Tristan Lum's Chinese Food Blog

Tristan Lum

Need to Easily Make Fast Chinese Food?

These days many of us are out of our home for over ten hours in a day, and there is little time to prepare a good and rather healthy meal.  I'm going to review some tips that will save you time in preparation your Chinese meals.  Here are some great quick ways to cook your Chinese food fast:

1. Use common ingredients as substitute for hard-to-find ingredients.  Some Asian foods may not be available in your local grocery store.  You may substitute other foods when cooking your meals.  If you need Asparagus in your dish, you can substitute broccoli, string beans, and other green vegetables.  Another example would be substitution for black mushrooms.  You can use fresh American mushrooms.

2. Buy food ingredients in larger quantity.  A) Buy a whole chicken.  Remove the bones or debone the chicken and use the bones for soup stock.  Use the chicken meat for your Chinese dishes to be stir fried with vegetables for your refrigerator.  B) Another technique is to buy a fresh fish like walleye or tilapia.  Remove the bones from the fish known as filleting the fish.  Save the bones for soup stock and use the fillet part of the fish for stir frying.  As you can see there are numerous ways, use food when buying in bulk.

3. Make several meals from bulk purchase.  For the chicken that is not used in your large quantity purchase, keep it in an aluminum foil, and place in the freezer for your next meal.  For a fast and easily thawing technique, place the aluminum foil with fish between two pieces of meat.

4. Use leftover food for your meals.  If you could a Chinese vegetable dish for the previous night, you can easily as some noodles or rice to make it meal one day or two later.  Or, you may a few pieces of steak with some spices to give your new meal a bit more flavor.  I would advise using food as meal if it's been there for several weeks since you may get ill from eating it.

5. Make some quick bites if you're really pressed for time.  Buy some frozen steam buns from the store.  It comes in a variety of flavors from red bean paste, black bean paste, and chicken or meat filling.  Steam a few extra buns for breakfast and leave a few cooked one in the refrigerator.  Microwave the steam buns for an afternoon or evening snack. 

6. Save energy and fuel by using your equipment efficiently.   When you're steaming those buns, you can use the other layers of the steamer to steam other food items too.  Most good steamers have two or three levels to steam food.  Buy a three level steamer if plan buy one. You can steam a variety of food for your meals like meats, vegetables, and even cooked rice.

7. Prepare sauces in advance.  Put your favorite sauces together in a jar, and store them for later use.  We have a 12 oz. jar of black bean sauce, but put it away in the refrigerator to store away for up to 3 weeks.  When we need that right flavor in our meals, we take a few teaspoons and put in right into our wok.  We're ready with our meals within minutes.

Seven Steps To Eating Healthy At Chinese Restaurants

When you are dining out at Chinese restaurants, try to avoid going to those large buffet place since many of them have a lot of greasy foods.  The best way eat healthy is really to eat a well balanced meal.  It's important to eat a good portion of vegetables over meat and rice.  You may prefer to stay away from eating several of those egg rolls and other deep fried dishes.  These egg rolls and other fried foods initially stem from the roots of American Chinese type of restaurants.  Here are some ideas that you should consider when dining out:

1. Finding a great restaurant.  Go talk to your friends and family and ask them which restaurants that have experienced.  Look in your local papers and internet site to find a recommend restaurant. You may need to stray away from your local town to find a good one.

2. Choose your right dishes. Don't forget that you should be sharing your meals with people at your table.  It is traditional to share your dishes as a group.  Start out your meals with a soup for everyone.  This will help your stomach from absorbing the fatty food throughout your meal.  Try to stay away from foods that have a lot of fat - fried dumplings, fried wonton, and egg rolls if possible.  For your vegetable dishes, you are able to choose a Bok Choy, Green beans, or vegetables.

3. Choose a tea flavor.  This is the tea that you will with others in your party. There are many teas available and the some of the common tea are Jasmine, Oolong, and Black.  If you're not familiar with these tea flavors, you may ask the waiter and try a common and less bitter tea that suits your taste buds.

4. Avoid eating a lot of rice.  The rice will fill you up quickly and there are many carbohydrates in rice.  In general, try to eat more rice than the meat and seafood.

5. Be careful of other food allergies.  You may want to avoid putting MSG (know as monosodium glutamate) into your foods.  Some restaurants don't allow you to this, but you should ask.  It may offend the waiter if you ask - so ask politely.

6. Avoid other food ingredients.  Some foods are high in sugar and starches (flour) which add to the number of carbohydrates in your food.  Eat food with less salt which could include heavy amounts of soy sauce and other salt gravy.

7. Eat less dessert.  Some of the desserts are high sugar and have fatty ingredients.  It is good to try these desserts sparingly.

With these ideas in mind, your next adventure at a new Chinese restaurant will be fun, healthy, and enjoyable!

• Previous Posts:

• Need to Easily Make Fast Chinese Food?
• Seven Steps To Eating Healthy At Chinese Restaurants
• Foods Considered As Asian Aphrodisiacs
• Essential Seasoning and Ingredients
• Cutting Techniques to Know - Slicing, Dicing, Shredding
• How to Season a Wok

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