

 

The second common dish, sold in ersatz versions to Guilin backpackers or tourists is S: 桂林啤酒鱼; T: 桂林啤酒魚 (guì lín pí jiǔ yú), Guilin Beer Fish aka 阳朔啤酒鱼 (yáng shuò pí jiǔ yú), Yangshuo being the backpacker hell-hole near Guilin where the backpacker mob descend. I’ve written about the beer fish here at length, but below is the description of the dish.

 

Beer Fish

 

Quote

Traditional beer fish is made with a freshly caught 1 to 1.5 kg carp from the local river, the River Li, perhaps caught by a cormorant – probably not. The fish is gutted, but not scaled and certainly not filleted. It is then fried whole in camellia oil until the scales form a hard crust, then the fish is braised with the local Liquan beer, red and green chilli peppers, garlic, onions, celery, tomatoes, soy, sugar and oyster sauce.

 

Of course hold back a can or bottle to wash down either your duck or fish.

 

Should you find yourself in China, watch out when drinking beer with the locals. They see it as a competitive sport; drinking games and toasting are obligatory. Not how I like to get my daily swallow.

 

🍺🍺🍺 干杯 (gān bēi)!!

Edited June 15 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

S: 银耳; T: 銀耳 (yín ěr) is this silver tree-ear fungus, Tremella fuciformis, available in most supermarkets. They are approximately 15cm / 6 inches in diameter and weigh 190 grams / 6.7 ounces when fresh. They are more often found dried.

 

 

However, today I found these: S: 小银耳; T: 小銀耳 (xiǎo yín ěr), Tremella fuciformis, small silver tree-ear fungus. They are about 5 cm / 2” max in diameter. I guess they are dropped into hotpots. Amusing more than anything. They certainly have no taste. Another one of those texture things, Chinese cuisine loves so much.

 

 

¥68 / $9.40 USD for 500 grams, but 500 grams would be a sack-load. They weigh almost nothing when dried.

 

 

[liuzhou]

A Chinese friend asked me today what Chinese Lemon Chicken is. I replied that I didn’t know but would find out. So I spent a while online and discovered that it is popular American-Chinese dish, which explains why she (and I) had never heard of it. The local dish, Zhuang Lemon Duck, made using salt preserved lemons, is known within Guangxi but little known elsewhere in China.

 

One recipe for lemon chicken on the internet, described as authentically ‘Chinese’, included sambal oelek which is authentically Indonesian instead.

 

When I lived in Hunan in the late 1990s, lemons were almost unknown but always unfindable. They are easy to find here further south but rare in northern China. In fact, Chinese has no native word for lemon, instead borrowing the English name and rendering a near phonetic version - 柠檬 / 檸檬 (níng méng).

 

 

Here, lemon sauce is widely available in these small 150 gram jars and used mainly as a dip for grilled / BBQd meats.

 

It is thin and very tart. You could, I suppose, use it to make a 糖醋 (táng cù, literally ‘sugar-vinegar’), sweet and sour dish, but sweet and sour chicken is the rarest of all the sweet and sour dishes available; dishes using pork rib and fish are dominant in that genre.

 

 

I have no idea what this. Certainly not available here.

 

 

Lays do have these, though, but then they are American, too.

 

 

 

Edited April 20 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

Lays do have these, though, but then they are American, too.

 

 

 

While Lay's is an American brand, I don't think I'd find Lemon Chicken flavored potato chips (crisps) anywhere here, other than in Chinatown and it's been imported from overseas!

[liuzhou]

13 minutes ago, KennethT said:

While Lay's is an American brand, I don't think I'd find Lemon Chicken flavored potato chips (crisps) anywhere here, other than in Chinatown and it's been imported from overseas!

 

Sure, I meant the  company is American not the chips (crisps). They tailor their flavours to the target territory - pehaps someone thought the Chinese were dying to eat a flavour they were(n't) used to!

 

Not that any flavour of chips (crisps) ever taste of their description. I wonder if they still do luosifen flavour. They never did in Liuzhou! Weren't that dumb.

Edited April 20 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

A few days ago, I was muttering on @Shel_B's How big is an onion? topic about only being able to find bowling ball sized onions. Someone in my local supermarket must have read that. Today, they were stocking these. Mini red onions (the default type here).

 

I have had them before, but not regularly. I use them like shallots.

 

¥11.98 / $1.65 USD per kg.

 

 

 

Edited October 5 by liuzhou
typo (log)

[KennethT]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

A few days ago, I was muttering on @Shel_B's How big is an onion? topic about only being able to find bowling ball sized onions. Someone in my local supermarket must have read that. Today, they were stocking these. Mini red onions (the default type here).

 

 i have had them before, but not regularly. I use them like shallots.

 

¥11.98 / $1.65 USD per kg.

 

 

 

 

 

They look exactly like what they call shallots here.

[Shel_B]

4 hours ago, liuzhou said:

A few days ago, I was muttering on @Shel_B's How big is an onion? topic about only being able to find bowling ball sized onions. Someone in my local supermarket must have read that. Today, they were stocking these. Mini red onions (the default type here).

 

 i have had them before, but not regularly. I use them like shallots.

 

¥11.98 / $1.65 USD per kg.

 

 

Coincidentally, I found some nice-looking, normal-sized onions at the market yesterday. Like others here, I've been finding only large (grapefruit-sized) onions the past few months, and of poor quality, too.  

 

Edited April 25 by Shel_B
Spelling (log)

[liuzhou]

On 4/25/2024 at 7:22 PM, KennethT said:

They look exactly like what they call shallots here.

 

Shallots to me are more like this image from The Spruce  Eats.  More pointed than round.

 

Image: The Spruce Eats / Diana Chistruga

 

The Chinese name for those I posted above is 小红葱 (xiǎo hóng cōng), literally 'small red onion'. But sometimes the shallots I usually buy resemble these Spruce Eats examples and are described as 小葱 (xiǎo cōng), only missing the 'red'. I find the labelling of alliums is often confused and with multiple regional variations.

 

 

Edited June 15 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

Here (at least in every store in NY that I've seen) the bin that holds shallots contains a mix of your original photo and the Spruce Eats one.  And you have to feel all of them up to find ones that aren't too old....

[Burmese Days]

15 hours ago, liuzhou said:

A few days ago, I was muttering on @Shel_B's How big is an onion? topic about only being able to find bowling ball sized onions. Someone in my local supermarket must have read that. Today, they were stocking these. Mini red onions (the default type here).

 

 i have had them before, but not regularly. I use them like shallots.

 

¥11.98 / $1.65 USD per kg.

 

 

 

 

 

They look similar, though more rounded and less segmented, to Laos and Northern Thai shallots. The common bulb allium consumed there -

[liuzhou]

3 hours ago, Burmese Days said:

They look similar, though more rounded and less segmented, to Laos and Northern Thai shallots.

 

Yes, we get those here, too.

 

But the 'small red onions' above are not segmented at all; they are exactly like red onions but small.

 

 

5cm / 2 inches in diameter.

 

 

[liuzhou]

Konjac, pronounced in English as /ˈkɒnjæk/, (kohn-yak), is also known as konjac potato, voodoo lily, devil’s tongue or elephant yam. In Japanese, it is こんにゃく(konnyaku) and in Chinese, 魔芋 (mó yù) or 蒟蒻 (jǔ ruò).

 

It is made from the corm of a large herb, Amorphophallus rivieri. Despite the various names, it is unrelated to yams, potatoes, lilies or tongues.

 

A substance called glucomannan, a glucose and mannose based polysaccharid, is extracted from the plant’s corm. This dry glucomannan can be used to make flour and from that can be made noodles and gums. You may think you’ve never eaten it, but you probably have. Gum from the plant is used in many processed foods as a thickener, identified in some territories as the food additive E425.

 

It contains several vitamins, but is otherwise devoid of any nutritional value but is valuable as as a filler. Hence, it is used in many slimming products. Here in China it is usually sold in off white blocks of gum, which can be boiled in hotpots to provide that chewy texture so many Chinese like. It is also used in the preparation of those fake meat dishes found in Buddhist vegetarian restaurants near or in temples. Fake shark’s fin is also usually konjac.

 

Available in some supermarkets for around ¥12 / $1.66 USD per kg.

 

 

 

[liuzhou]

Are these Chinese ingredients? They are now.

 

 

马铃薯条 (mǎ líng shǔ tiáo). literally 'potato strips'. 

 

Are they Chinese? Well, they're certainly not French! Grown in China, chipped in China, frozen in China and sold in my local supermarket in China.

 

When I first served some chips (I refuse to call them fries - I have standards) to some friends here in 1996, they were baffled and grabbed some sugar and poured it over them liberally.

 

Soon after, McD's and KFC turned up and they worked it out. Yesterday was the first time I saw them like this, though.

 

Did I buy them? No. I make my chips from this ingredient.

 

 

 

Edited May 10 by liuzhou (log)