Cooking Techniques

No matter what dish you're cooking, the principles remain the same. These principles are the cooking techniques.

When you first start learning to cook, it's easy to confuse stir-frying, flash-frying with sauce, and dry-frying—after all, aren't they all just tossing ingredients in oil? So what's the real difference?

Think of these cooking techniques as the "formulas" for making Chinese dishes. They are the most effective methods our ancestors developed through practice to achieve specific flavors and textures in ingredients. While there are countless ingredients, the techniques are limited. According to statistics, Chinese cuisine has over 30 cooking techniques, but only 7 are commonly used at home. Once you understand these 7 essential techniques, you can cook a dish just by reading its name, without needing a recipe. Mastering these techniques is a major shortcut to cooking great food!

These 7 cooking techniques can be divided into 3 categories.

The first category relies on oil for heating: stir-frying, flash-frying, and deep-frying.

Since oil has a high boiling point, ingredients cook quickly and develop a crispy yet tender texture. However, because cooking time is short, this technique requires ingredients to be cut into small pieces beforehand.

The second category relies on water and steam for heating—braising, stewing, and steaming.

Water's boiling point is lower than that of oil, so ingredients cook more slowly, but they tend to absorb flavors more easily and result in a tender, soft texture.

Third category, no heating—cold mixing.

Additionally, to ensure a smooth cooking process or to remove unwanted odors from ingredients, pre-treatment is often necessary. The two most common methods are blanching, which uses hot water, and oil-slicking, which uses hot oil. This chapter will provide a detailed explanation of both techniques.