For those foreigners who come to learn Chinese in China, after they tasted all kinds of delicious Chinese food, they may be surprised by the various cooking techniques, each of which has its own feature. For the same food, if there are as many as ten ways to cook, there would be ten different tastes. Spices are essential for a delicious food. But the most important thing is the application of the proper cooking techniques.
In the following parts, I will introduce several common seen cooking techniques in our daily food to the foreigners who study Chinese in China. The first one should be stir-fry, which is the most popular and the most widely applied cooking techniques. It is also plays an important role in home cooking because of the simple cooking way and short time.
The points for stir-frying are the strong fire and the fast cooking. After putting some oil in the pan, you can add the food and ingredients as well as the flavoring. Foreigners who study Mandarin in China should notice that it should be cooked fast and in a short time. For the convenience of rapid stir-fry, the food materials should be small and almost equally shaped. We can stir-fry the fresh food materials as well as the half-cooked or cooked materials.
Another one of the most important cooking techniques is quick-fry. Those who learn Chinese in China may be told that this technique needs more speed than the former one. Indeed, the quick-fry is to cook with string fire and extremely hot oil. It should be done after being rolled over for several times.
For this reason, the food materials should be tiny and boneless. In order to speed up the cooking process, the flavoring should be prepared as juice and put it in as soon as you cook the materials. Foreigners may know many ways of quick-fry when they study Chinese in China. We can quick-fry with soy sauce and scallion and so on. One dish we often eat is the spicy diced chicken with chili and peanuts, which is also cooked by quick-fry.
During the process when foreigners study Mandarin in China, they may have tasted the food cooked with the method of “liu”. It is also often used among so many cooking techniques. It is very similar to the cooking way “stir-fry” but much more complicated than it. Some students who learn Chinese in China say that the food materials should be soused before. Then the oil is needed. It can be boiled before adding the flavoring.
According to different standards, it can be classified into different classifications. From the view of color, it has “bailiu”, “hongliu” and “huangliu”. Many foreigners who study Chinese in China may know the types classified according to the flavor such as fish flavor, juice flavor, vinegar flavor and salty flavor and so on.
For most foreigners who come to study Mandarin in China, the most familiar one is to fry with much oil. We call it “chao”. To cook food by this way, we need put the food materials into much boiling oil to fry until it is done. As one of the most common seen cooking techniques, fry with much oil can reach the result of “crispy outside and tender inside”. The foreigners who learn Chinese in China may be familiar with it because most of them like to eat potato chips.
Similar with the cooking way of frying with much oil, frying in shallow oil is another important cooking ways among so many cooking techniques. If students cook for themselves when they study Chinese in China, they must be familiar with this process. It is often fried with little oil and soft fire. More importantly, it should be heated up gradually until it is done.
The most important point of cooking food by this way should be the time. Most westerners who study Mandarin in China are aware of that if the time is too short, the oil temperature is not enough. Then the materials are difficult to be done. On the contrary, the long lasting time will fry the food into pasted. By adding different ingredients, it can be cooked into different flavors.
In total, there are five main cooking techniques are introduced above. All of them are frequently seen in our life. We can choose different food cooked by various cooking ways according to our taste.