These 4 Chinese Favourites for a Restaurant Quality Meal - For LESS

Hi everyone, I'm Flo buddy, I'm behind the camera and we like simple, simple food Faith, recently a customer asked how to create a Chinese menu that served multiple dishes. I thought maybe some of you might have the same question during weekdays. I usually make just one dish, maybe with a vegetable and simple rice, and that's all I can manage, but I remember when I was a child, my mother and grandmother would cook several dishes served at the same time at every dinner and I can't. I can't even imagine how they could do that every day when I plan a multi-course

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.

I usually choose a variety of different proteins along with a vegetable and rice. If I can incorporate more vegetables into a particular dish with a protein, then that's a bonus and I won't have to make an extra vegetable on the side and that also probably means

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cleanup for the friend, which I'm sure he appreciates when I mentioned one flavor profile, for example, would not make a pork sweet and sour. along with a lemon chicken because they both have sweet and sour flavors, so I don't think I would want to have two dishes that are similar in that sense.

Another thing to consider is different cooking methods so you can get multiples. things go at the same time, so in today's menu I have included a soup, a recipe that can go in the air fryer OR in the oven and two recipes that include vegetables and a sauce that will combine very well with white rice, but if If you want, you can Always check out my fried rice recipes too, I hope this helps you enjoy it instead of ham. Today we will use half a pound of ground pork. I'm going to turn my pot on, putting it over medium heat.

I'm going to wait for it to warm up. a little bit before adding our oil, okay, just adding about a tablespoon of vegetable oil didn't get it hot enough, obviously because I don't hear a sizzle, here goes, I didn't season it or anything because it's just going to be absorbed. all the flavors of the soup, so you just want to cook this. I'm going to prepare my piece of ginger so you can slice it if you want. I'm just going to mash it up because I just want the flavor of it and I want to be able to get it out easily, here we go, if you don't want meat you can also make it totally vegetarian but don't add the meat so I'm going to add my ginger it's about half. ounce, maybe a little more than half an ounce.

When you leave the skin on Ginger, make sure you clean it really well because you don't want all the bacteria and things that get stuck in the corners to build up. to ingest that, okay, I'm going to add eight cups of chicken broth and again, if you want to make this even vegan, I think you can use a vegetable broth instead, we're going to bring the chicken broth to a boil and once start. boiling you are going to lower the heat and let it simmer for 20 minutes then while the soup is simmering we are going to prepare the rest of the ingredients so I have a carrot I am not going to use it all because it is like a giant carrot, like this that maybe around these three quarters and we're going to julienne the carrot and cut it into sticks.

It's a pretty giant carrot, true, but I love these giant carrots because they're quite sweet, perfect for Soups. I'm using half a pound of cabbage and it's about a quarter of a small cabbage. I'm going to shred this too. I'm cutting three stalks of foreign green onion or you can throw it all away if you want. I want it to depend totally on you. I'm using about seven large shiitake mushrooms. You can use dried mushrooms if you want to remove the stem and we won't use them because they can be quite tough and we're just going to cut them off.

These, if you're using the dried ones, make sure you rehydrate them before you start cutting them and use them well, that's a lot of cutting, it's a pretty big recipe, it feeds six to eight like pretty big bowls, so it's great for company. so I don't have enough room on my board, I'm just going to cut it here, cut it in half and this is about a pound and a half of tofu. If you can't find it in this size, you can use it. It's more or

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entirely up to you to turn them around. I'm just going to cut them into cubes.

I'm using a medium firm tofu and I wouldn't try to use a soft tofu for this because you want the tofu to hold. its shape and not fall apart in your soup and you can use an extra firm tofu if you want, but I like the texture of medium firm so I'm going to leave it like that and cut it. Put them into fairly large cubes about an inch in size, okay, and now I'm going to set this aside. I'm also using four ounces of bamboo shoots and these are just canned bamboo shoots, you can get them in strips like this. or they get wider and thinner, okay, I'm using half an ounce of dried black mushroom and it comes like this, already cut and you want to rehydrate it before you use it, so I've been rehydrating it for more than half. an hour now, but you want at least 30 minutes in hot water to get them back to good without drying out, I just want to measure out our seasoning and I'm using half a cup of rice vinegar.

If you don't have rice vinegar, you can just use regular vinegar, but I find that regular vinegar is stronger, so you may want to start with a little less, half a cup and you can always add more later if it's not enough. acid and we're going to add three tablespoons of soy sauce, okay, and again you can add more if you need more salt in the soup later. I'm also going to beat three eggs. I just want to beat them lightly and set it aside. Okay, let's get our ginger out. it'll be easy to find yeah okay we'll add our carrots and cabbage and cook it for two or three minutes after two or three minutes we'll add the heat of the tofu which is getting quite filling uh oh. yes, it's going to hold everything I expect so that's okay, I don't know why I thought it could fit in my smaller cast iron dutch oven.

I usually use this when I make this amount of soup, which is my five and a half. quarter Le Creuset dutch oven and I'm going to add the mushroom I already drained bamboo shoot all the mushrooms so they don't fit in the impossible little one and half of my green onions we're just going to heat that up the whole process should take you a couple of minutes more, oh one more thing, don't forget to add the seasoning, put it all in there when the soup is simmering, add the egg like you're drizzling it in slowly so you can create these weird egg ribbons by making a cornstarch slurry.

I'm going to start with two tablespoons of cornstarch adding about two tablespoons of water. Make sure it's cold or room temperature water because otherwise the cornstarch won't dissolve and this is what will thicken your soup, so let's go. to stir that in and if it's still not thick enough, it's not going to be thick like the

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s because I think they use a lot of cornstarch, which I'm not going to do here, but it thickens enough for my taste, the egg too. It thickens it up a little bit and there's so much going on here that you don't really need a thick soup, so I'm going to give it a try to see if I need to adjust the ingredients before trying it.

I forgot to add two pinches of ground white pepper. the ground white pepper will give it heat and we are going to add a teaspoon of sesame oil. Sesame oil adds flavor, just stir more. I think the friend would like more spice, but I like it as is, I could add a little more. soy sauce, let's do that now, but it's not very vinegary, it was just a little spicy. I probably added another teaspoon or two of soy sauce. I have two pounds and there are about 24 pieces of drumettes and flats and we're going to let it marinate for half an hour adding a tablespoon of cooking oil a tablespoon of soy sauce and this is just regular soy sauce.

I'm actually using light soy sauce, ditto a tablespoon of rice wine for cooking and I normally use shaoxing wine. using normal rice wine today if you have shaoxing wine you can use it if not you can use dry sherry or we also use bourbon just add a little bit of that to give it more flavor but if you don't just drink it for a minute adding two teaspoons of sugar and that's just to balance the flavors. If you don't want to add sugar, you don't have to remember that it will be a little saltier if you don't add it. sugar by adding half a teaspoon of five spice powder and half a teaspoon of ground white pepper.

We're just going to mix this together and let it marinate for half an hour while the chicken marinates and you can marinate it up to overnight if you want. like the longer you let it marinate the more flavor it will have in the meantime I'm just going to prepare the rest of my ingredients I have two green onions that I'm going to cut and separate the white and light green part from the dark green and here's a little tip. I have been planting them in my garden and the green onions will sprout again so you can put them in your garden or you can even put them in a glass of water and they will grow. back we are also using just a small bunch of cilantro which will give you about two tablespoons and if you don't like cilantro you don't have to use it, we really like cilantro and you can add it to the same pile as the green onions the dark green part I'm also using a large jalapeño today, you can use Thai chili if you want or serrano peppers, whatever pepper you like that holds up to the heat.

I'm going to leave them in big rings for people to pick them up if they want, we're also using four cloves of garlic, but the store was out of garlic today, so I'm using my freeze dried garlic, which only has a little bit left, but that will have That will be enough today. I'm using half a teaspoon of whole white pepper and if you don't have whole white pepper you can use ground pepper, just use a quarter teaspoon or if you have other peppercorns you'd like to use you can do that too. Sichuan peppers would be good, even black pepper if you like.

I'm going to grind them and not too much. I don't want it to be completely crushed. I want to have the little pieces there. I'm using a quarter. teaspoon five spice powder teaspoon kosher salt and you want a coarse salt here so that when you sprinkle it on the chicken wings at the end you get a bite of that salt and we'll pour in our ground peppercorn and we'll just stir that on top and that'll be the salt seasoning that you're going to put on at the end, look how thick it covers the chicken wings, it's just going to give it a hint of flavor on your tongue and it's going to be so amazing I'm using about half a cup of potato starch and this is sweet potato starch .

You can usually get them at an Asian market. I think potato starch actually gives a crispier texture when air fried, but if you don't have potato starch you can use cornstarch. I'm adding half the wings to the potato starch just because my air fryer is small so I have to do this in several batches. If you have a larger fryer, you may be able to do it all at once. I'm just going to make sure they're evenly covered. I already preheated my deep fryer to 400 degrees for just a couple of minutes and I'm going to spray the bottom with a little bit of oil.

I'm going to put the chicken wings in there, I'm going to make sure they're not crowded and I like to stand them up because you can put more chicken wings in there when they're standing up, I'm just going to spray them with a little bit of vegetable oil. I'm using vegetable oil, you can use whatever you want and we're going to cook it. for about 15 minutes and check it halfway at 400 degrees, okay, see you in a moment. I'm going to turn them over, you may need to drizzle a little more oil. Great, it just smells really good, okay, check it out.

I'm going to set them aside while we make the second batch and they'll be crispy enough for you. You can always leave them there for another five minutes or even another five minutes. They look pretty good and juicy. I'm making the second batch I'm adding a little more potato starch because I needed a little more during the last five minutes of the chicken wings cooking time. We want the aromatics to kick in, I turn the heat to medium and I'm I do this in a wok because at the end I want to be able to add my chicken wings with the aromatics, but if you don't have a wok you can always do it in a smaller pan and pour hot aromatics in a bowl. with the chicken wings and throw them in there once you see that wisp of smoke in your Wok it's time to add the oil we're adding two tablespoons of cooking oil and if you're using garlic add it now because mine is freeze dried.

I just want to make sure it's going to cook right, I don't want to confirm hello, okay, that's another thing with walking, move everything in, okay, let's put our green onions and chiles in there now, this only takes about a minute, no. It's even okay, turn off the heat, that's it, now we're just waiting for the chicken wings, the jalapenos are going to be spicy, dude, it's okay to add that second batch of chicken wings to the first batch in the wok, oh my gosh, They smell so good and look how crunchy. they're okay, you're going to mix it all together, then we add the green onions and cilantro to add a little freshness, then another mix and that's oh my goodness, put this on a plate and don't forget the salt seasoning.

First I'm going to marinate my pork, this is just lean ground pork and weighs about a pound. I'm adding a teaspoon of soy sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil and we'll set this aside for about half an hour. I'm using a thumb-sized piece of ginger and I see thatIt is the size of a thumb. We look for about a tablespoon of grated ginger and I already peeled it. There is no need to peel it. If you wash the skin very well, a clove of garlic and I am only going to use the grater so I have one less thing to wash or I can chop it.

I guess but I'm going to put it with the ginger because everything goes in the pan at the same time using three onions and I'm going to separate the white from the dark green and we're going to cook the white parts, but we leave the green part, the dark green part for garnish, using about a pound and a half of medium-firm tofu and tofu comes in all kinds of textures, so this one, wow! It's medium firm, he says, but it's breaking down and I'm going to cut it in half here and leave it in my container because I'm going to throw it all away. in the wok when I cook it and I just want to cut it into cubes.

He's not cooperating with me today, guys, but that's okay because the tofu is going to break down anyway. I just don't want it to break up too much, so I'm going to cut it into about an inch cubes, we're going to heat the wok over medium heat. Today I'm using a wok, but if you don't have a wok, you can use a large frying pan and I like to use a wok because it's easier to move all the ingredients around and once you see that wisp of smoke add the oil, a tablespoon of oil. vegetable and I'll add my green onions just the white parts for about a minute. maybe less.

I'm going to add ginger and garlic. This one you'll cook for about 30 seconds and then immediately add the pork you want to cook for about three to five minutes until the pork is completely cooked, you know what? If you don't eat pork, you can always use ground chicken for this dish or ground turkey, it will be really delicious. In fact, this recipe makes so much that I don't think a large skillet could hold all the ingredients. so you might want to use a large Dutch oven, it's probably a better option to use three tablespoons of bean paste and this is regular bean paste, not spicy, and if you don't want to invest in a jar of this, you can always use my other mapodofu recipe that doesn't use bean paste, but bean paste is a more authentic mapotofu, so it's totally up to you because I'm not using the spicy bean paste, I'm using half a teaspoon, that's too much buddy. uh no, that should be fine, okay, half a teaspoon of chili paste and that's Szechuan chili paste, it's the variety that numbs your mouth or your tongue.

I'm going to use about half a teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorn if I can get a half teaspoon with a gentle flow. Don't leave it all alone, maybe a quarter teaspoon if you want more of a tongue numbing sensation, you can add more. A tablespoon of shaoxing wine is just rice wine and I often use it in Chinese cooking if you don't have shaoxing wine. you can use a dry sherry or a white wine or we've been known to use bourbon just something that will add a depth of flavor and a tablespoon of dark soy sauce dark soy sauce will give it a little bit of additional color and flavor. foreign half cup of chicken broth, okay and I'll add my tofu and we're just going to fold it in gently and then cover it and let it simmer for about three minutes until the tofu is nice and hot.

I'm also going to make a cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce, so about a tablespoon of cornstarch without water and make sure the water is room temperature or cold because the cornstarch won't dissolve; otherwise it's fine. I'm also going to add some peas, this just adds a little sweetness now traditional mapodofu doesn't contain peas but I remember when we first got married this was what I made for friend because it also had vegetables so it was just a

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healthy in one pot, it's okay, we just want to cook. through the peas to bring them back to a simmer.

I just made a little well in the middle so I can add my cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce. Alright? Does this look good or how nice to put out the heat by adding my green onions? Alright. More than decorating guys, it will have an extra flavor, it is what we have today because we are going to make the meat and the gailon together. I'm going to cut my gailon into two inch pieces after I've washed the leaves and the gailon is nice. easy to wash, not like a really dirty plant. I would soak it in water with a couple teaspoons of salt just to make sure that I kill any bugs and things that may be hiding in the flowers or between the leaves and when When purchasing tension line, make sure that when you look at the bottom of the stems don't have a white dot, when you see a white dot, it means it's aging and cupping, it's drying out in the middle, so you don't want that and when I say remove the flowers I only mean when they are blooming, don't let me showing you when they're like this, it's actually good because this part of the men's line is probably the cutest part. of the greens you don't want to get rid of it but once they start to bloom they will open with a white flower you will want to remove that white flower because that's where the bugs hide yuck that's what my dad told me this It's about half a pound of already chopped kylon and I have a pot of boiling water.

I added two teaspoons of salt and half a teaspoon of sugar. The sugar actually keeps the gylon green and also takes away the bitterness it has. Guylon can have it, so I'm going to whitewash him for a minute. I'll get right back to foreign once you've bleached the tension line, just wring it out and set it aside until you're ready to use it. I have about half. pound of beef brisket. I'm going to cut this in half lengthwise and I like to use brisket because you can see the grains so when they tell you to cut along the green that's what you do so I'm just going to Cut this finely naturally if you put it in the freezer for about 20 minutes before you start cutting it it will be easier, everyone knows I don't mind especially since my freezer is completely full of things that I really need to clean out.

There, place the sliced ​​meat in a bowl, add a teaspoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of rice wine, and you can use shaoxing wine. I haven't been able to find it lately and I ran out. I could not. I find the brand that I like lately I don't know what happened to a teaspoon of cornstarch and that helps velvetize your meat so that it is more tender and soft and if you have time to let it marinate just let it sit for about half an hour I have about a quarter of a cup of beef broth and if you don't have beef broth you can use water adding a tablespoon of oyster sauce and a tablespoon of dark soy and again, if you don't have dark soy, you can use regular. soy and a teaspoon of brown sugar I have two teaspoons of cornstarch adding a tablespoon of room temperature water or cold water I'm going to dissolve this and this is our cornstarch mixture that we will add at the end to thicken our sauce remember Always use cold or room temperature water , since cornstarch will not dissolve in hot water and one last thing, I have a clove of garlic.

I'm going to run it through my garlic press, prep that too, and save it for later. We are ready to cook now, heating my Wok on medium high heat so the meat is done and if you don't have a wok you can always use a large frying pan, no big deal. I just find it easier to stir fry in a wok. the ingredients, once you see a wisp of smoke, add two tablespoons of vegetable oil, the meat, let it sit to brown a little before moving it and once the meat is about 80 percent cooked, I'll remove it and Then we are going to lower the heat to low simply adding another tablespoon of vegetable oil to add the garlic.

You don't want the garlic to burn, so we're going to quickly sauté it for about 30 seconds until you start to smell it. I have a gallon of art adding our foreign sauce, the heat goes back up to medium and the sauce is starting to simmer. I'm going to add our cornstarch mixture adding our meat back in along with all the foreign juices I just want to cook this for about One or two minutes to warm everything up okay turning off the heat serving it on a black plate and I just use the same plate on the one I ate the meat and to give it more flavor you can drizzle a little sesame oil on top.