Introduction to How to Make Authentic Chinese Food at Home
The internet is full of tutorials on how to make authentic Chinese food at home. With our personal experience, we want to add a bit more clarity for home chefs who want to make a full authentic meal, whether you have 30 minutes to spare or 30 hours to create an entire feast.
It’s possible to make good authentic Chinese food at home—and frozen soup dumplings are an easy part of the equation that you can store away in the freezer. However, if you’re looking for a full meal alongside your dumplings and noodles, here’s what you need to know.
First: What Makes a Type of Chinese Food Authentic?
“Authentic” means a lot of things to a lot of people, especially in a food culture as rich and diverse as Chinese cuisine. China has many different culinary regions with different climates, flavor preferences, and histories, so any dish originating in China could be considered authentic.
For example, dishes originally from northern China are more likely to use wheat as a starch. In turn, because rice grows more easily in the south, you’re more likely to find southern dishes that use rice than wheat. This climate-based phenomenon also influences the regional nature of Chinese cuisine.
The Eight Great Traditions (and More)
You might occasionally hear foodies and culinary historians refer to the Eight Great Traditions in Chinese cuisine. These encapsulate different regions of China with their own unique food traditions, much like how you’ll find a very different set of dishes in New England than you would at a Soul Food restaurant in the Deep South—but both of them are American.
At a glance, the Eight Great Traditions include:
Grandma Knows Best
Regardless of cooking traditions, just like with the rest of the world’s great food cultures, many Chinese Americans know that the best real Chinese food is what their grandma makes at home.
Chinese grandmas have been cooking for their kids and grandkids all their lives, and they’ve had decades to practice and perfect their craft and know it by heart. They also aren’t shy about changing the ingredients to match personal preferences.
That being said, the truest form of authenticity involves making it yourself. We usually follow the recipes our grandmas have had stored in their minds, and what we slowly picked up after watching them as kids. You’ll find a few of our favorites below.
Chinese Pantry Staples to Have On Hand
Before you start cooking any type of Chinese food, whether it’s a main dish or a side, there are certain things we recommend having in your pantry and refrigerator to make your life easier before you pull out your wok or frying pan.
Chinese Dipping Sauces
Whether you’re making a batch of soup dumplings or trying a new way of marinating chicken, having Chinese dipping sauces elevates your whole meal.
We’ve taken our classic sauce trio and remixed it into something that adds flavor to every dish. With our sweet and tangy Dumpling Dipping Sauce, handcrafted Chili Crunch, and Ginger & Scallion Umami oil, each Chinese dish you make will have a unique and unforgettable flavor profile!
Cooking Wine
Also called Shaoxing wine (绍兴黄酒), this is one of the secrets most Chinese restaurants use to make their food taste so good. Nothing tastes quite as good as the real deal.
Sichuan Peppercorns
Sichuan peppercorns, also called hua jiao (花椒), are dried berries known for their presence in five-spice powder, chili oil, dan dan noodles, and beyond. They have a tingly spiciness to them that’s tricky to replicate with other spices.
Hoisin Sauce
This sweet and salty condiment is a staple in Cantonese cuisine, where it’s often used to glaze meat or elevate stir-fried dishes.
Dried Chili Peppers
These are an aromatic staple and a sign you’re cooking real Chinese food. Chefs add these to the pan or wok early in the process to add fragrant heat to the final product.
Black Vinegar
A staple for making dumpling dipping sauces, black vinegar or Zhenjiang xiang cu (镇江香醋) has a milder flavor that cuts through the rich flavor of meat and balances out savory or fatty ingredients.
Both Light and Dark Soy Sauce
There are several types of soy sauce—and they have different flavor profiles. Light soy sauce is generally saltier and used to flavor all types of dishes, while dark soy sauce is mellow and often used to provide color or add depth to the flavor profile of different dishes.
Sesame Oil
Made from sesame seeds, sesame oil has a distinctly nutty flavor that makes it a unique addition to everything from stir-fries to dipping sauces. A little goes a long way!
Chicken Stock Powder
This is a flavor-boosting powder that’s a bit different from the bouillon you’ll find in most American-style supermarkets. While those usually have herbs or vegetables, Chinese chicken stock powder has a purer chicken flavor that elevates anything it touches.
MSG
You might see this listed on ingredient labels as “monosodium glutamate.” This ingredient has been the victim of an unjustly bad reputation for decades, even though it’s in everything from bacon and salami to cheeses and tomatoes. It also adds an extra layer of umami to your food, making it essential for dozens of Chinese dishes.
Easy Authentic Chinese Dishes for Weeknights
If we listed every single easy and authentic Chinese dish you can make at home, this post would be the length of a novel. These are a few of our favorites when we’re in the mood to make some homestyle Chinese cuisine. Even better—you can whip up most of them in 30 minutes or less.
Mapo Tofu
Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐) is a spicy, mala-filled classic from Sichuan. It consists of ground pork or beef, fermented black beans, and firm tofu. This oily and savory dish is a quick fix for lighting a fire under your weeknights since it’s ready in a matter of minutes and pairs beautifully with white rice.
You might see this dish appear frequently on Chinese takeout menus, but most restaurateurs will market it as a vegetarian dish because so many people associate tofu with vegetable dishes. However, the ground meat is traditional!
Fried Rice
This is the Chinese answer to getting rid of leftover odds and ends in your pantry and fridge. It’s fast, easy, and can be tailored to your exact tastes, whether you like the main protein to be spam or you want to go more traditional with dried scallops and green onions.
Stir-Fried Tomato and Eggs
This is the classic midweek dinner for many a Chinese grandma since it’s easy, cheap, and quick to make—plus you can customize it to be either sweet or savory depending on your preferences. Simply combine seasoned scrambled eggs with a gingery tomato sauce and eat it alongside rice and your favorite type of soup dumplings for a complete meal.
Three-Cup Chicken
Three-cup chicken, or sanbeiji (三杯鸡), is a classic dish from Taiwan that uses three main ingredients for the sauce. Simply cook up soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil with chicken—or sautéed eggplant or oyster mushrooms if you want to make a vegetarian version—and serve it alongside your favorite soup dumplings or Chinese noodles, and you’ll have dinner in a matter of minutes.
Authentic Chinese Veggie Dishes for Any Meal
No Chinese meal is complete without some veggies on the side. Here are our favorites to have ready alongside our favorite authentic weeknight Chinese entrees, soup dumplings, and noodles.
Smashed Cucumber Salad
This one’s a classic at restaurants like Din Tai Fung for a reason—it adds freshness, spice, and a tangy kick to everything it touches! Just be sure to use seedless cucumbers, because that makes a surprising difference in the taste.
Stir-Fried Bok Choy
This is the classic pair of denim jeans at the Chinese dinner table—it pairs with just about everything. Simply stir fry some young bok choy in a ginger and garlic sauce, and you have a healthy side dish within a matter of minutes that does well as leftovers.
Green Beans
Another classic for any mom trying to get their kids to eat their vegetables, these green beans are flash-fried, garlicky, and the perfect way to get some extra color on the table in a matter of minutes.
Other Stir-Fried Veggies
Have some bell peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, or pumpkin leaves and flowers that you found at the farmers market? Any of these are good candidates as stir-fried vegetable side dishes for a truly authentic Chinese meal. Whether you’re cooking Dan Dan Noodles as the main event or an elaborate feast for the Lunar New Year, there’s almost always a vegetable of some sort on the Chinese dinner table.
Chinese Dishes for Special Occasions
Steamed Fish
For some Chinese-American families, a whole steamed fish is a dish made for holidays, birthdays, graduations, bar mitzvahs, or the season finale of The Bachelor. It’s a simple but elegant dish that’s flaky and juicy and filled with an aromatic sauce. However, it’s a bit labor-intensive if you want to cook it traditional style and somewhat expensive if you want to spare yourself from gutting it at home, so a lot of us save it for special occasions.
Lion’s Head Meatballs
Even if you take out all the preparation time and just focus on the cooking, this dish can take almost two hours to make. However, these gigantic braised meatballs are worth every second and pair beautifully with stir-fried bok choy.
Braised Eggplant
Braising in general takes a long time compared to other ways of preparing Chinese veggie dishes. However, there’s nothing quite like the sweet and salty taste and silky texture of eggplant, especially as a contrast to the umami in the first few bites of a plate of soup dumplings.
Homemade Dumplings
Making homemade dumplings is a great way to pass an afternoon or spend time together with your family—because it takes a long time to make and benefits from teamwork. However, if you’re all together for the holidays, there’s nothing quite like taking the first bite of a potsticker you all worked together to make, especially when you pair it with other dishes like our soup dumplings or Chinese noodles.
What to Buy: Frozen Chinese Food Online
While it’s a great experience to make certain authentic Chinese dishes at home, certain things are just better to buy and leave to the experts. Here are a few examples.
Frozen Authentic Soup Dumplings
We compiled every dish on this list knowing that they pair well with our frozen soup dumplings. When you buy frozen soup dumplings online from us, we can help you get a taste of the authentic Chinese experience, without having to put 30 or more years of work into mastering the perfect soup dumplings like we had to do with our parents.
Frozen Chinese Noodles
If you’re not in the mood for rice, we’ve still got you covered. We’ve mastered three different types of Chinese noodles that make the perfect pairing for any dish on this list that’ll match perfectly with savory, salty, spicy, and any other flavor profile.