Chinese Home Cooking Recipes

Chinese restaurant food is often complex, requiring a great deal of skill, careful timing, as well as a lot of ingredients most of us don’t have in our home kitchens. Chinese home cooking is much easier and every bit as delicious. These are not dishes you are likely to find in restaurants, but they are regulars on the tables of most Chinese families.

• Abbby Schweber

Sheet Pan Fried Rice Ingredients

The traditional Chinese kitchen didn’t have an oven, but it had a very hot burner. Trying to cook proper fried rice on an ordinary stove is tricky, as you can’t get enough heat to achieve wok-hei, the hint of char and crispiness that you get with a really hot burner. So modern home cooks have come up with an oven method that creates that authentic flavor and texture. Freshly cooked rice is too moist for this recipe – if you can, cook the rice the day before and store in the fridge, otherwise leave it out uncovered for at least an hour to dry out.

• 1 bunch spring onions*

• 1 lb. ham steak

• 4 cups cooked rice

• 1 lb. long-cooking vegetables (any combination of carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, onion, eggplant)*

• 1 lb. quick-cooking vegetables (any combination of snow peas, sugar snaps, green beans, corn, asparagus, peas, bell pepper)*

• 1/2 tsp. pepper

• 1/4 cup soy sauce

• ¼ cup vegetable oil

• 3 cloves garlic*

• 3 eggs*

*These ingredients can be found at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market

Method

1. Preheat oven to 475.

2. Cut the spring onions into ¼” slices. Cut the ham into ½” cubes. Cut long-cooking vegetables other than eggplant into ¼” dice. If using eggplant, cut into ½” dice. Mince garlic. (Ham and eggplant will shrink during cooking, so they start as larger pieces.)

3. Get a large bowl and put the rice, spring onions, ham, long-cooking vegetables, soy sauce, vegetable oil, pepper, and garlic into it. Stir together lightly.

4. Spread the rice mixture onto 2 sheet pans and bake for 20 minutes.

5. While the rice is baking, cut the quick-cooking vegetables: Snow peas, sugar snaps, green beans, or asparagus get cut into ½” lengths. Corn just gets removed from the cob. Bell pepper gets cut into ¼” dice. Peas don’t need cutting.

6. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. Pour the eggs over the rice. Use a metal spatula to scrape the rice mixture off the bottom of the pan and flip, breaking up any large pieces. Add quick-cooking vegetables and lightly stir. Bake for another 10 minutes.

7. Scrape the fried rice into your serving bowl, breaking up any large pieces.

Tomato & Egg Soup Ingredients

There are probably as many varieties of this soup as there are Chinese home cooks, but they all include tomato, egg, spring onion, and a flavored stock. I’ve included several optional additions here; you can use as many as you want or keep it simple.

• 3 Tbs. vegetable oil

• 4 medium tomatoes*

• 3 eggs*

• ½-1” ginger*

• 1 bunch spring onions*

• 1 quart chicken stock*

• 1-2 tsp. sesame oil

• 2 tsp. soy sauce

• ½ tsp. pepper

• 1 tsp. salt

• 8 oz. Asian mushrooms (optional)*

• 1 box medium tofu (optional)

• ½ head of lettuce or 1 bunch spinach (optional)*

• ½ lb. cleaned, raw shrimp (optional)

*These ingredients can be found at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market

Method

1. Cut spring onion into 1” slices. Make short matchsticks out of the ginger.

2. Prepare any optional ingredients you are using: Cut up mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Cut lettuce leaves in half, slicing through the ribs, then cut across the ribs into 1” slices. Cut spinach crosswise into 1” pieces. Cut tofu into ½” cubes. If your shrimp still have tails, pull those off, then cut into bite-sized pieces.

3. Heat oil in wok on medium high. Stir fry tomatoes for 1 minute.

4. Stir in chicken stock, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, and salt. If you are using mushrooms or tofu, add them now. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer for 15 minutes.

5. Stir in spring onions. If you are adding lettuce, spinach, or shrimp, stir them in as well. Simmer 5 more minutes.

6. Beat eggs in a small bowl.

7. Stream in egg slowly while stirring to make ribbons.

Pork & Green Beans Ingredients

The combination of pork, garlic, and green beans is popular in many parts of China, with each region adding their own spin to the dish. The meat can be ground or carefully cut into batons, and it can be flavored with fiery-hot red chilies, fresh ginger, fermented vegetables, or even nuts. It’s always done in the classic Chinese “meat as a condiment” style, where a relatively small amount of meat is used to flavor the vegetables,  rather than the meat dominating the dish. I’ve gone with a fairly simple version, using ginger for warmth, and just black pepper for bite. This cooks very quickly, so be sure to do all of your chopping and mixing before you start cooking.

• 1 lb. ground pork*

• 2 tsp. cornstarch

• ¼ cup soy sauce

• 2 tsp. pepper

• 2” fresh ginger*

• ½ bulb garlic*

• ¼ cup rice vinegar or white wine vinegar

• 2 lb. fresh green beans*

• 1 Tbs. vegetable oil

*These ingredients can be found at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market

Method

1. Mix the cornstarch, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, and pepper in a medium bowl, then stir in the pork. Let it sit while you prepare the other ingredients.

2. Peel the ginger with a spoon, then finely mince or grate. Finely chop or press the garlic. Remove the stem ends from the green beans and cut into 1” lengths.

3. Mix the remaining 2 tablespoons of soy sauce with the vinegar, ginger, and garlic in a small bowl.

4. Cook the pork in a large frying pan on medium-high heat in oil, breaking it up into small clumps, for 3-4 minutes until it is mostly cooked. Turn the heat to high, add the soy sauce mixture, and continue cooking, stirring regularly, another 3-4 minutes.

5. Add the green beans and continue cooking and stirring until just tender, about 5-6 minutes. The sauce should all get absorbed, so you’ll need to scrape the bottom of the pan as you stir.