Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with chinesefood

I'll have a number 42...

Rabulah — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:47:49 -0800

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?

What should I do about a screw in my food?

cerebus19 — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:56:18 -0800

I found a metal screw in my takeout Chinese food. What should I do? This is from a restaurant I really like--one of the only authentic Sichuan restaurants in the area. I've never had any problems with their food before, but I just found a screw in the leftovers from the takeout I got yesterday.

I found it by biting down on it, fortunately not hard enough to injure my teeth at all. I spat it out instantly, assuming it was a bone from the chicken used to make the dish, then discovered what it really was. I saved it, still covered in sauce, in a plastic bag, and threw out the rest of the food.

Should I bring it to the restaurant, perhaps with a friend of mine who speaks Mandarin, as the staff there doesn't speak English that well? Are there any authorities I should notify?

No soup for you (?)

CRM114 — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:16:37 -0800

On behalf of my girlfriend, who wanted the soup from my Chinese delivery lunch special but now is too full to eat it: Can you reheat egg drop soup? Any safety considerations? "Died of salmonella from bad egg drop soup" would be a lame obituary.

Good dim sum in London?

sueinnyc — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:14:58 -0800

Please recommend a great restaurant for dim sum in central London (UK). I am familiar with Gerrard Street but have never had dim sum in London. I would be interested in recommendations in that area, or anywhere else in central London.

I want to take my mother, so quality is more important to me than price.

I have searched old questions, but can't find one where people actually name London restaurants in the dim sum context.

Thanks!

Why do orange chicken vapors make me cough?

lostburner — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:34:44 -0800

This question is about chinese fast-food orange chicken (the deep-fried amorphous nuggets with a thick tangy glaze). When I take a deep smell from a hot bowl of this chicken, or hold it in my mouth and breathe around it, some sort of irritating vapor makes me cough (or stings my nose). Just one cough – enough to keep it from getting into my lungs. Once the chicken cools down (to mouth temperature, even) it doesn't happen. It reminds me of the reaction I've had sniffing acid in lab – could it be lots of volatile vinegar? I've experienced this with fast-food chicken in more than one college food court.

Can I make potstickers at home, or am I doomed to produce mere wontons?

nebulawindphone — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:20:00 -0800

I want to make potstickers (a.k.a. "fried dumplings"), those round, doughy, dense, well-stuffed meat dumplings you can buy at American Chinese restaurants. But the recipes that I find, they produce something I only recognize as a wonton soup dumpling — a light, triangular, thin-skinned noodle with only a small ball of meat. Help me, oh filter of filters! Problem 1: the noodles

The dumpling skins I bought at my local Chinese grocery... well, they might be very close to what you get in China, but I'm looking to re-create a comfort food from my American childhood, and for that they just aren't right. They're far too thin, for starters — like I said, much closer to what I'd call a "wonton." And the texture is wrong too — they're light, sticky and even a little slimy if overcooked, not thick and hearty like I was hoping. What should I be buying instead?

Problem 2: the filling

The filling recipes Google has turned up for me — most recently this one, after Wikipedia suggested that jiaozi might be the true name for what I sought — have produced a light-colored, light-textured, slightly dry filling, not the dark and moist one I was expecting.

Am I barking up the wrong tree entirely? Does "potsticker" not mean to other people what it means to me? Is there a Chinese name for these tasty treats that will enable me to buy the right noodles and Google the right recipes? (Hell, does anyone ever make these things at home? Or are they a purely food-service item?)

Stir Fry Advice

empath — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:15:26 -0800

Help me make a decent stir fry. I think I'm a fairly decent cook, but I'm a complete failure at Chinese food, and it seems like it should be dead simple. I've finally mastered cooking tofu (press, marinate, cook at very high heat until brown), but vegetables and sauce defeat me. Vegetables are always either soggy and limp or underdone and any sauce I make ends up being extremely thin and bland. I can make it edible if I coat it in soy sauce afterwards, but I'd prefer to do it right -- any advice?

I've found plenty of recipes for stir-fry online, but not a lot of articles about technique-- are there any really good, detailed articles about stir-frying out there?

Chopsticks!

saysthis — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 03:17:58 -0800

Give me some ideas about what can be done with those disposable chopsticks at Chinese restaurants once they've been used (I live in China, so there's lots of 'em). China, believe it or not, actually has a pretty effective recycling apparattus - since nobody recycles, there are people who dig through the trash at about 3 in the morning, pull out anything they can sell, and leave the rest for the garbage shovelers and street sweepers who come out at about 5-6 in the morning. The garbage shovelers then sort by hand what's left. Sure ain't pretty work, but it's effective, at least where I live.

Anyway, one type of garbage I almost never see pulled and recycled is the disposable bamboo chopsticks/kebab sticks (coal grills and food on sticks are a stable of the street food market). I remember reading once about a guy who collects them and makes furniture out of them, and I guess now that I'm managing to store away a little capital and thinking about starting my own business, I'm wondering if there's a way to recycle these locally and turn them into something resalable. Any ideas/ballpark costs? The more ape-able and small-scale this thing is, the better, because it would get rid of a major pet peeve to my tree-hugging conscience (and probably open up consulting opportunities in the future :D ).

Best restaurant in Montreal Chinatown?

ITheCosmos — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:39:21 -0800

What's the best/your favourite restaurant in Montreal's Chinatown?

Crispy duck for Christmas

Flitcraft — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:03:09 -0800

Does anyone know a Chinese restaurant or takeaway in London which opens on Christmas day? Extensive googling and ringing round last year failed to turn up any that did. We're non-cooks with very limited kitchen facilities (think microwave). Last year we ended up eating at a very fancy hotel when all we really wanted was a crispy duck with pancakes and hoi sin sauce. Please help us feed our tasty waterfowl habit.

Why do Chinese restaurants serve soup for two?

nebulawindphone — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 20:13:51 -0800

At most Chinese restaurants in the U.S., there are a few soups that only come in servings big enough for two people. Why do they do that? And why is it so common at Chinese restaurants and so rare other places?

Secret of the Lotus Seed Bun

picea — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 06:58:11 -0800

After having a delightful dim sum experience this past weekend, my wife and I are trying to figure out how to make what I believe is called a steamed lotus seed bun. I've just spent awhile on the Google, trying to find recipes, but haven't had any luck. It's a white bun with a sweet, eggy center. Online and printed recipes are both fine.

Question number 12040

cyrusdogstar — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 08:43:57 -0800

NYCFilter: This should be a simple question, where can I get fairly decent, cheap, fast Chinese food in Soho or Chinatown? Details and Midtown analogies inside.

Question number 11419

XQUZYPHYR — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 09:58:26 -0800

Take-out Chinese food: I love take-out sweet & sour chicken. For some reason, some places serve it just as the fried nuggets with a container of the red sauce on the side, and some places serve it as a big mishmosh of the chicken and veggies all in the sauce. Are there actual terms for this difference, and if so would I be able to order it the way I want at your generic take-out place?