4 Main Chinese Cuisine you should know in Chinese culture

Chinese dishes are different depend on the geographical location. Based on different region, Chinese people have their unique dishes.

There are four famous regional cuisines in China, they are Cantonese cuisine, Shandong cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine and Sichuan cuisine.

1. Cantonese cuisine

Cantonese cuisine is the cuisine of China’s Guangdong Province, and also known as Yue cuisine and Guangdong cuisine. It is one of the eight culinary traditional of Chinese cuisine. The reason why it called Cantonese cuisine is that most people in there speak Cantonese.

Most Chinese food restaurants in other country serve Cantonese dishes. Cantonese cuisine separates to four parts, they are brunch, lunch, dinner and night snack. For the brunch and night snack, most Cantonese dishes are dim sum. However, for lunch and night snack, it contains pork, chicken, beef and various seafood. Since Guangdong province is near the sea, many seafood is easy for local people to eat.

The cooking methods that used in Cantonese cuisine are steaming, stir frying, shallow frying, double steaming, braising and deep frying. The flavours of Cantonese dishes are well balanced and not greasy.

2. Shandong cuisine

Shandong cuisine is from the north part of china. Shandong is a province and the cuisine was created during the Yuan dynasty. Some modern cuisines in North China, likes Beijing, Tianjin and the northeastern regions all develop from Shandong cuisine. And the meals in most northern Chinese households are prepared Shandong dishes.

Shandong cuisine consist of wide selection of material and use of different cooking methods. The material that used is from local animals and vegetable. The main cooking methods are bao (quick frying), liu (quick frying with corn flour), pa (stewing), kao (roasting), zhu (boiling), and use sugar to crystalize fruit and potato. The flavours of Shandong dishes are freshness, light aroma and rich taste.

3. Jiangsu cuisine

Jiangsu cuisine is derived from the dishes of Jiangsu province. It consists of other sub-regional styles, they are Nanjing style (emphasizes the taste and matching colour), Suzhou style (emphasizes the selection of ingredients and is sweeter than other Jiangsu dishes), Wuxi style (has wide variety of freshwater products, such as “three whites”), Shanghai style(emphasize the sweet flavour and the selection of ingredients) and Nantong style(emphasize the freshness of the material).

The characteristic of Jiangsu cuisine is soft, especially meat, the meat taste really soft but not separate from the bone. Fish and shrimp are also very common material that used in Jiangsu dishes, but most of fish is from lake and river. Another characteristic is that the selection of material is strict depend on the season. The dishes have to match the colour and shape of each dish and need soup to improve flavour.

4. Sichuan cuisine

Sichuan cuisine is from Sichuan Province. The weather in there is hot and wet, so people in there have to eat something spicy to keep them healthy. The geographical location is complex that include mountains, hills, plains, plateaus and Sichuan Basin. It shaped the food customs with versatile and distinct ingredients. There is not much seafood and most of dishes consist of the visceral and meat of chicken, pig, beef and rabbit. People in Sichuan province usually preserve their food through pickling, salting and drying.

The flavour of Sichuan dishes is spicy by using garlic, chilli peppers and huajiao (Sichuan peppercorn that is similar to black pepper, but it is intense fragrant and produce a “tingly-numbing” sensation in the mouth). The characteristics of Sichuan cuisine are hot, spicy, sour, sweet, bitter, aromatic, pungent and salty. Sichuan food is divided into five different type that are sumptuous banquet, ordinary banquet, popularized food, house-style food and snacks. The main cooking techniques are steaming, braising, frying, inline skating, blasting, boiling, simmering, especially starch and stir-fry are usually in Sichuan cuisine.

This is a trailer for A Bite of China.

If you want to watch more about the Chinese dishes, you can click A Bite of China season 1 youtube page.

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