Basic Elements of Traditional Chinese Cooking

As a Chinese who loves cooking very much, I always take any chance available to introduce the advantageous elements of the traditional Chinese cooking. It involves not only techniques that provide nutrients to our body, but also culture that is unknown to many people who are living outside of China and do not have the opportunity to learn about it.

Naturalization

As vegetable-centered as it is, the traditional Chinese cooking tends to involve both vegetables and meat. This reflects the balance of yin and yang, which are believed to be the two sides of the nature.

It is upheld in Chinese cooking that color is very important for a dish. So many cooking techniques are created to reserve the fresh colors of vegetables, including stir-frying and steaming.

In addition to retaining colors, the combination and balance of colors can not be ignored, either. For example, you can seen many green vegetable dishes decorated with red chili peppers. White Chinese cabbage stir-fried with black wood ear mushrooms is another good example of color balance.

Timeliness

With proper cooking methods and techniques, you will never wait hours for a dish to be prepared. By timing the stir-frying processes that I go through on a daily basis, I have found out that stir-frying vegetables only takes minutes on average. Of course, it depends on the number of ingredients included and the cooking method.

Retention of Nutrients

Although the traditional Chinese cooking attaches great importance to the bright colors and crispness of dishes, nutrition is undoubtedly the most important part. It is advocated that the nutrients that are contained in the original vegetables and other ingredients should be effectively retained.

Traditional Chinese cooking is not rocket science, though.