There are many styles of cooking in China, here is 4 culinary traditions as the best. These have set the course of how Chinese cook food, and are looked to as models. Each of these schools has a distinct style and different strengths.
Guangdong
The great joke about Guangdong, or Cantonese, cuisine is that the Cantonese will “eat anything that has four legs other than a table, anything that flies other than an airplane, and anything that swims other than a submarine.” However, do not let this deter you.
Cantonese cuisine is lauded for its focus on bringing out pure flavors, the result being bright, crisp vegetables, steamed fish, and elaborate, lightly sautéed dishes. Cantonese cuisine is also well regarded for its roasted meats, like lacquered barbecue pork, burnished golden pigeons, and crisp, flavorsome goose. Perhaps most famous of all is the dim sum that hails from the region, elaborate and delicate steamed dumplings, custard buns, radish cakes, and more eaten in the mornings with tea.
Yue Cuisine
Yue Cuisine, also known as Cantonese cuisine, originates from Guangdong Province in South China. Yue Cuisine is especially skillful in techniques of stir-frying, frying, stewing and braising. Special attentions are paid to the heating temperature and duration. The tastes feature pure delicacy, freshness, tenderness, and crispness.
An emphasis on preserving the natural flavor of the food is also the hallmark of Yue Cuisine. A Cantonese chef would consider it a culinary sin of the highest order to produce a dish that was overcooked or too heavily seasoned. Special care is taken to make sure that the tastes are light but not tasteless, fresh but not vulgar, tender but not raw, oily but not greasy.
Sichuan
Sichuan cuisine is one of the most popular in China, famous for its brash flavors, mouth-tingling pepper, and sweat-inducing heat. The province is characterized by the iconic numbing and spicy characteristics, but Sichuan cuisine should not be judged by the pure power of its spiciness alone. The cooking here is as diverse and exuberant as the complex topography (and population) from which it springs.
In fact, chilies did not even make it to China until the 16th century from the New World, and Sichuan cuisine quickly picked it up as a way to balance the effect of the prickly ash, which was already iconic in its cuisine. Today, its capital (Chengdu) buzzes with foodies who delight in everyday eating, and the city houses chefs who are both rooted in tradition and some of the most innovative in China, who are buoyed, not shackled, by its deep-rooted history.
Lu Cuisine
Featuring freshness of materials and salt flavor, Lu Cuisine is derived from the traditional and historical cooking methods of Shandong Province. It is considered the most influential and popular in China. Modern day schools of cuisine in North China, such as those of
Beijing,
Tianjin, and Northeast, are all branches of Shandong Cuisine. However, it is not so popular in South China and even in the all-embracing
Shanghai.
Lu Cuisine consists of Jinan cuisine and Jiaodong Cuisine. Jinan Cuisine is particular about being bold and unconstrained with thick color. Moreover, it is characterized by using soup and utilizing soups in its dishes. The use and making of clear soup, milky soup and superior soup all have strict stipulations. Jiaodong Cuisine, which includes dishes in Qingdao, Yantai and Weihai, is characterized by seafood cooking, with light tastes. The cooking method of Jiaodong Cuisine is particular about freshness, liveliness and insipidity though its flavor gives priority to tenderness.
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Challenge yourself with top 5 Chongqing spicy dishes
Source Internet
