How to Cook Herbs & Spices in Chinese Cooking

An aphorism about Chinese cooking holds that the Chinese eat every part of the duck except the quack and eat everything with four legs except the table. Periodic famines led Chinese people, of necessity, to create dishes that include even goose feet and pig stomach lining.

While the Chinese use a vast repertory of possibilities for the main ingredients of dishes, including pork, chicken, beef, seafood and every manner of vegetable, they rely on a relatively short list of herbs and spices to flavor foods.

Chinese stir-fried dishes rely on ginger, spring onions and garlic, and in northern regional cuisine, coriander (cilantro) as well, to impart flavor. Spices, more prevalent in slow-cooked dishes based on soy sauce, include dried red chilies and Szechuan peppercorns in western regional cooking, as well as five-spice powder, Chinese cinnamon and star anise.

Things You'll Need

• Ginger
• Spring onions
• Garlic
• Coriander (cilantro)
• Dried red chilies
• Five-spice powder
• Szechuan peppercorns
• Chinese cinnamon
• Star anise

Instructions

Preparation

1. Prepare the herbs by cutting them per the requirements of your recipe. Steps 2 through 6 indicate possible methods of preparation.

2. Cut garlic and ginger into "silken threads" by slicing thinly, stacking the slices and cutting the slices into narrow strips.

3. Crush garlic by laying unpeeled cloves on your cutting board or counter top. Bang down on the cloves with the side of a heavy knife or cleaver. Peel the skin off the crushed clove.

4. Finely chop garlic or coriander (cilantro) on a cutting board. Crush with the side of your knife, remove the skin, then chop repeatedly until you've minced the garlic or coriander.

5. Cut spring onions or scallions into 1-inch segments, into small rounds or diagonally. Separate the white parts and green parts.

6. Alternatively, cut spring onions into brushes by trimming the white ends into 2 ½-inch segments. Make repeated cuts through both ends, leaving the central section intact. Place the onions in cold water and refrigerate for several hours.

Cooking Techniques for Herbs

1. Add chopped or sliced garlic, ginger and spring onions to hot oil prior to stir-frying meats, fish or vegetables.

2. Heat an empty wok over high heat until smoke rises. Add 2-3 tbsp. of oil and swirl it around.

3. Add garlic to the oil. As soon as it takes on color and releases its odor, add the ginger. Stir. As soon as the ginger releases its odor, add the white part of the spring onion.

4. Add the green part of the spring onion and chopped coriander near the end of the cooking process, after you have stir-fried the main ingredient, wine or sherry, vegetables and sauces.

Techniques for Spices

1. Use star anise in recipes such as soy sauce chicken to create a flavored liquid in which to cook a whole chicken.

2. Use Chinese cinnamon, the dried bark of the cassia tree, in a master sauce for "flavor-potting," or stewing meats in a highly flavored stock.

3. Use dried red chili in Szechuan and Hunan cuisines to add a hot flavor to stir-frying oil. Some recipes call for discarding the chilies before stir-frying in the oil or before presenting the dish.

4. Use five-spice powder, which contains star anise, Chinese cinnamon, cloves, Szechuan peppercorns and fennel seeds, sparingly in marinades for meat, poultry or fish.

5. Use Szechuan peppercorns in western regional tofu dish sauces and to impart flavor to oil prior to stir-frying Szechuan dishes. These small, red-brown peppercorns provide a stronger flavor than black peppercorns and "produce a numbing rather than a burning effect," writes chef Yan-kit So.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep most spices indefinitely in a covered container or spice jar.

• Korean and other ethnic grocers may have a wide variety of ginger roots, white, yellow and red for example, to experiment with in your cooking.

References

• "Yan-kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook;" Yan-kit So; 2007
• "The Complete Asian Cookbook;" Charmaine Solomon; 2006