Let’s move on to some questions in Chinese cooking from our viewers and some of our listeners. Amy has a question for us. “I went to a new Chinese restaurant and the chef was incredible. I've never seen a kitchen of a Chinese restaurant before. I was wondering why a cooking range and wok was filled with water and why is there steam coming out of the spigot or faucet?”
You may have seen the spigot or faucet with an arm usually installed just on top of the wok for cleaning after the cooking. The heat is so intense that it also heat up the spigot causing steam from it. It may also have residue water after the last usage. Some of the kitchen may have water constantly running at the front edge of the water to keep the water area cooler since the water is constantly in use in the restaurants.
Okay now, Steve has a question. “I spend sometime in Thailand and enjoyed cooking those cuisines. Now I’m interested in cooking Chinese food. There seems to be quite an acceptance that ready-made commercial sauces are fine, but that feels weird to me. I’ve never dreamed of making tight tom yam soup with a mixture of jar. Do Chinese people use readymade jars or tanning sauces? I’ve got a recipe for char teow which has a whole host of ingredients and then it says at the end or use readymade char teow sauce or marinade it for an hour before roasting. To be honest I’m not going to be bothered by getting a whole of Chinese ingredients and other ingredients as well. If the ready stuff is made already and ready to go to be used, so based in the summary, he’s asking whether or not, would it be better to use making your own sauces with ingredients or would it be better to buy it in a jar?”
There are many readymade sauces available in the Asian market and some of them are very good. Others are very poor. If you’re a normal nine to five job person, it does seems to be a lot of work to put all of these ingredients together. You can go to the market and ask about the sauce you are buying. Similar story keep a very knowledgeable about the product they are selling. However, I would prefer to make my own using the raw sauces and to make that to my taste. You can adjust the taste to your—like if spending a little time to make it yourself, in the long run, it’s still best to learn how to cook since you’ll be eating for the rest of your life.
Here’s a question from a student we have here. “My dad is in on a low-salt sodium and also on a no-MSG diet. Lately, he has been craving for Chinese food. I like to cook some low-salt sodium food but seems like they’re not a lot of options in most Chinese restaurants. Do you have any ideas or recipes for Chinese food, which use little or no salt?”
First, MSG is a flavor enhancer for food and some people are sensitive to it. As a replacement, you can use or substitute such as concentrated meat broth or a product called Maggi sauce which is a high vegetable protein. Second, if you are cooking Chinese food and a recipe call for a light or dark soy sauce, you can substitute with low-sodium soy sauce such as—low-sodium soy sauce, Kikoman light soy sauce and finally, dilute and—soy sauce with some broth using one teaspoon of soy sauce with one teaspoon of meat broth and it is far less salt per volume.
Here’s a question from Adrian. “How do Chinese food use wok pans when making food and why do they not use regular pans? Also, what’s the difference between a wok from the other pan, why does a wok is used for Chinese cooking?”
The wok design has a larger and higher curvature than the regular pan. Chinese food require higher heating source. When you place an ingredient into the heated wok with oil, it will splatter oil all over. It covers do wok is highly recommended for Chinese stir fry cooking. It can be heated to 1800 degree plus degrees so that you can quickly seal the vitamin into each piece of food that you are cooking.
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