Chinese Cooking Ingredients - Healthy Spices and Ingredients For a Healthy Cooking

Chinese Cooking Ingredients - Healthy Spices and Ingredients For a Healthy Cooking
By Carolyn Anderson

Traditional Chinese cooking is known to be healthy as it focuses more on having more vegetables than meat and it promotes a variety of colorful and crisp vegetables that is ideal for a healthy recipe. If you are interested in learning Chinese cooking at home, here are some of the popular Chinese cooking ingredients, spices and herbs that will help you add more flavor to your Chinese recipes.

Tofu - tofu or bean curd is a popular ingredient you can find in many Chinese recipes especially those vegetarian recipes. This ingredient is of Chinese origin but it has become a popular recipe ingredient in Asian cooking. Tofu has little flavor or smell and you can drain it before use to let it absorb the flavors of the other ingredients and spices in the recipe. For some vegetarian diet, the tofu can also be a good substitute for meat as it can be a good source of protein and iron but low in calories and fat. It can also be digested easily as it is tender and soft.

Mushroom - mushroom is also one of the popular Chinese cooking ingredients that add taste to your recipes. These are not rare ingredients and you can readily find them in the supermarket but it can vary in price as some of them are still harvested from their natural environment. You can also get dried mushrooms as ingredients for your stew, soups as well as in your stir-fried recipes.

Dried fungus - Dried fungus is one of the dried ingredients that you may commonly find in Chinese dishes. These are best for stir-frying and are often used together with tofu, chicken, celery and onions. You may find them too small when you get to purchase them from the supermarket but they can expand after soaking them in about 15 minutes in hot water before cooking them with the rest of the ingredients.

Bok choy - is also another popular vegetable that you can find in Chinese cooking but they are popular around the world. You can often find this vegetable in stews, in soups as well as in stir-fried recipes.

The five-spice powder - this spice is a one of the popular Chinese cooking ingredients and often used as food seasoning that you can add to your dish like pepper. As the name suggests, the five-spice powder consists of five spices that commonly include the Szechuan peppercorn, start anise, fennel, cinnamon and cloves. Usually, this is used by in seasoning fatty meats but it is also widely used in vegetarian dishes.

Ginger is also another popular spice in Chinese cooking. In fact, it is one primary flavorings in Chinese food because of its aromatic and its pungent and biting taste. Sometimes it is also added in the five-spice powder instead of fennel. Ginger not only adds flavor to your dishes but also provides health benefits such as promoting good digestion as well as preventing motion sickness and nausea.

Carolyn Anderson loves cooking and loves to explore healthy tips and techniques in cooking. To explore healthy Chinese cooking, check out the hundreds of recipes in real Chinese cooking. Also check out Copycat Cookbook, a great recipe book to help you cook your favorite American restaurant meals.

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