Jiaozi | Jiaozi
Try elongated Chinese dumplings filled with meat or vegetables. This is the most popular street food in Shanghai, Beijing, Hainan and other cities of China. Look for a shop on the street with a metal vat with thick steam hanging over it - this is the place for you. Take it with minced pork or cabbage, they are considered classics. Also popular in Chinese cuisine are jiaozi with shrimp, fish, sweet potatoes, chicken, rice, and bamboo shoots. The dumplings are steamed and served with black rice vinegar.
Wonton | Wontons
In China, they are worth trying as an independent dish or as part of a soup. Wontons are round, wrinkled dumplings. Most often they are prepared with a filling of minced meat, shiitake mushrooms or young bamboo stems. Try the steamed appetizer, or even better, deep-fried. Crispy golden crust, juicy filling - add a little sweet and sour or hot sauce, you get a little fast food masterpiece. Wontons in this form are especially popular in Hong Kong. In China, broth with noodles and dumplings is common. It is served with greens. The wonton noodle soup is extremely popular among locals and tourists alike and is worth a try.
Dishes for the Chinese New Year table - traditions, menus, recipes
During the New Year's celebrations, tables in the Celestial Empire are bursting with abundance. The Chinese believe that a richly laid table with a wide variety of dishes will bring prosperity, prosperity and wealth to the house. Every region of the Middle Kingdom, every city and every family has its own preferences regarding the menu and its favorite New Year's dishes, their diversity is amazing. But at the same time, all Chinese, when choosing New Year's dishes for the festive table, are always guided by traditions and customs, as well as the symbolic meanings of products, their colors and shapes.
FISH DISHES
Any, even modest, New Year's table will definitely have fish - it is believed that this will bring good luck and wealth in the New Year. In Chinese, the word “fish” is pronounced “yu” (Chinese 鱼, pinyin Yú), which is similar to the word “abundance”, which is also pronounced “yu” (Chinese 裕, pinyin Yù), only with a different intonation. In Guangdong province, for example, on the New Year's table you can often see traditional Cantonese fish in sweet and sour sauce or “sizzling” steamed fish, and in Sichuan – boiled fish in a spicy broth with seasonings or fried crucian carp. The fish is steamed, fried until crunchy, stewed with seasonings, made into soups, fried in various sauces, smoked on tea leaves, baked, made into cutlets and meatballs, stuffed, made into kebabs, stuffed into dumplings and dim sum.
Recipe: Cantonese Sweet and Sour Fish
Recipe: Sichuan Spicy Boiled Fish
Recipe: Cantonese Steamed Fish
Recipe: Fried crucian carp in thick brown sauce
DUMPLINGS
All New Year's tables in the Middle Kingdom are united by the presence of dumplings on them - this treat symbolizes gold bars and attracts good luck, prosperity, and prosperity to the house. People in northern China are especially sensitive to this. Many Chinese families have a tradition of making dumplings with the whole family before the New Year. The preferred shape and fillings are according to the taste of the household, but the most common dumplings for the Spring Festival are jiaozi, boiled in water or steamed. Sometimes they are then fried until crispy and golden brown. Jiaozi is filled with pork and onions, or minced pork and shrimp, or other meat with vegetables. Vegetarian versions of dumplings are also prepared. The most common way to form jiaozi dumplings is to fold the round filling wrapper in half, pinching the edges to form a few folds to create a crescent-shaped dumpling. Sometimes a coin is placed in one of the dumplings - the one who gets it will be the happiest in the New Year.
If the owners have the time and desire, they prepare dumplings for the festive table in the shape of bags, which symbolize bags of gold coins. They are made from a special, so-called “crystal” dough, it is so called because it looks shiny, white and translucent due to the wheat starch it contains. The filling is visible through the translucent dough. These dumplings look very impressive.
Another type of dumplings that greatly decorate the holiday table are open shaomai dumplings. They are formed in the shape of a half-opened bud, leaving the filling exposed. They symbolize blooming flowers, the beginning of spring. Often shaomai is also prepared from translucent dough, through which the filling is visible, which can be anything from lamb and Chinese sausages to assorted seafood and vegetables.
Recipe: Crystal Steamed Dumplings
Recipe: Shaomai Open Dumplings
SPRING PANCAKES (SPRING ROLLS)
This is a traditional Chinese holiday snack that is prepared especially for the Spring Festival - New Year. Spring pancakes must be on the table as a symbol of entering a new life cycle. They look like gold bars or bars. The thinnest wheat cakes or so-called rice paper (a thin transparent sheet of rice flour) are used as pancakes. A wide variety of fillings are wrapped in them. The most common is the filling of minced pork, Chinese cabbage, muer black mushrooms, carrots and jusai onions. The filling is fried with sauce (most often salty or salty-sweet) and wrapped in a pancake. Pancakes made from wheat flour are usually deep-fried until golden brown, and they are very tasty hot, and spring rolls made from transparent rice paper are often left “raw” so that the filling can be seen through them. Transparent white rice paper pancakes with a contrasting filling of pink shrimp and green vegetables look most impressive. More than others, the Chinese prefer deep-fried, hot, golden spring rolls. You can see a variety of sauces to go with them on the table.
Recipe: Spring rolls
MEAT AND POULTRY DISHES
It is believed that the New Year's table should simultaneously include dishes of chicken, duck, beef, pork and fish. If a family has good income, then it tries to adhere to this tradition. If the budget allows, the duck (a symbol of fidelity) will be cooked whole. Families who live modestly put only one or two meat dishes on the table.
The most “New Year’s” meat dish is meatballs. Round meat balls will certainly be on the Chinese New Year table. The round shape is a symbol of unity, family reunification, and the New Year is primarily a family holiday, a time when all family members, no matter how far from each other they live, come and gather together in their father’s house. The New Year's reunion tradition is almost never broken. Thanks to such an important symbolic meaning, meatballs are an indispensable menu item for any New Year's feast. Meatballs are prepared either according to the family’s favorite recipe, or they choose spectacular holiday dishes based on them. Perhaps the most famous New Year's meatball dish is “Lion's Head,” which symbolizes strength and good luck. Meat balls framed by leafy vegetables are associated in Chinese cuisine with the head of a guardian lion with a lush mane.
Recipe: Lion's Head Meatballs
Recipe: Strawberry Meatballs
Recipe: Delicious Shrimp Meatballs
Recipe: Sesame Chicken Meatballs
All kinds of meat rolls are considered a spectacular decoration for the festive table (by the way, and not only New Year’s) in the Celestial Empire. These aesthetically pleasing snacks can be filled with anything from rice to bananas. There are countless types of holiday rolls. This treat is also symbolic - the shape of the rolls, like spring rolls, symbolizes gold bars, and the round slices of the rolls symbolize gold coins. Very often, to enhance the effect of symbolism, the fillings contain rice (attracting abundance) and chestnuts (profit). Chicken meat represents good luck, and the crispy golden crust represents wealth and prosperity.
Recipe: Golden Chicken Roll
Recipe: Drunken Chicken Roll
CHINESE SAUSAGES
In the Middle Kingdom they have a weakness for dry-cured sausages. Often on the eve of the New Year, connoisseurs of these meat delicacies prepare sausage, which is dried right on the street. In addition to home-made sausages, the Chinese willingly buy their favorite types of industrially produced sausages. Sausage slices are one of the most preferred meat snacks for the holidays.
Recipe: Yangzhou Dried Sausage
Recipe: Szechuan Dried Sausages
Recipe: Harbin Boiled Smoked Chopped Sausage Songren Xiao Du
Recipe: Harbin Red Sausage
NOODLE AND RICE DISHES
Rice represents abundance and wealth, prosperity and a good harvest, and noodles represent long and long life. Therefore, rice and noodle dishes will certainly decorate the festive table. Rice balls with various fillings are very common (the round shape, as we have already mentioned, symbolizes unity), and among the noodles they prefer Shoumian - “longevity” noodles. The length of one such noodle is one and a half meters. It needs to be pulled into your mouth without tearing it. These noodles are put on the table when celebrating very significant holidays - New Year, birthday or wedding.
Recipe: Shoumian Longevity Noodles with Three Additives
Recipe: Sesame Noodles with Broccoli
TABLE DECORATIONS
Tables should be plentiful, bright and varied. The main decorations of the table, in addition to the festive dishes themselves and skillfully decorated snacks, are tangerines as a symbol of well-being (exactly eight, this number represents infinity), figurines with symbols of the year, a branch hung with bright red and gold cards with hieroglyphs (good wishes), red candles, incense. The table is lined with a red tablecloth and decorated with flowers and coins.
And finally, we will share with you more recipes for festive dishes for the New Year’s table:
Recipe: Golden Hammer
Recipe: Salad with chicken and funchose
Recipe: Peking Fried Meat with Soy Sauce
Recipe: Pig Ear Snack
Recipe: Chicken roll with banana filling
Recipe: Baked Sweet Ribs
Recipe: Sesame Chicken
Recipe: Chicken with Fish Flavor
Dì Sān Xiān | Di San Xian
Translated, the name of this Chinese dish means “three treasures of the Earth.” It is made from potatoes, eggplants and peppers. Vegetables are fried in hot oil until golden brown and then simmered in a fragrant garlic sauce, sprinkled with sesame seeds and served with a bowl of white rice. Vegetarians should try this delicious food in China on its own, and meat lovers can take it as a side dish for pork or chicken.
Kung Pao | Gongbao
The most famous Chinese dish based on chicken. Appetizing, buttery, spicy, aromatic, piquant - be sure to try gong bao (or kung pao). It is made from pieces of chicken fried with peanuts and chili peppers. In Chinese national cuisine restaurants, the dish is served with unleavened rice by default. If you buy a portion of gongbao on the street, pick up a packet of the side dish yourself. The rice will help put out the fire in your mouth - the chicken is piping hot.
Is everything really bad? Either rice or animal heads?
No. If you fork out the money, you can completely provide yourself with European cuisine.
It was expensive for every day. After a break from local food, I decided to give Chinese food a second try.
The problem is that almost all fast food menus look something like this:
The translator did a poor job, so he decided to memorize dangerous Chinese characters like “tongue,” “ears,” “snout,” “pork,” and useful “noodles,” “rice,” “chicken,” “beef,” “duck.”
This approach opened up many places close to home with cheap dishes. Below is a selection of them with prices.
I especially liked that you can almost always order neutral noodles, stewed vegetables or rice with chicken. If you know what the chef should point his finger at, of course.
I’ve been to so-called “grill bars” a couple of times. You order different types of meat and appetizers, most of them are cooked on fire on wooden sticks, even sweet bread. Some were tasty, but most had sharp and sour-bitter spices: in China they always add strange white pepper.
Yesterday I found out that the cozy place from this photo has closed. Not surprised: the turnover of eateries in China is terrible
I also dined on Chinese dumplings. The difference from ours is that the rice dough is the thinnest, and the filling can be with herbs and eggs, shrimp, chopped chicken fillet and much more. The result is a light and nutritious dish without unnecessary carbohydrates, even when fried.
What are the prices: • Noodle soup with beef from 120 rubles per 600 g; • Rice with chicken and peanuts in teriyaki sauce 110 rub.; • Stewed river fish 140 rubles; • Stewed vegetables with shrimp and squid – 450 rub. per serving for two (plus a bowl of rice); • Fried rice with vegetables and egg cost 130 rubles; • Grill stick 40-100 rubles; • Dumplings from 150 rubles per serving of 10 pieces.
Běijīng Kǎoyā | Bei Jin Hao
This is the name of the legendary Peking duck. It is prepared in almost every Chinese restaurant in Russia, Europe and the USA. But in their homeland they don’t sell it at every turn. However, reviews from tourists are similar - this dish must be tried in Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan and anywhere else, as long as it is in China. The bird is baked in a spicy orange marinade with honey, sesame oil and soy sauce. The meat is sweet, salty and sour at the same time. Star anise, cinnamon, cloves, dill and licorice make the dish especially piquant. An amazing combination of flavors is complemented by a smoky aroma - duck in China is cooked in a wood-burning oven. If you order a whole duck, you will receive a sweet and spicy main, spicy wings, a duck heart in wine and a duck neck in a spicy sauce. You will remember the taste of this dish for a very long time.
There are many types of egg preparation in Asia and none in Europe. There are also plenty of local snacks
Many people have heard about the hundred-year egg. If not, here's some help:
"Hundred Year Egg" is a popular snack in Chinese cuisine; an egg kept for several months in a special mixture with a highly alkaline reaction without access to air.
As a result, we get a golden-green delicacy. The white has no taste, the yolk smells slightly of ammonia. Or not slightly, depends on the manufacturer. Sometimes this egg is eaten in addition to steamed vegetables and meat, and sometimes it is added to soups to dilute the texture of the dish.
Later, in honor of Dragon Day, they gave me a gift: a box of zongzi (rice and meat pyramids in leaves) and duck eggs. I still don’t know how they were prepared, but this sign of attention caused the biggest gastronomic shock.
The white was salty and fluffy to the point of burning, but the yolk was too fatty, it was literally leaking. The evening of celebration ended with my friend and I taking turns playing Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad. Not all gifts were included, yes.
Starbucks has a strong presence in China: for the holiday, they launched their zongzi made with rice jelly and bean filling in different flavors. At least they could be eaten without consequences.
The situation with snacks is better. There are a ton of them, there is always a choice: small portions in transparent plastic almost fall out of the shelves. The most unexpected ones, at that.
Quail eggs, like chicken eggs, can be boiled with soy sauce. Once cooked, they are packaged, cracked a little to create a salty, nutritious snack. On the road they help out better than any apple or chips.
From the salty side I also saw fish heads, tails, fins, meat cartilage and soy meat with various seasonings.
I didn’t count sweet snacks - unrealistic. Hundreds of types of marshmallows, nuts, dried fruits and vegetables, waffles, mooncakes, ultra-sweet cookies and rice... products? There was the biggest intrigue with the latter, because you could get both crumbly sweetness with sesame filling and white plates that taste and feel like flour.
What are the prices: • century eggs 20 pcs. for 400 rubles; • quail 4-6 pcs. in a package for 20-70 rubles; • dried fruits from 100 rub. per jar; • sweets start from 10 rubles. a piece.
Сhòu Dòufu | Chou Doufu
Better known as “stinky tofu” or “rotten tofu”. It has a really specific smell. The Chinese soak soy cheese in sour milk or fermented vegetable pickle. Then it is thoroughly grilled or deep-fried. The golden tofu pieces are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and deliciously flavorful. They are served with pickled vegetables or as an independent snack. Buy a couple of pieces of chow doufu in China at night markets or street stalls. Tourists usually take it with beer.
Hot Pot | Hot Pot
In any region of China, look for restaurants or cafes labeled huǒ guō or yuān yāng guō. Or approach street vendors with an impressively sized metal pan floating next to them, and dozens of plates of snacks placed on the counter. Hotpot is Chinese food that you assemble yourself. Noodles, meat or vegetables, mushrooms, pickles, rice, eggs, tofu, sauces, spices - choose any product. They will prepare them for you. If you order hot pot at a restaurant, they will bring you a boiling pot into which you can place the ingredients one at a time and assemble the food yourself. This is an interesting experience, we recommend you try it. It is convenient to order 1 hot pot per group.
Diǎnxīn | Dim sum
Light dishes that you can try in China for breakfast or before lunch during the tea ceremony. According to tradition, they are brought along with a teapot of pu-erh. In dim sum restaurants, which are popular in southern China, snacks are carried on carts between tables so that each guest can take something to their table. If you order a dish elsewhere, they will bring you all the plates at once.
Dim sum usually includes:
- steamed rice cakes;
- Chinese baozi dumplings with minced pork or vegetables;
- spring rolls;
- “Phoenix claws” – deep-fried chicken feet with bean sauce;
- fried rice;
- pickles and marinated snacks;
- flatbreads with green onions.
What to try for extreme sports
Remember that in China they love to eat snakes, insects and a variety of animal body parts. Since the people of the Celestial Empire are very superstitious, people often use something to give themselves strength, intelligence and sexuality.
photo: Insects - extreme cuisine of China
As a result, you can taste fried scorpions, locusts, cobra meat, genitals of 30 animals and much more. The Chinese will surprise you, believe me!
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Guō Bāo Ròu | Gobajou
Try pork in sweet and sour sauce in China. Pieces of meat are deep-fried until lightly browned. They turn out juicy and soft. Sweet and sour sauce is a simple mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar, tomato paste and a pinch of sugar. The cook throws a portion of juicy vegetables into the frying pan, adds pre-prepared meat, pours in the dressing and fries the dish until it has a glossy caramel crust. The recipe is simple, but the Chinese dish turns out to be unforgettable. You can try it in hotel restaurants, street eateries or markets - pork in sweet and sour sauce is prepared the same way everywhere.
What is worth trying from Chinese cuisine?
Every tourist dreams of tasting authentic Chinese food. And rightly so! This is one of the best entertainment in China. You will have a lot of fun getting to know traditional Chinese cuisine better. Where to start?
Peking duck
This dish always tops all sorts of ratings, because it is a symbol of the national cuisine of China. If you find yourself in a restaurant that is famous for its Peking duck, don’t waste time and place your order quickly!
photo: Peking duck - a symbol of national Chinese cuisine
The bird must be baked in a special oven using all technologies. The meat is marinated so that the crust is honeyed and crispy. The dish is served with flatbreads, soy sauce and other goodies.
Pork in sweet and sour sauce
Another famous Chinese dish, distinguished by its bright orange color and original taste. As a rule, it is served with rice without salt, and the meat can be replaced with chicken or beef at the request of the client.
photo: Pork in sweet and sour sauce. This Chinese dish is easy to prepare yourself.
Gong Chicken Gongbao
A popular Sichuan treat. Poultry meat, cut into cubes, is mixed with dried hot pepper and roasted peanuts.
photo: Chicken Gongbao
Tofu Ma Po
Tofu and ground beef are seasoned with a variety of hot and spicy seasonings. An important ingredient is dry bitter Sichuan pepper. The dish will appeal to lovers of fiery dishes.
photo: Tofu Ma Po
Wontons and Chinese dumplings
These goodies are a little similar. They are reminiscent of Italian tortellini and our native dumplings. Minced beef, fish, shrimp, chicken, pork or vegetables are used as minced meat. The dishes differ only in shape. They are served with broths and flatbreads.
photo: Wontons - Chinese dumplings
Fried noodles
Incredibly tasty and juicy dinner. The dish is served with meat, celery and various sauces. The spicy and spicy dish will leave the best impression of Chinese cuisine.
photo: Chinese fried noodles
Chinese noodles
Remember two names: miàn and fěn. Mian is Chinese wheat noodles, fen is rice noodles. There are more than a dozen types of this dish in the country. It is served boiled, soups are prepared with it, it is deep-fried or in a frying pan with vegetables. Chinese noodles are sold everywhere: in restaurants, eateries, on the streets, specialized cafes, even in some stores. Try cat ears maoerdo, udon's cousin tsumian, egg yumian or any other. It is impossible to learn all the names of Chinese noodles, so remember the 2 main types, and order the shape, fillings and sauces from the pictures. Be sure to try noodles in China - the locals manage to cook this simple dish surprisingly well!
Before traveling to China, be sure to read our article about shopping in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other cities in the country. The secrets of finding high-quality clothing, equipment and accessories, the most important thing about traditional souvenirs and delicacies - we have collected the best shopping ideas in one place. We also wrote a separate article about exotic fruits that you can try in Hainan.
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