I'll have a number 42...

December 28, 2007 12:47 PM

I want to cook chinese takeaway style food at home. Is there a website that will tell me how to do this?

One of my NYR's is to cook from scratch more, and another is to get in shape. So I figured I'd combine the two, and learn how to cook chinese takeaway style food (fried rice, sesame prawn toasts, lemon honey chicken, etc) at home. I have a takeaway 200 yards from my home, and it's really making me fat.

I've found websites online that tell me how to cook "lemon & honey chicken", but the results don't seem very much like takeaway food. It's very important that it still looks/tastes like it's from the Happy House. I can experiment a bit, but I'm not a confident chef, so I'd prefer to have a recipe in front of me.

Is there a website, or perhaps a book, that specialises in takeaway food?

posted by Rabulah to food & drink (12 comments total)

Since getting in shape is one of your goals, I would encourage you to try cooking Thai food instead of Chinese, as most takeout Chinese food is loaded with salt, fat and sugar. Hot Sour Salty Sweet is an excellent Thai cookbook with beautiful photography. It also delves into the history of different dishes.

However, I do have a great recipe for takeout-style Sweet and Sour Chicken. Here it is:

1 lb boneless chicken breasts
1 beaten egg
1 cup packaged biscuit mix (like Bisquik)
1.5 cups cooking oil
1 20 oz can pineapple chunks
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons paprika
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 large sweet green pepper, cut lengthwise into strips
4 green onions cut into 2" pieces
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
hot cooked rice

Rise chicken and pat dry. Cut into 1-inch pieces. In a medium bowl combine egg, biscuit mix and water. Dip chicken pieces into batter to coat.

Heat 1.5 cups cooking oil in wok or small deep fryer. Fry chicken pieces in hot oil, a few at a time. They will turn golden brown after about 2 minutes. Remove chicken pieces as they cook and drain on paper towels. Discard oil and keep chicken warm in a 250 degree oven.

For sauce, drain pineapple, reserving juice. Add enough water to juice to make 1 3/4 cups. In a bowl combine sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and cornstarch. Add pineapple juice/water mixture. Set aside.

Add one tablespoon cooking oil to wok, stir fry pepper and green onions for 2-3 minutes. Remove veggies, add sauce to wok, cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Add veggies back to wok, also put in pineapple and tomatoes. Cook about 2 minutes, add chicken. Stir to coat, serve over rice.
posted by Ostara at 1:09 PM on December 28, 2007 [6 favorites]

The takeaway isn't making you fat, the food is making you fat. Just removing the 'takeaway' from the takeaway food does not reduce its calorie content.

What is it about home cooking that you think will make this food better for you? The food you are getting from the takeaway is not making you fat because someone else cooked it and brought it to your house - its making you fat because its all fried.

You can't have your cake and eat it, as the saying goes. You can't have nice healthy food that tastes just like the takeaway food you get. It tastes that way because its laden with fat. If you carefully control your oil usage, you can make some nice chinese takeaway style food but it wont taste exactly the same because its not the same.

There are tons of recipe sites and tons of recipes for things you might find at a chinese takeaway. Just google for a dish you like.
posted by missmagenta at 1:26 PM on December 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Try RecipeZaar. The secret is to do your search, say, "Fried Rice", but then sort by Rating. The top result is then a recipe with 154 ratings and an average of 4.5 stars. I haven't done that one but "Allrighty then Scrambled Eggs", "Caramelized Butternut Squash", and "Roasted Asparagus" are easily the best I've had ever and I found them using this method.

The cooking method is very important. For instance, the scrambled eggs call for low heat... otherwise you'll heat the water out of them and they end up like edible plastic. Yum. So I watched them while they cooked and took them out a bit early since I knew they'd still cook a bit on the plate.
posted by jwells at 1:43 PM on December 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

If you're not cooking with MSG, and I'd bet money you aren't, it's just not going to taste right.

(And please do not listen to people that natter on about how horrible it is—if MSG was so bad, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?)
posted by lia at 1:44 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

The basis for americanized Chinese food is pretty deep much fried or fried, so you're going to have to be careful.

However I disagree with the previous two posters, cooking at home is a lot less fattening than at American Chinese restaurants, and it will probably taste better than what comes out of those restaurants. Even authentic Chinese restaurants don't use that much oil.

I'd do an ingredient serach on allrecipes.com for the dishes you like. I'm sure you can find much healthier recipes.
posted by mphuie at 1:45 PM on December 28, 2007

Google for "Yang Chow Fried Rice" for a starter recipe. I've begun the same path as you, but this is my only step so far. It's a great all-around takeout-style of fried rice, though, and it didn't take me more than two tries to start making it by feel.
posted by rhizome at 1:51 PM on December 28, 2007

More and hotter oil and more msg. There is a cookbook out there somewhere that tries to reproduce American Chinese restaurant food. Frankly, you will eat better food sticking with the classics like Madam Wu.
posted by caddis at 2:31 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Is there a website that will tell me how to do this?

How about Chinese Cooking Lessons by professional restaurant chef Barbara Fisher? Keep clicking; there's 30 recipes in the Chinese Cooking Lessons, and a million more on the rest of Tigers and Strawberries. Under no circumstances are you allowed to skip Staples of the Chinese Pantry, and you won't get very far without buying a few of them. I personally like to keep hoisin, soy sauce, and a rough chili-garlic paste on hands at all times.

I really enjoyed cooking pork ribs glazed in vietnamese carmel from a recipe my Chubby Hubby. Unless you really like fish sauce I'd cut the amount in the recipe by half.
posted by Juliet Banana at 4:39 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

You'll get plenty of good cooking advice from others, so I'll take a different tack at the underlying problem. missmagenta's right that it's the oil that's making you fat, not the mere fact of the Happy House. So if you perfectly recreate that Happy House taste in your kitchen, you'll just be recreating the problem at home.

Forgive the obviousfilter here, but the ultimate problem is that you're taking in more calories than you're burning. There's two ways to attack that - take in fewer calories, or burn more. You can combine them of course, and the more ground you cover in "burn more," the less you have to worry about "eat less." I lost a bunch of weight recently using the methods in this book - but I'll summarize it in two sentences. Get a pedometer so you know how many steps you take each day, then gradually increase it. On the food side, eat whatever you're eating now - just eat 3/4 as much of it.

So, if you raise your activity level (which is one of your resolutions after all) you'll reduce the amount of impact you have to make on your dietary habits. And most people find it easier to be more active than to eat less. Then you've got two options on the cooking side. One, do what you've been doing and try to make Chinese at home. Just teach yourself to accept that it's not going to taste exactly like takeaway, but I'm sure you can make some pretty good stuff and wean yourself off the taste of the fats.

And/Or two, just have the takeaway! You know you love it! Just eat a little less of it. Divvy up an extra portion out of it. The stuff's good warmed up the next day too!

In fact the best thing about this for me wasn't even that I lost weight, it's that I don't stress about food all the damn time anymore. Here's a major example, though not the only one in my particular experience: My wife has a bit of a sweet tooth. It's okay for her. She eats like a bird. She weighs nothing. But it was a problem for me. She refused to not keep ice cream in the house for the odd times when she wanted it. Then it just sat there tempting me. I'd polish it off, I'd feel like shit because I told myself I wasn't going to do that, and then she'd get irked a week later when there wasn't any ice cream. We actually had arguments about this. Now if I want some ice cream, I just have it. I didn't starve myself and eat nothing but brown rice and broccoli. I tried to avoid binging, but I had ice cream or a couple oatmeal raisin cookies when I wanted them. We ordered pizza or ate out around once a week, and I'm still down like 16 pounds and a waist size. And I'm a whole lot happier.
posted by Naberius at 5:36 PM on December 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I admire your desire to learn to cook.

That being said, it is very hard to argue with the economics of Chinese takeout. If you're living on your own it is the cheapest and easiest way to get a full filling meal, period. My recommendation, if you're concerned about the health effects, is to change what you're ordering. Choose steamed rice instead of fried, and the mixed vegetable or mixed vegetables with tofu dishes.

You will get a lot more mileage by choosing alternate cuisines to learn. It is easy to make Chinese food but hard to make it taste like the takeout version unless you have the right equipment and ingredients. For instance, I have never figured out how to get that "burned gasoline" flavor that is the central flavor to so much of Chinese stir fry. I'll probably waste an AskMe question on that at some point once I have access to a Wok again.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:29 PM on December 28, 2007

results don't seem very much like takeaway food
Hmm... how to put this? The Americanzed Chinese food takeout you get is like the McDonald's of Chinese cuisine. It's fast and tasty but that's because it's laden with fat and sodium. In the same way that McDonald's uses unhealthy tricks to boost the flavor and texture of their low-quality meat patties and fries, so too do Chinese takeout restaurants use unhealthy cooking techniques to make the food taste good.

That's not to say you can't replicate Chinese takeout but you can't expect it to taste exactly the same and still be low in fat/calories/sodium. If you want to improve your health and still enjoy Chinese takeout, then you just need to downsize your portions for each meal and eat it less frequently.

If you're still committed to learning how to cook Chinese food, I recommend About.com's Chinese Food section. It's not perfect but on the whole the recipes are comprehensive, produce tasty results, and fairly authentic. I prefer it to the free-for-all recipe collections like Recipezaar and Allrecipes which often have really bizarre Chinese recipes.

Deathalicious: Try the tips in this NPR piece on wok breath (wok hay). It's practically impossible to get the same level of wok hay without access to a big cast iron wok and a burner that shoots flames around your wok. But you can get some by maximizing cooking temperature to cook the food in minimum amount of time. That means cooking on the biggest surface area pan you've got with peanut oil (high smoke point) as hot as you can get it and all the ingredients all ready to go. Everything needs to sizzle as soon as it hits the pan, browned in seconds, and then kept in motion. The thin, round-bottomed wok allows frequent flipping and motion with one hand while the other is free to grab and dump in ingredients.
posted by junesix at 8:04 PM on December 28, 2007

Hochiak! Delicious Asian Food is a blog that has many recipes.
posted by catburger at 10:19 PM on December 28, 2007