01 / Cuisines · East Asian
Heat is the ingredient. Everything else is decoration.
02 / Intro · The shape of it
Chinese cooking is the world's largest cuisine, and the foreign perception ("Chinese food") collapses thirteen regional cuisines into a single category. Cantonese is not Sichuan is not Hunan is not Shanghainese is not Northeastern. Each has its own pantry, technique vocabulary, and dialect of heat.
The throughline is wok hei — the "breath of the wok," the smoky depth that only comes from a screaming-hot carbon-steel pan and a brisk hand. Most home stoves can't reach the temperature of a Sham Shui Po line cooker, and Souschef's Chinese recipes are honest about that: a flat-bottom wok on a powerful gas burner gets you 85% of the way there, and the other 15% is what you'd buy at a restaurant.
Five sauces (light soy, dark soy, oyster, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil) plus the trinity (ginger, garlic, scallion) cover most of the Cantonese repertoire. Sichuan adds doubanjiang and Sichuan peppercorn. Once you have the pantry, the recipes are mostly about technique and timing.
03 / Techniques · The four that matter
Preheat a seasoned carbon-steel wok until it smokes, then add oil, then ingredients in batches. Crowding kills wok hei — work fast, small portions, never let the pan drop below smoking.
Coat sliced meat in cornstarch + egg white + a splash of Shaoxing for 15 minutes before cooking. The starch shields the protein from high heat, keeping it tender even at wok temperatures.
A spoonful of cornstarch dissolved in cold water, swirled into the wok at the very end. The sauce goes from watery to glossy in seconds — the signature Cantonese coat.
Long, hot dry-cooking that drives off water before any sauce hits. The technique behind Sichuan green beans and dry-fried beef — the surface goes chewy-savory, the inside stays tender.
04 / Soundtrack · Traditional Chinese Instrumentals
05 / The library · 48 chinese recipes
Mapo tofu is Sichuan cooking at its most direct: silken tofu in a sauce built on fermented paste, two kinds of heat, and the numbing tingle that defines the mala profile. The dish works best when you do not temper any of it.
Kung Pao chicken is a Sichuan stir-fry built on three things arriving in the right order: velveted chicken, charred dried chilies, and a tart-sweet-spicy sauce that coats everything in seconds. Get the heat high and the timing tight.
Char siu is the pork that hangs in Cantonese restaurant windows, lacquered and gleaming -- but it is also one of the more forgiving things you can roast at home. The marinade does the heavy lifting; the oven does the rest.
Dan dan noodles take their name from the carrying pole street vendors used to balance pots of noodles and sauce -- a dish built for speed and directness, with sesame paste, chili oil, and Yibin preserved vegetable as its three pillars.
Scallion pancakes are one of the most satisfying things to make from scratch in Chinese cooking -- hot water dough, layers built through rolling and coiling, and the smell of scallions hitting a hot pan.
Wonton soup is Cantonese cooking at its most restrained: thin-skinned dumplings in a clean pork-bone broth, where nothing should overpower anything else. The filling is the point, and the broth is its frame.
Tomato and egg stir-fry is the weeknight dish that every Chinese home cook knows, and the one that most cooks outside China underestimate. The technique is faster than it looks and the result is better than the ingredient list suggests.
Hot and sour soup builds its punch from two underused ingredients: Chinkiang black vinegar for a sharp, malty sourness and white pepper for a nasal, penetrating heat that sits differently on the palate than chili does. Get both in the right proportion and the soup balances itself.
Yangzhou fried rice is the benchmark: eggs, char siu, shrimp, peas, and scallions worked into cold day-old rice over the highest heat you can manage. Everything else is variation.
Beef and broccoli became a Chinese-American staple because the combination works: velveted flank steak against blistered broccoli in a glossy oyster sauce glaze. The restaurant secret is the velveting -- without it, the beef tightens and toughens on contact with the wok.
The Cantonese version of sweet and sour pork does not use ketchup, does not glow neon red, and does not coat the meat in a gel-like sauce. It uses plum sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, and a light batter that stays crisp for longer than you expect.
Cantonese steamed whole fish is the purest expression of the cuisine's philosophy: source the best ingredient, apply minimal technique, and get out of the way. A whole sea bass steamed for exactly the right amount of time is the meal.
Lo mein is tossed noodles -- not stir-fried, but coated. The noodles go into the sauce rather than the sauce going onto the noodles, which makes the difference between something that tastes dressed and something that tastes integrated.
Smashed cucumber salad is one of the best arguments for smashing rather than slicing: the fractured edges trap dressing in a way that smooth cuts cannot, and the texture shifts from crunchy to slightly yielding in the 15 minutes it needs to sit.
Congee is the Chinese answer to a blank canvas: plain rice simmered until it collapses into a thick, silky porridge, ready to carry whatever topping you put on it. It is both the most unassuming and the most versatile dish in the repertoire.
Tea-smoked duck is a Sichuan technique that uses tea and rice to smoke marinated duck before a final blast of heat renders the skin crisp. At home, a wok and a tight-fitting lid are enough to replicate the process.
Twice-cooked pork is exactly what it says: pork belly poached first to cook through, then sliced thin and returned to the wok with doubanjiang and fermented black beans until the fat renders and the edges char. The second cooking is where the dish happens.
Jiaozi are the dumplings of northern China -- thicker-skinned and more robustly filled than Cantonese dim sum style, designed to be a meal rather than a bite. Pork and chive is the canonical combination.
Hong shao rou is Chinese braised pork at its most elemental -- pork belly in soy sauce, sugar, Shaoxing wine, and aromatics, simmered until the fat is translucent and the meat yields at the push of a chopstick. Mao Zedong apparently ate it daily.
Cantonese spring rolls are thin-wrapped and properly fried -- a world apart from the thick-skinned, baked versions that appear in Western Chinese food. The filling is cooked first and cooled completely; wet filling ruins the skin from the inside.
Char kway teow is a Singaporean-Cantonese hawker staple: flat rice noodles stir-fried at maximum heat with egg, Chinese sausage, bean sprouts, and shrimp until they have the smoky, slightly charred flavor of the hawker's ancient wok. At home, maximum heat is the prerequisite.
Fish-fragrant shredded pork (yu xiang rou si) contains no fish -- the name refers to the sauce flavor profile used in Sichuan fish cookery: doubanjiang, vinegar, sugar, garlic, ginger, and scallion. On pork, it is one of the most balanced and complete Sichuan stir-fries.
Cantonese five-spice braised brisket is a long, slow project that pays off in slices of deeply flavored, tender beef in a sauce that gels overnight. It is Cantonese diner food -- the kind served over rice noodles or plain steamed rice.
Cold sesame noodles with chili crisp are the best ten-minute lunch in Chinese cooking: cooked and rinsed noodles, a sesame-vinegar sauce, and as much chili crisp as you can handle. The key is the noodle temperature -- they should be cooled to room temperature, not refrigerator-cold.
Lion's head meatballs are a Shanghainese classic -- large pork meatballs braised slowly with napa cabbage until the meatballs are tender and the cabbage has surrendered completely to the broth. The size is not decorative; the interior stays juicy where a smaller meatball would dry out.
Hainanese chicken rice is a Singaporean-Cantonese dish that centres a poached chicken alongside rice cooked in the poaching broth, and a trio of dipping sauces that do most of the talking. The chicken is barely seasoned; the sauces carry the flavor.
Yu xiang qie zi translates as 'fish-fragrant eggplant' -- the same sauce profile as the fish-fragrant dishes of Sichuan, with no fish involved. Garlic, ginger, doubanjiang, vinegar, and sugar in a glossy, silky sauce over eggplant that has been softened until it practically dissolves.
Braised firm tofu with ground pork is the weeknight version of mapo tofu -- less heat, less technique, same satisfying result. Firm tofu holds its shape in the braise without the pre-soaking step silken requires.
Claypot rice is a Cantonese street food that builds its appeal on texture: soft, savory rice on top, and a crunchy, lacy rice crust (guoba) on the bottom that forms as the moisture cooks off. The lap cheong perfumes everything with its sweet-salty fat.
Pineapple fried rice is dismissed as inauthentic by purists who have never eaten it well made. When the pineapple is fresh, the rice is cold, and the wok heat is right, the interplay between the sweet fruit and the savory, salted rice is one of the most enjoyable things a wok can produce.
Kong xin cai -- hollow-stemmed water spinach -- is one of the fastest things you can stir-fry. It goes from crunchy to perfectly wilted in under three minutes. The fermented tofu sauce gives it a pungent, funky depth that makes it the best argument for an otherwise overlooked vegetable.
Properly stir-fried bok choy -- bright green, with a slight char on the leaves and a crisp stem -- is one of the fastest things you can cook in a wok. The technique is as important as the ingredients: very hot pan, very little time.
Cantonese spare ribs with black bean sauce are a dim sum staple: marinated pork ribs chopped into small pieces, tossed with douchi and seasonings, and steamed until the meat is just tender and the sauce is a concentrated, savory-salty glaze.
Egg drop soup takes five minutes if you have good broth. The technique is two things: the starch goes in first to thicken the soup, then the eggs go in a slow, steady drizzle while the soup is being stirred in one direction. The ribbons form on contact; stop stirring and they set.
Soy sauce chicken (si yau gai) is a Cantonese staple that hangs alongside char siu and roast duck in Cantonese barbecue shop windows. At home, it is simpler than it looks: poach a whole chicken in a seasoned soy-sugar broth until glossy and deeply colored.
Three-cup chicken takes its name from the original ratio: one cup each of sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine. Modern versions use less sesame oil and more technique, but the dish is still fundamentally those three ingredients plus garlic, ginger, and a fistful of Thai basil that goes in at the end.
Chuan chuan xiang is Chengdu street food: thinly sliced meat and vegetables on bamboo skewers, cooked in a communal pot of mala broth. At home, the same flavored skewers can be grilled or pan-fried to capture the char and the heat.
Drunken chicken is one of the great cold dishes of Shanghainese cooking: poached chicken submerged in a Shaoxing wine brine overnight, served at room temperature or slightly chilled. The wine does not cook out -- it is the point.
General Tso's chicken is a Chinese-American dish that Chinese chefs created for American tastes in the 1970s. It has no historical basis in Chinese cooking, but it is genuinely good when made well -- crispy fried chicken in a sweet, sour, and hot sauce.
Chinese steamed egg custard is the opposite of an omelet -- slow, gentle heat, a higher water ratio than Western custards, and a surface so smooth it looks lacquered. It is eaten with a spoon and seasoned at the table.
06 / FAQ · The cook's questions
It helps, but a flat-bottom wok on a regular gas burner gets you most of the way. Induction can work if it's powerful enough. Electric coils — accept the limitation and cook in smaller batches.
No. The Western fear of MSG is the residue of a 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine that no peer-reviewed study has ever replicated. Use it sparingly, the way Cantonese cooks have for a century.
Light soy is saltier, thinner, and used for seasoning. Dark soy is sweeter, thicker, less salty, and used for color and finishing. Most stir-fries use both — light for taste, dark for the lacquer look.