This recipe applies a Chinese technique to two decidedly Western ingredients, kale and frisée, with surprisingly good results. We cook them like any other hearty greens—adding the stems to a hot wok, followed by the leaves. There’s no need for blanching, which makes this recipe super quick and leaves you with one fewer pot to clean.
This vegetarian version of lo mein goes heavy on the vegetables—to make the dish more nutritious and more flavorful, we use almost as much cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, and chives as we do noodles. It’s important to blanch the noodles before tossing them into the wok, or else they can clump up.
Braised eggplant with garlic sauce is a classic Sichuan dish that combines soft simmered eggplant , fermented soy beans, and a sweet, garlicky sauce. This version adds a few tablespoons of preserved mustard root and incorporates the garlic in a couple of ways. You can go with 100% eggplant if you’d like, or you can add cubes of firm silken tofu to transform this into a one-pot-meal.
The second great thing about making dan dan noodles—it’s an exceedingly simple dish to make. Once you’ve put together your roasted chile vinaigrette (which holds for months in the fridge, by the way), it’s just a matter of cooking your noodles, frying your chopped pork, and throwing everything together.
One of the problems with ordering dan dan noodles at a Chinese restaurant is that you never know exactly what you’ll get. Are they gonna deliver the hardcore Sichuan version swimming in red-hot chile oil and laced with pickled zha cai (mustard root) and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns? Or can you expect the equally delicious but totally different Chinese-American version with more pork, a vinegary soy-based sauce, perhaps some greens, and a sprinkling of peanuts?
Heat reserved 1 tablespoon of mushroom oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat until shimmering. Add chopped Sichuan vegetables, fried mushrooms, and garlic. Cook, stirring and tossing constantly until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Add Shaoxing wine and stir to combine. Transfer mixture to bowl with sauce.
As former Serious Eats editor Adam Kuban put it, crab rangoons, those little parcels of creamy filling surrounded by crunchy shell, are “just a big ol’ excuse for crazy non-Chinese people to eat deep-fried cream cheese.” And it’s true—but that admission doesn’t make them any less delicious. At your local Chinese-American joint, the crab rangoons are almost certainly made with surimi, those artificially colored sticks of reconstituted fish that you find in California rolls. Using real crab instead will give the dumplings a more assertive fish flavor; stick with surimi if you’d like to re-create the “crab” puffs of your youth.
Stir-frying is a very quick cooking technique, so it works well with thin cuts of meat . Skirt steak satisfies that requirement and brings the added benefit of a loose texture that’s perfect for soaking up marinades. This stir-fry—which takes only half an hour, including the marinating time—pairs the beef with snap peas, oyster sauce, chicken broth, Shaoxing wine, sugar, sesame oil, and soy sauce for a super-fast and flavorful dinner.
Fried-things-in-sandwiches has been a recurring theme throughout Vegan Month, and for good reason; they’re delicious! Here is sandwich #3: tempura-battered oyster mushrooms with simmered daikon root. The two play off each other to make a crunchy, savory, chewy filling, and are perfectly complemented by a miso-agave mayonnaise .
There are some cravings that only that iconic white box of Chinese-American takeout will satisfy. We’re no strangers to the stuff—many’s the night we’ve spent in front of the TV, inhaling a truly shocking amount of beef with broccoli and fried rice. But, as much as we love the ease and convenience of calling in our favorite dishes from the neighborhood spot—ideally while riding the train on the way home, so the noodle food reviews|https://noodleinsight.com/ is five minutes away once we walk in the door—homemade versions of takeout standbys are not only possible but often tastier than the originals they copy.
The prototypical street food, dan dan noodles are an ultra-simple dish of cold or warm noodles placed in a bowl with a ladleful of highly seasoned sauce poured on top. Flavored with minced pork, preserved pickled mustard, black vinegar, fermented broad beans, garlic, and plenty of chili oil, the dish is eaten by swirling the slick noodles through the oily sauce, picking up bits of meat and pickles as they go.
The problem with so many steam-table iterations of this dish lies in the broccoli: It’s too often mushy and bland. To keep it crisp and flavorful here, and get a good sear on the strips of beef without overcooking them, we stir-fry the ingredients over very high heat, using a wok or a wok insert over a grill.
Once you’ve mastered our technique for a crispety, crunchety coating on takeout-style fried chicken, you can easily replicate a number of favorites on the buffet line. To turn our General Tso’s recipe into sesame chicken, we simply change the sauce, adding extra sugar and sesame oil and omitting the chilies. Be sure to toast those sesame seeds before adding them, and sprinkle them both throughout the sauce and over the finished dish.
