（Kitchen seasonings 2018)
Are you a Chinese food lover? Do you want to cook Chinese dishes at home? While Chinese recipes always involve many Chinese seasonings which you may never heard of them before, it can be quite confusing to people who are not familiar with Chinese cooking. So if you made up your mind to begin your Chinese cooking, you need to buy some essential Chinese seasonings.
In this blog I gonna tell your 9 essential Chinese seasonings and introduce them one by one, you can buy them online or from an Asian market.
1. Light soy sauce (生抽)
Light soy sauce is one of the most basic seasoning in Chinese cooking, it is made from soybeans, wheat, salt and water. It’s thin and light in color and it tastes salty, So It is mainly used to add the flavor of the food in cooking, it can be put into almost every dish and used as the dipping sauce.
2. Dark soy sauce (老抽)
Dark soy sauce is added with caramel on the basis of light soy sauce, it is thicker in texture and darker in color than light soy sauce. It is mainly used to add the color and flavor to a dish, such as the dish braised pork chop.
3. Oyster sauce (蚝油)
Made from oysters, oyster sauce was incidentally invented in Guangdong China in 19th century. The inventor Lee Kum Sheung, also the brand name of the oyster sauce, sold cooked oysters for living. One day he was cooking oysters, but he left home and forgot to turn off the fire. When he back to home, he surprisingly found out that the cooked oysters have turned into a thick brown sauce with a strong aroma after simmering for a long time, and the taste was so delicious (Wikipedia 2019). After that he started selling oyster sauce and nowadays it has turned into a well-known brand. To be honest, I hate oysters, but I love oyster sauce because it has a sweet and salty taste, my family use it to cook with meats and vegetables. So it's surprising to know oyster sauce was invented due to a incident.
4. Cooking wine (料酒)
Cooking wine plays an important role when cooking meats and seafood, it helps to improve the flavor of dishes and remove the unpleasant smell.
5. Corn flour
Corn flour is commonly used in Chinese stir-fry recipes. When cooking the stir-fry dishes, it is mixed with water to thicken the sauce of the dish. Besides, cornflour also can be used to velvet meat, which helps to get tender and silky meat.
I watched a YouTube video called How to Velvet Meat - Velveting Meat Chinese Tutorial, in which the YouTuber put the meat into velveting mixture made from cornflour, egg whites, cooking wine and salt, and put them into fridge for an hour, then removed the mixture by kitchen paper before cooking the meat (Cook with Aussie, 2013). Which is quite different from what we do at home. We just directly add some cornflour and egg white into the meat and mix them well before cooking. I think his way is better than mine. Because last time I velveted the fish before I cooked, I can taste egg white in that dish.
6. Vinegar
Black vinegar and white vinegar are two vinegar that are mainly used in Chinese recipes. Black vinegar has richer flavor and is darker in color than white vinegar, it is used to be dipping sauce and cook dishes with sweet and sour flavor. White vinegar is used more in Chinese cold salad.
7. Sesame oil (香油)
Sesame oil has fantastic aroma and taste, it helps to enhance the flavor of food. It almost fit with all the Chinese dishes, and it is also the key in dipping sauce for Hotpot.
8. Doubanjiang (豆瓣酱)
Doubanjiang is a spicy bean paste, which is an inevitable seasoning to cook Szechuan dishes like Mapo tofu and Szechuan boiled beef.
9. The Holy Trinity in Chinese kitchen—Spring Onion, garlic, ginger
（The House of Health Regimen 2017)
Spring onion, garlic and ginger are common seasoning ingredients in Chinese recipe, they are used in most Chinese dishes, they help to add their flavor to food. Spring onion is commonly used as a garnish, and ginger also can remove the unpleasant smell of meats and seafood.
Reference:
Cook with Aussie 2013, How To Velvet Meat - Velveting Meat Chinese Tutorial, Youtube, 23 March, Cook with Aussie, viewed 21 September 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZr3HkxigSE>
Kitchen seasonings 2018, photograph, viewed 20 September 2019, <http://dy.163.com/v2/article/detail/E3MFMO6H0516M79C.html>
The House of Health Regimen 2017,Do You Know How to Use Spring Onion, Garlic and Ginger? The Holy trinity of Chinese Kitchen also are Great Medicines, photograph, viewed 21 September 2019, <https://kknews.cc/zh-sg/health/39685a3.html>
Wikipedia 2019, Oyster Sauce, Wikipedia, viewed 25 September, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_sauce>
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