First off…stir-frying ain’t all there is in Chinese cooking, by a long shot. But it is one of the quickest cooking techniques in the world…which, ironically, makes it perfect for modern life. The ancient Chinese had tons of time, but little energy for heat—so they had to devise a quick-cooking technique. We in the modern West have tons of energy for heat (like gas stoves)—but no time!
Different millennia, different imperatives, same theme!
I personally hit the woks at least once or twice a month to produce a great, quickly-made dish for dinner. What enables me to do this is my Chinese-ingredient pantry; because I’m stocked with the stir-frying basics, a pre-dinner look through the refrigerator for proteins and/or vegetables is often all I need to get wokking.
Here are five pantry items that I can’t live without. A word of warning, however: you may be surprised. Some of these are not the most esoteric of ingredients…but they get the job done!
1) Great Soy Sauce
Well, of course that’s at the top of my list; soy sauce is to Chinese food as stock is to French food, or dashi is to Japanese food. I do stir-fry at times without soy sauce—but soy sauce is my best friend, my easiest flavor enhancer. If you sear a bunch of shrimp in a wok with oil, garlic, ginger and scallions, toss for 10 seconds with a little soy towards the end…you’ve got it! Chinese food!
I hasten to add that your pantry soy sauce (in this case, refrigerator soy sauce) should be great soy sauce. For me, the supermarket stuff doesn’t cut it. Avoid the big brand names; they often taste simple and salty. Instead, get yourself to a Chinese neighborhood, and consider the multitude of soy sauces from China that are available. Start buying/tasting (they’re cheap!) to find your fave.
I’ve got mine, without doubt.
This year I found Donggu Soy Sauce, from Heshan City Donggu Flavouring & Food Co., a 150-year-old operation based in Gulao Town of Heshan County in China’s Guangdong province. Oh baby! This stuff has a sweet nuttiness to it, an intensity of flavor, a liveliness, that is leagues beyond the standard soy package. Jumping genres…I sometimes buy raw sashimi-grade fish, just so I can slice it and drip Donggu on it.
I’m sure there are many other soys out there of equal or greater quality. But if you want to track down mine…the importer is Prosperity Resources International, in New Jersey. I even have an e-mail address for the company in China, though I have no guarantees on its effectiveness in English: dg at donggu.com.cn.
2) Oil for Deep-Frying
Hey Dave…I thought you said stir frying! Why are we looking at oil for deep-frying?
Aha! Chinese restaurant secret!
In many. many contemporary restaurants (and I have no idea how far back this goes in the history of Chinese cooking)…the proteins and/or vegetables of a stir-fry are pre-cooked separately before they get their 30-second communal stir in the wok with everything else! And a very common method for that first protein cook is…deep-frying! But not with batter or coating.
So let’s visualize a shrimp dish. The shrimp are peeled and deveined. I like to toss a pound of shrimp with a teaspoon of salt, let ’em sit, and wash the salt off after an hour. Then…I throw the shrimp in deep oil that’s at 375°F. There are many types of oil you can use; I generally go for canola oil, either the Western kind, or a Chinese brand.
Sploosh! The shrimp practically explode in the oil, and are done after 30 seconds or so…with that marvelous poppy-squirty texture you’ve experienced in Chinese restaurants. Rest shrimp on paper towels.
Next task: mix together a sauce for the stir-fried dish-to-be in a bowl. Use your imagination (oyster sauce, shao hsing, black vinegar, chili paste with garlic, sugar, etc.)
NOW it’s time for the wok, a hot one, with a little bit of oil in it (you can transfer a tablespoon or so of the deep oil to the wok).
Stir-fry your minced flavorings, like garlic, ginger, scallions, etc., over medium-high heat. When they’re slightly cooked, add the shrimp and quickly toss (10 seconds?). Then add the sauce and quickly toss (10 seconds?). Done.
You will have a spectacular stir-fried dish—though the main ingredient was deep-fried. Try it! It tastes like restaurant food!
3) Sesame Oil
Don’t get nervous! I know this is the second oil in a row…but we have to remain aware that Chinese people LOVE the feel of oil on the palate.
To the modern American, oil brings this response: fattening!
To the Chinese people, historically, oil brings this response: luxurious!
Beyond this call for authenticity…I also urge you to understand that we’re really not talking about a lot of oil. The deep-frying thing above (no batter) results in a mere gloss on the proteins. The second oil–sesame oil–is used in droplets.
But do use it, please! After a stir-fry is done cooking, it is the addition, off-heat, of a few drops of sesame oil that has the grandest impact on flavor. For that reason, I don’t like to use it in every dish. And I sure don’t like to use too much of it (I’ve carelessly swirled a half-teaspoon or so of sesame oil into a stir-fry, obliterating the taste of everything else!)
When you buy it, make sure you buy dark sesame oil, either Chinese or Japanese. Do not buy the light-colored sesame oil that’s sold in health-food stores; the seeds have not been toasted, and the oil lacks flavor.
Unlike soy sauce, sesame oil is perfectly acceptable in big brands. Until I find something superior, I’m going to keep using my Kadoya sesame oil (pictured above).
4) Sichuan Peppercorns
Of all the possible flavoring agents for Chinese cooking, why is the Sichuan peppercorn—the dry husk of the berry of the prickly ash tree, not a peppercorn at all—the one I insist on for my pantry?
1) Because Sichuan peppercorns are unique. There is nothing else that tastes like them.
2) Because I do a lot of Sichuan stir-fries, and Sichuan peppercorns bring the authentic flavor of Sichuan cuisine.
3) Because I’m hoarding them. From 1968 to 2005, the U.S. government banned the sale of Sichuan peppercorns in the U.S. (holding on to the disputed notion than the peppercorns could spread a canker to citrus trees). The peppercorns are legal now…the FDA finally agreed to the heating of peppercorns before sale to remove any risk of canker…but who knows what farkakte government regulations lie ahead? It’s Survivalist time for Sichuan Peppercorns!
Once you’ve got ’em, there are lots of ways to use ’em. When starting to build a Sichuan stir-fry, you could crack them, sizzle them in a few tablespoons of oil, then remove from the now-flavored oil and discard.
You could do the same and not remove them, tossing them in the wok with ginger, garlic, etc. Some chefs like to retain only the outer skins, not the black seeds inside.
You could also toast them in a dry pan, then grind them to a powder.
In any case, you will perceive the Sichuan peppercorn’s odd flavor: kind of a lemon-menthol combo. More important, you will get the “heat”—or what passes for heat in this weird ingredient. In a word: your mouth becomes numb. In two words: tingly and numb. It is a very distinctive tactile feature of true Sichuan food. The scientists tell us that this sensation is caused by hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, which accounts for only 3% of the peppercorn (potent stuff).
Speaking of scientists, here’s what McGee has to say (Harold, of course):
“(Sichuan peppercorns) produce a strange tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue). Sanshools appear to act on several different kinds of nerve endings at once to induce sensitivity to touch and cold in nerves that are ordinarily nonsensitive. So theoretically may cause a kind of general neurological confusion.”
Keep in mind that Sichuan peppercorns in tandem with hot chiles (a different type of pain), and Sichuan peppercorns alone, have different types of effects. To get the best and purest Sichuan peppercorn reaction—leave the capsicums out of the dish!
5) MSG (known also by its Japanese trade name, Aji-No-Moto)
All right, all right. I know exactly how most of you are reacting. Let’s get to that in a minute. First, I want to tell you what’s GREAT about MSG.
I think it adds extraordinary flavor to food…and the kind of flavor that I identify with authentic Chinese cuisine (and Japanese cuisine).
I’m at work on a kitchen research piece about MSG, which will likely be published down the road in the new version of my newsletter. For now, however, I can share one important finding.
I take chicken bones, and put them in two identical pots with water. One pound of bones in each pot, three cups water in each pot. To one pot I add half a teaspoon of MSG; to the other pot I add nothing.
After 15 minutes of simmering…the MSG pot has wonderful flavor, almost like a soup from a Chinese restaurant.
After 15 minutes of simmering…the plain pot has no flavor, tasting almost like water.
The difference is staggering. And, because of it, I will continue to keep MSG in my pantry, and use it judiciously in Chinese cooking. (In stir-fries, I usually mix a little into my sauce.)
Am I hell-bent on suicide? I think not. I think, instead—along with the other Garten, Jeffrey Steingarten (read his wonderful pro-MSG essay in The Man Who Ate Everything)—that Americans have mass hysteria about MSG, an hysteria completely unfounded in scientific evidence.
First of all, what is MSG? To make a long story short, the gastronomic benefits of MSG have long been perceived in Asian cuisines, particularly Japanese. It’s just that they didn’t know what was making stuff taste so good.
In 1908, a Japanese professor, Kikunae Ikeda, finally figured it out. He knew that dashi, the Japanese broth derived from dried bonito flakes, and from konbu (a type of seaweed), had a certain flavor that went beyond sweet, sour, salty, bitter. He called this flavor “umami” (now widely known as the “fifth” basic flavor). He went further.
Konbu contains glutamic acid—which contains sodium salt. Hai! It is the sodium salt of glutamic acid—let’s call it “glutamate salt”—that has the “umami” taste. (Sodium salt of glutamic acid naturally appears in other foods as well). Ikeda went further.
He was able to isolate this salt, called it Monosodium Glutamate, and applied for a patent in 1909 to produce it in the laboratory. Within that year, the world saw the first industrial MSG.
HOW it’s produced has changed, constantly, in the last hundred years…and research does need to be done about how the different processes affect human reaction.
However, any sober reading of the currently available scientific evidence must yield the conclusion that a massive ratio of the population (like 99.9999%) has no physical reaction to MSG at all. I had a go at the internet evidence, and even found a Mayo Clinic newsletter posted two months ago declaring MSG to be safe (as does the U.S. government).
Well…it stays on my pantry.
One interesting detail, however, arises at the end of the pro-MSG Steingarten article. He notes that the only time that “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” has ever affected test participants, is when a large amount of it is dissolved in a hot liquid and consumed on an empty stomach. Anything overdone ain’t good…but…
Wouldn’t ya just know it? Americans for years went to their Chinese restaurants hungry…and, before consuming anything else…had steaming bowls of wonton soup! That makes sense! They were perfectly fulfilling the caution conditions! So if you’re convinced you’re sensitive to MSG…keep it out of your first-course soups! All other uses…I endorse fully!
Photos: André, Dong Gu, Crisco, Emily Oberto, Amazon, The Kitchn
