Whats the best way for a Westerner to get comfortable with Chinese cooking?
I think for a beginner stir-frying is the easiest way to start. It’s a great technique for cooking vegetables because it preserves vitamins. And because vegetables taste so delicious stir-fried you naturally put more of them in your diet. Add a little meat protein as a condiment, and you’ve got a quick light meal. Is it a healthy way to cook? Definitely. It takes very little oil to stir-fry a whole pan full of food. And then there’s steaming, which is not only incredibly low in fat, but keeps food tender and succulent and intensifies its natural flavor. Western cooks seem to steam only vegetables, but Chinese cooking has the classic steamed fish with scallions and ginger, savory egg custards, steamed shellfish and of course dumplings. What about rice? Is it okay to use brown rice? Younger people definitely eat brown rice, but for the older generation it’s not even a possibility. To my parents’ generation, white rice is a status symbol, and brown rice is only eaten by poor people. I hap
