Chinese Food Recipes - Cold Dishes & Salads

In China, cold dishes and salads are served on the dinning table at the very beginning, so they are also named 'Meeting or Welcoming Dishes'. Whether they are good or not will influence guests' impressions on the entire feast. Those dishes in China are mostly cooked after cutting and seasoning, especially particular about the matching of the materials, cutting skills, and serving skills. Different from warm dishes, cold dishes are characterized by superior materials, fragrant taste, crispiness, tenderness, bright colors, as well as tidy and beautiful designs.

How to cook a cold dish well? There are three main requirements: first is mastering multiple cooking methods; second is exercising professional cutting skills; third is having some art knowledge and innovative ideas to create elegant and elaborate cold dishes. At the very end, the serving skills are also important, including padding at the bottom with excess material, enclosing the rim of the padding with well-cut tidy materials, and covering the dish with seasoning juice, parsley, cucumber slices, or carved radish.

With Sichuan pickled vegetables as representative, there are many well-known elaborate cold dishes in China such as Clear Noodles in Chili Sauce, Enoki Mushroom in Chili Oil, Marinated Pig Tongue, Spiced Beef, and Deep-fried Peanuts.

Vegetables & Eggs

• Ma Po Tofu
• Pine Nuts with Sweet Corn

Meat & Poultry

• Kung Pao Chicken
• Sweet and Sour Pork Fillet

Seafood

• Steamed Perch
• Braised Pomfret

Staple Food

• Chinese Dumplings
• Yangzhou Fried Rice

Soup

• Sweet Corn Soup
• West Lake Beef Soup