Tips for Cooking Chinese

Basically Chinese cooking is simple. The only prerequisite is to be as orderly as possible and to prepare everything you can before the actual cooking process begins. So before you start experimenting with any recipes in the site, prepare all of the ingredients, measure them, slice them, chop them, then line them up beside the stove in the order in which they are to be added to the cooking pot. Many dishes, especially stir fry ones, just do not allow time to turn around and scramble amid a chaos of half prepared ingredients.

The secret of Chinese cooking lies, in fact in the preparation. Food is sliced, shredded or cut according to certain predetermined rules. For really successful short-cooking dishes, all of the ingredients should be cut or chopped to as near the same size as possible to ensure that they are all cooked to the same degree. For very tender, almost velvety meat, the meat should be sliced along the grain, for a slightly crunchier texture it should be sliced against. Slightly frozen meat is often easier to slice into very thin strips in this way than meat at room temperature. Vegetable particularly, are often sliced on the diagonal both for aesthetic appeal and for regularity of cooking.