114 Chinese Recipes You’ll Make Again and Again

China has one of the world’s most well-developed and sophisticated cuisines. It is the origin of many of the world’s cooking techniques, and traditional Chinese foods have spread throughout the world where they have been adopted by local populations. Nevertheless, many of us only know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this nation’s myriad cuisines. From stir-frys and noodles to dumplings and baked goods (and so much more in between), here’s just a sample of what Chinese and Chinese American food can look and taste like.

The chicken and broccoli you find at your favorite Chinese restaurant is usually covered in an intensely flavored brown sauce often based on oyster and soy sauces. This recipe showcases a milder but equally delicious Chinese white sauce that might be familiar to you from dishes like shrimp in lobster sauce. It’s clear and savory, thickened with a cornstarch slurry. This recipe also highlights the traditional Chinese technique of “velveting,” a marinating process that coats proteins to tenderize, lock in the juices and promote browning.

Singapore mei fun, a classic noodle dish in Chinese restaurants around the world, did not originate in Singapore – and many Singaporeans have not even heard of the dish that bears their country’s name. It was created in Hong Kong when it was a British colony and curry powder was readily available. Mixed with rice noodles and a variety of proteins and vegetables, it is the perfect seasoning for this satisfying stir-fry.

A classic, go-to appetizer. Ming Tsai’s soft, pliable pancakes come together in just 40 minutes – and are sure to please any crowd.

We created an air fryer version of egg rolls that’s crisp, savory and satisfying without all the oil of deep frying. We kept the filling classic with shredded cabbage, carrots, and strips of char siu, which you can buy from Chinese barbecue restaurants (you’ll likely see this red-tinged roast pork hanging on hooks in the window). Make a large batch and freeze extras so you can have this Chinese American takeout favorite as an appetizer any time.

This Chinese sausage fried rice is not only quick to prepare, but it showcases sweet, savory and meaty ingredients and demonstrates a couple of delicious fried-rice techniques that are a snap to learn. A simple soy-based sauce mixture gets caramelized around the perimeter of the hot wok, a step that helps give the ingredients deeper flavor. And leaving the rice to crisp on the bottom gives the dish a bit of wok hei (“breath of wok”) mimicking the high-heat browning restaurant fried rice is known for. Although the recipe calls for day-old jasmine rice you can make it with any white rice leftover from another meal — get in the habit of making more rice than you need, and you’ll have excellent reasons to put fried rice into your regular rotation as a go-to easy meal.

This classic Chinese vegetable dish of stir-fried snow pea tips is simple, but its popularity at restaurants and banquets and with home cooks alike is a testament to its deliciousness. Also known as snow pea leaves or sprouts and dòu miáo in Mandarin, the tips are made up of the leaves and part of the stalk of the snow pea plant; look for them at markets specializing in Asian ingredients or at farmers’ markets. With stir-frying — the classic cooking method — the leaves wilt and become silky like spinach and the hallow stalks turn crisp-tender. The flavor is earthy and slightly sweet, and the dish can be as easy as just adding a little oil, garlic and white pepper, although in this version, ginger, Shaoxing wine and fish sauce add a touch more complexity. The whole cooking process is very quick, and the tender vegetable can be on your table in about 15 minutes start to finish.

This is a recipe to get excited about! Char siu is a Chinese style of roasted pork that is enjoyed on its own but also appears in everything from steamed buns and baked pastries to stir fries and noodle soups. It's someting you should prepare a lot of and keep around in the freezer to use as needed.

Pillowy and sweet steamed bread is filled with mouthwatering char siu. Enjoy as a snack or for breakfast.

The crispy skin and juicy meat of restaurant-style Peking duck is easy to capture at home in this recipe that is made using duck breasts only — no whole duck required. Marinating the duck breasts in a mixture of hoisin sauce, oyster sauce and aromatics results in flavorful, tender meat. The dish’s signature crunchy skin is achieved by deeply scoring it, air-drying in the refrigerator and then starting the breasts skin-side down in a cold skillet, a method that effectively renders the fat during cooking for irresistible results. Gather the classic accompaniments of scallions, cucumber and hoisin and diners can assemble the duck in classic wrappers, or you can use steamed baos instead, a fun variation.

Bok choy comes into season in the spring and fall. There are a few different ways to cook it; the Food Network test kitchen tried all of them, and this simple 15-minute technique is our favorite. It involves quickly stir-frying the bok choy with garlic, ginger, a splash of Shaoxing wine and savory chicken bouillon. At Chinese restaurants, adult bok choy is typically blanched until just-tender or sliced thinly for stir fries, but we prefer to split heads of tender baby bok choy in half. Just be sure to rinse your bok choy thoroughly, as sand and grit can hide between the leaves.

A signature meat of Cantonese barbecue restaurants, siu yuk is a roast pork belly dish that features a wonderful contrast between crackling-crisp skin and tender, juicy meat. While this dish doesn’t require a lot of ingredients, it does involve some advance preparation and a few steps to achieve its crowning glory: skin that is perfectly crispy all the way through. We tested a lot of different methods that are popular for cooking the dish at home, but more often than not while the top of the skin would get crunchy, underneath it would remain chewy. We eventually settled on an easy combination of techniques for roasting the pork belly, including keeping the skin very dry and poking it full of tiny holes using a meat tenderizer with sharp needle-like blades. But the final step for getting a consistently beautiful layer of crispy, crumbly skin is finishing the pork skin-side down in a skillet. The result is beautifully burnished chunks of meat with an irresistible combination of flavor and textures.

This traditional kind of soup is more of a broth or tonic based not only on chicken but also on a variety of botanical ingredients broadly referred to as “herbs.” According to traditional Chinese medicine, each ingredient offers medicinal benefits, everything from boosting immunity to fighting inflammation to warding off common ailments like colds and flus. These beliefs are just one part of this philosophy of health and healing. But medicinal claims aside, each ingredient adds flavor and depth to this comforting, aromatic soup: Ginger provides warming flavor, ginseng and dried tangerine peel add lightly bitter notes, red dates and goji berries contribute different levels of sweetness and balance, and shiitake mushrooms provide umami. A luxurious black silkie chicken — a small chicken with distinctive black skin found at Asian butcher or grocery shops — adds deliciously concentrated chicken flavor, although you can also use a Cornish hen.

Soup dumplings, or xiao long bao, are a traditional style of steamed dumpling from Shanghai, a city known for its sophisticated delicacies that sometimes require years of training to make correctly. These dumplings are a kind of a culinary engineering marvel — liquid soup encased in a thin skin of wheat flour. However, the secret to these explosive dumplings is actually quite simple.

Wontons have a storied culinary history, tracing their origins back to the Qing dynasty in around 1600 and now popular throughout China, Hong Kong and beyond. Our version, known as laat ziu wan tan in Cantonese, are little gems of juicy pork and shrimp served with a sauce of spicy, flavorful chili oil. This recipe makes a generous batch of about 50 wontons; you can cook them up fresh and also freeze some for future meals if you like.

Known as ma la xiang guo in Mandarin, mala dry pot is a popular restaurant phenomenon in China that’s recently made its way to the United States and elsewhere. Colorful vegetables of different textures and proteins like lean beef and tofu are stir-fried and coated in a spicy umami-rich sauce. Ingredients like spicy bean paste, chili crisp and tongue-tingling Sichuan pepper typically give the dish its signature kick. We developed this recipe to streamline preparing dry pot at home and also chose ingredients that skew healthier than some versions. We chose in particular to add bok choy, tomatoes and shiitake mushrooms for big flavor while also paying homage to the dish’s inspiration from hot pot, minus the broth. In fact, this recipe is a perfect way to use up any leftover hot pot ingredients you might have on hand.

The simple Chinese American stir-fry of sliced chicken (gai pan in Cantonese) and mushrooms (mo gu in Cantonese) has been popular almost as long as there have been Chinese restaurants stateside. Versions of the dish vary, but most offer a supporting cast of veggies that often include snow peas, sugar snap peas, sliced carrots, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots to name a few. Our recipe puts an emphasis on a satisfying amount of vegetables and features a flavorful sauce that’s lighter than some but still gets extra depth and umami from oyster sauce. As with most restaurant versions of the dish, we use velveting, a process that briefly marinates chicken strips in cornstarch to preserve their juices during stir-frying. The result is chicken that stays moist and irresistibly tender even as the high heat deliciously browns the outside.

The comforting meal of clay pot rice known as bo zai fan in Cantonese is popular in many parts of China, particularly in Hong Kong where this version takes its inspiration. A layer of crispy rice on the bottom of the pot, known as fan jiao, is a hallmark of the dish and a delicious counterpart to the fluffy, flavored rice above. Various proteins and toppings for bo zai fan abound, including ingredients like Chinese bacon, dried salted fish, morsels of marinated chicken and various vegetables, but Chinese sausage is a favored one in Hong Kong so we’ve called for it here.

Andy Liang’s vegetarian-friendly recipe (Ke Zi Dau Fu Bou) is based on braised eggplant dishes you might know from Cantonese restaurants. They often feature pork or chicken, but here we’ve used tofu and shiitake mushrooms to give it hearty flavor while keeping it meatless. A clay pot is excellent for braising since it traps steam, giving the eggplant a custard-like texture and bathing it in flavorful sauce.

A quintessential Hong Kong dish, macaroni soup is often eaten for breakfast in the city’s iconic cha chaan tengs, diner-like restaurants that serve uniquely local takes on Western food. This comforting soup is fast and easy to put together and can be dressed up or down based on whatever you have on hand. You can omit the egg, add other vegetables such as carrots and corn, substitute the ham with browned luncheon meat and even stir in a little evaporated milk or cream of chicken soup for richness.

This Chinese chicken corn soup includes bites of tender chicken breast, ribbons of egg and a creamy broth of puréed corn. Sometimes called creamy corn soup, it’s a restaurant favorite that’s similar to egg drop soup and is quick and easy to make at home. Many versions use canned cream-style corn, but we preferred the brighter corn flavor of kernels. This recipe uses canned whole kernels, convenient for making the soup when sweet corn isn’t in season, but you can use fresh corn on the cob as well; just use the kernels from two ears instead.

Tomato and egg with rice is a classic Chinese comfort food. Its simplicity makes this dish a common yet satisfying weeknight meal. With the exception of fresh tomatoes, all the ingredients are staples in a Chinese household.

Congee is a very popular Chinese rice porridge commonly eaten for breakfast or when someone is feeling under the weather. The base recipe is pretty simple, making it the perfect foil for a myriad of seasonings and toppings. Century eggs are hard-cooked chicken eggs that have been cured and aged (but not for a century). The process makes the yolks creamy and gives the whites a jelly-like texture that melts in your mouth. It is a favorite topping for congee.

This version of congee (rice porridge) known as tang jai jook translates as “little boat porridge,” a reference to its origin as a dish Cantonese fishermen would sell incorporating some of their day’s catch.

This is a popular street food in China consisting of skewers of fruit dipped in a crackly hard candy. Typically, tart fruits are chosen to contrast the sweetness of the candy coating. However, you can experiment with any fruit you want.

Lotus root is prized for its characteristic texture, which is similar to water chestnuts. Even after stir-frying, deep frying, boiling, braising or steaming, it remains crisp and tender. This traditional dish is made during Chinese New Year – in Cantonese, lotus root (“leen ngau”) is directly translated to “year have,” meaning you should have another year to come – and is a beautiful harmony of crunchy coating, crisp lotus root and savory (and juicy) pork filling.

Salt and pepper anything (shrimp, squid or tofu) is a favorite stir-fry and offered in most Chinese restaurants. The combination of the wok hey (breath of the wok) and the savory flavors from garlic, chile pepper, spices and particularly the famous salt-pepper mixture is wonderfully satisfying. The tofu version, known as ziu jim dau fu in Cantonese, showcases this vegetarian protein at its best: golden and crispy on the outside, lush and pillowy-soft on the inside.

This is a variation on smashed cucumber salad, which is very popular throughout China. This version uses gochugaru, which are bright red chili flakes from Korea that give this dish a beautifully vibrant color. The Chinese black vinegar is a must in this dish and an ingredient you will fall in love with if you haven't already.

This is a classic cold dish from Shanghai that involves soaking poached chicken in a rice wine called Shaoxing. This spirit is often replaced with sherry in the U.S., but as it's the main seasoning in this dish, it's best to try and source Shaoxing. The good thing is that it is affordable and available at almost every Asian grocer and even online.

Recipe developer Vivian Chan says, “Growing up I always saw honey walnut shrimp at Chinese wedding banquets but was never able to eat them due to my nut allergy. Luckily I outgrew the allergy in my early 20s and, consumed with curiosity for this iconic dish, it’s one of the first recipes I wanted my mom to share with me. It’s considered a special-occasion dish because of the technique and the size of the prawns used. And although the ingredients may seem simple, each component of the dish has a secret. For the walnuts, blanching them before frying is a classic technique Chinese restaurants use; it makes the nut’s interior feel light and tender as a contrast to the crunchy candied exterior. For the sauce, the secret is the sweet-tart flavor of pineapple juice; without it the sauce could feel heavy from the mayonnaise and sweetened condensed milk. Last but not least, butterflying the shrimp makes them appear larger, giving the dish the impressive look it’s known for at Chinese banquets, and coating them in cornstarch creates a light and crisp exterior. I’ve made this dish numerous times for my family. My mom is glad that she no longer needs to wait for a wedding to enjoy it!”

Sweet and Sour actually has roots from Western China and isn’t only a Chinese American classic. The pineapples were added here, but the spirit of sour and sweet is a classic Asian combination.

These rich and juicy pork ribs are falling-off-the-bone tender after slowly braising in a mixture of soy sauce, star anise, cinnamon and rock sugar. The dish originated in the town of Wuxi (pronounced woo-shee) located outside Shanghai. It’s a popular dish in Shanghai-style restaurants but quite easy to make at home with just a bit more than an hour of braising time needed for irresistible results. The ribs with their thick, sweet-salty sauce pair well with a bowl of rice and a vegetable side. Wuxi spareribs are traditionally sweetened with rock sugar, but brown sugar is a good substitute if you can’t find it.

Dumplings with a crispy skirt are essentially pan-fried dumplings with a thin and crisp outer layer (the “skirt”) for an added texture. They’re popular at izakayas throughout Japan, where they’re called hanetsuki gyoza (“gyoza with wings”) and at Chinese dumpling shops, where they’re sometimes called binghua jianjiao (“ice-flower fried dumplings”).

Hot pot is a tasty, festive and communal cooking and dining experience that involves little more than a table set with a portable butane stove, a pot of bubbling broth and platters of raw meat and/or seafood and vegetables. Various condiments and a dipping sauce or two are common, as well. In the spirit of hot pot, a winter staple in various Asian countries, our recipe is flexible. Feel free to sub out any of the components according to your taste.

This is a simple and flavorful side dish that’s very popular in Cantonese cuisine and easy to make. Chinese broccoli, known as gai lan in Cantonese, is a type of cabbage prized for its crisp, crunchy stems, tender leaves and an earthy flavor similar to traditional broccoli. In this favored preparation it’s blanched and then dressed with just a bit of garlic and oyster sauce to highlight its light flavor. Although Chinese broccoli is a cool weather crop you can find it in Asian supermarkets year-round.

These are a perennial favorite at Cantonese bakeries and are a Southern Chinese adaptation of pasteis de nata, a Portuguese egg custard tart. These tarts were introduced to Hong Kong and Macau by Portuguese traders and colonists. The recipe was adapted to suit local tastes, and the Chinese version is lighter and not as sweet as the original Portuguese confection.

Sweet red bean soup is a dessert fixture at Chinese banquets and during the Lunar New Year, when many households also enjoy it as a light snack. It may owe part of its popularity to the fact that in Chinese culture red beans are said to provide strength because of their color (red symbolizes power) and the amount of protein they contain.

This soup is based on a common Chinese dessert soup, taro sago, which features delightful little tapioca pearls suspended in a creamy blend of coconut milk and taro (and sometimes sweet potato). Young Sun Huh’s version omits the taro but includes two kinds of sweet potatoes — orange and vibrant purple — for a taste and color contrast.

When you think of snacks, you might not think of toast. But in Hong Kong, you can find condensed milk toast with peanut butter on any cha chaan tang (café) menu – and it's served all day. Warm sweet and savory fried bread with an oozy and creamy filling is a delicious way to satisfy any craving, day or night.

Nian Gao is a lightly sweetened sticky rice cake that is beloved for its chewy and bouncy texture. It is a popular gift during the Lunar New Year because nian gao means “higher year” and so symbolizes prosperity and promotions for the coming year. It’s also great for breakfast, alongside a cup of hot tea. The simplest version of the cake is made with brown sugar, water and glutinous rice flour, but you can find many variations.

This vegan soup offers a beautiful balance of flavors with earthy lotus root, sweet carrots and jujubes dates, warming ginger and savory mushrooms and peanuts. Soups like this one are a staple on many Chinese family’s dinner tables not only because they’re light and delicious but also because their ingredients are believed to have healing properties. According to traditional Chinese medicine, a soup’s botanical ingredients, broadly known as “herbs,” are thought to help with everything from calming inflammation to improving vision to boosting energy. Regardless of health claims, it’s certain that each plays a role in making this soup comforting and refreshing, with eye-catching wedges of lotus root as the star. Although most recipes for lotus soup contain pork ribs we made this one vegan, using shiitake mushrooms to give the broth depth of flavor instead. Many of the ingredients require soaking, so be sure to start the process either the night before or in the morning so that you can have this nourishing hot soup ready by dinner.

This recipe from Molly Yeh is her take on traditional Chinese braised pork. It's a simplified recipe that does away with some of the harder-to-find spices in favor of a pared-down ingredients list. The recipe also calls for sherry, which has long been an American substituion for Chinese rice wine and gives similar results. If you can find liaojiu — sometimes referred to as Shaoxing cooking wine — definitely use it in place of the sherry.

This is a variation on Tepong pork. If you have access to traditional Chinese ingredients, this recipe more closely recreates what you will find in Shanghai, where locals prefer this dish on the sweeter side.

While there is a traditional Cantonese orange flavored meat dish, the orange chicken we love in the West is an all-American invention. By many accounts, it was invented by Panda Express in Hawaii and has since become a mainstay on most Chinese American takeout menus. Jet Tila shares how to make a full orange chicken meal from the sauce down to the bed of fried rice.

This refreshing, flavorful Chinese side salad is made with a combination of crunchy vegetables and chewy pressed tofu noodles, all tossed in a vinegary, garlicky, spicy dressing. Known as liángbàn doufu si or liángbàn gāndòufusī in Mandarin, it’s particularly popular in warm weather and often sold as a prepared food or salad-bar offering in Beijing and throughout China.

Traditionally consumed by Buddhist monks, Buddha’s delight (Lo Han Jai) is now popular around the world as a healthy vegetarian Chinese restaurant option. In Andy Liang’s version, he chose vegetables with texture and flavor in mind, resulting in a pleasant combination of crunchy, tender and crisp elements.

Mapo Tofu is an almost world-famous dish from the Sichuan province in China, where people love bold, spicy flavors. There are many international versions of this dish, including a milder Japanese version. The dish traditionally consists of soft tofu cubes swimming in a spicy sauce flavored with a small amount of meat and toban djan, spicy fermented broad bean paste.

Though this dish is traditionally made with ground pork, the real stars are the spicy bean paste, soft tofu and, of course, Sichuan peppercorns, which have a citrus flavor and a signature numbing effect. So switching out the meat for mushrooms is easy and delicious. Andy Liang’s version (which also happens to be vegan), calls for dried shiitakes so you can use the mushroom soaking liquid as stock.

Chow fan, or fried rice, is a dish that originated in Guandong (formerly known as Canton) that made use of day-old white rice. It became wildly popular almost everywhere Cantonese immigrants migrated to, and there are versions of this dish everywhere from Thailand and Pakistan to Nigeria and Peru.

Lo Mein is a stir-fried noodle dish that has become a staple on Chinese American restaurant menus. This recipe is Jet Tila's adaptation of the American takeout favorite.

Tea eggs, known as caa jip daan in Cantonese, are a popular Hong Kong and Chinese street food found warming in a cauldron of soy sauce and tea for a quick breakfast or on-the-go snack. The eggs get their recognizable marbled look and deep flavor from a long steep in a mixture of soy sauce and black Chinese tea flavored with spices. Making a big batch at home to last the week is pretty easy.

Tangyuan, or chewy rice balls, are traditionally eaten as a dessert during the family reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve (though they’re great any time of year). Each bowl of tangyuan symbolizes unity; and the smoothness of each ball represents how smooth the family’s year will be. The rice balls have a soft and slightly bouncy texture and a sweet surprise in the center.

Served during weddings, Lunar New Year and other celebrations, the Chinese dessert known as “eight treasure rice” is made with eight different fruits, nuts and seeds. It’s said to be auspicious because the pronunciation of “eight” in Chinese is close to the pronunciation of the Chinese word for luck or fortune.

These cookies are popular during the Chinese New Year festivities since they remind people of ancient Chinese coins and can invite wealth to visit a home in the coming year. However, they are popular year-round in many Chinese bakeries. The traditional recipe calls for lard, but this recipe uses butter instead.

Fa Gao, or fortune cake, is a popular Chinese dessert typically eaten during the Lunar New Year to bring luck and money in the coming months. The chewy and lightly sweetened steamed cakes were traditionally leavened with yeast, which helps create the signature cracked flower-like design on top. However, nowadays bakeries often substitute double-acting baking powder; it yields the same effect in far less time.

Using a rice cooker is the key to getting the famously deep, savory flavor of Hainanese chicken without having to poach a whole bird. This delicious chicken-and-rice dish is named for Hainan, China’s southernmost province, but is popular throughout Asia and especially in Singapore, where it’s considered the national dish. We've streamlined it to make it perfect for weeknight meals. Skinless, boneless thighs are seared along with aromatics and jasmine rice, then everything is transferred to a rice cooker to cook together, infusing every bite with flavor. While the rice cooks, make the dish’s signature scallion-ginger sauce and seasoned soy sauce to spoon over the finished dish. A garnish of refreshing cucumber slices completes the meal.

Pro-tip: tianjin preserved vegetable is a salted cabbage. It adds a delicious tang and umami to Jet Tila’s recipe. Leave it out if you can’t find it. But it’s available online and in many Asian stores.

This is Mei Lin’s chili oil recipe – a super easy condiment that you can literally add to any meal for an extra boost of flavor. It’s something she loves to make and have on hand in her fridge.

Scallion-ginger sauce is usually served alongside soy sauce chicken, bai qie ji (white cut chicken) and roasted meats with rice (commonly called rice boxes) in restaurants in Chinatowns around the country. There are many methods for making it, from a no-cook version (which results in a very green sauce with a sharp scallion and ginger flavor) to a browned version (which results in a beautiful flavor but less bright color). Our combination method produces a happy medium.

Throughout much of the world, chicken is a luxurious delicacy that's prepared in ways that bring out its flavor and succulence. A perfect example of this is bai qie ji, which is a simple poached chicken with a scallion and ginger dipping sauce. Because this dish is supposed to highlight the flavor of the chicken, it's best to splurge on a high-quality heirloom variety. If you live close to a Chinese enclave, seek out a live poultry vendor so that you can get the freshest chicken possible. They will typically dispatch and clean it for you if you ask.

This delicious braised chicken is a traditional Cantonese dish and a standard at Chinese barbecue restaurants, typically hung in a window display along with other sui mei meats. See yao means soy sauce, and gai means chicken. Braising the bird in soy sauce creates its famously rich brown color. Its arresting appearance coupled with flavorful, juicy meat makes it extremely popular, especially for celebrations.

This is a favorite appetizer from the coastal city of Ningbo. The traditional recipe calls for a type of seaweed that is nearly impossible to find in stores outside of China. However, you may be lucky enough to find it wild on the beach if you know what you're looking for. If you can't find it, this recipe calls for a simple cheat that many Chinese restaurants in the U.K. use.

Chinese milk bread has a soft, fluffy interior and sweet, golden-brown top. One bite and the tender crumb melts in your mouth. Chinese milk bread is very similar to Japanese milk bread (called shokupan) in that a mixture of flour and water is heated then cooled before adding to the dough. This tangzhong method used here has a higher ratio of water to flour, which helps the bread retain more moisture and remain softer for longer. You can bake the dough in a loaf pan to slice for sandwiches or toast. Here, we shape the dough into individual buns. They can be enjoyed on their own, with butter and jam, or used as slider buns.

Hong Kong-style egg sandwiches, served in cha chaan tengs or “tea restaurants,” consist of extra fluffy scrambled eggs on milk bread. The milk bread adds subtle sweetness and incredible softness, and the cornstarch slurry in the egg mixture helps keep them extra creamy.

These custardy, absurdly supple steamed eggs are easy to make. But we added a couple of extra steps to make them absolutely foolproof: First, cover the eggs with foil to guarantee that you won't get large pools of water in your ramekins; second, allow the eggs to gently finish cooking in the steamer after the initial cooking time to ensure perfectly just-set eggs every time.

This recipe is for a popular Chinese New Year dish and uses a generous amount of daikon radish (the "turnip"). Daikon tends to have a mild flavor, so this recipe includes some deeply umami ingredients like dried scallops, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese bacon, dried shrimp and Chinese sausage.

Mei Lin says, “Fried mochi dumplings are my absolute favorite dim sum/brunch item growing up and going out to eat with my parentals. When the cart came around and I saw those football-shaped dumplings I knew I had to have them, so I made sure to ask my parents to grab them when they came out fresh from the kitchen.”

This is a favorite Southern Chinese dish made with wide, thick rice noodles. The noodles are tossed in a searing hot wok along with beef and veggies to make a smoky, charred noodle dish. The right noodles may not always be easy to find, which is why this recipe includes instructions for how to make your own rice noodles from scratch!

Steamed whole fish is one of the hallmarks of Chinese cooking. While it may seem like a simple and light way of preparing fish, the technique has been perfected over centuries and brings out the best flavors of the fish. That being said, it's important to use the freshest fish you can find.

This preparation of steamed fish is a classic dish cooked at home for family gatherings, special occasions and Lunar New Year. It is often included as one of the courses at any Chinese banquet, regardless of the occasion. This dish symbolizes good fortune and abundance, as the Chinese word for “fish” sounds very similar to the Chinese word for “abundance.”

Whole fish is a traditional part of Lunar New Year dinner tables, symbolizing abundance of food, wealth and luck for the new year. But this recipe can also be part of any special-occasion meal with its stunning presentation: a crispy whole fish topped with a tangle of greens — a mix of sliced scallions and fresh cilantro — bloomed upon serving with a scoop of the hot fry oil. Make sure to serve this with plenty of rice for soaking up the delicious sauce. The mixture of rice flour and cornstarch helps achieve a crispy, crackling crunch.

This showstopping dish is a classic at Chinese banquets for weddings and other big celebrations. It’s also popular at higher-end Chinese restaurants. Although “bird’s nest” is in the title, there are no actual birds involved in any way in this Cantonese dish known as hoi sin zoek caau. The basis is a “nest” (zoek caau) made of taro strips that are molded and then deep-fried to form a basket that holds a seafood-and-vegetable stir-fry.

Abalone and mushrooms, representing gold ingots and coins respectively, are natural additions to a Lunar New Year table and thought to bring wealth and good fortune or prosperity to the family. Andy Liang follows the tradition of braising them in oyster sauce to make a savory gravy that coats every inch of the ingredients. The beautiful ring of vibrant green bok choy provides both a visual and flavor contrast to the finished dish, but blanched yu choy, napa cabbage or even iceberg lettuce can be substituted.

Mooncakes are a necessity during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is the traditional Chinese harvest festival. These exquisite cakes fit into the palm of your hand and feature a rich dough encasing various fillings. This recipe teaches you how to make a classic lotus seed paste moon cake.

These jelly mooncakes are lightly sweet and refreshing, a jewel-like addition to a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner table — or just a lovely snack or dessert on their own. The combination of honey-sweet longan fruit (similar to lychees), dried osmanthus flowers steeped into a tea and red goji berries is a popular one that’s often served as a jellied dim sum offering. In this version, it’s molded in festive mooncake molds and set with just enough agar agar and konnyaku powders (both plant-based gelatin substitutes) to form shimmering cakes with a wonderful bouncy texture. Mooncakes are an important part of the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated in China and throughout Asia, so much so that it’s sometimes referred to as the Mooncake Festival. Although the cakes are traditionally made with pastry baked around rich fillings, jelly versions have become popular with home cooks as an easier and lighter alternative. They’re also a fun way to use decorative mooncake molds any time of the year, and since they’re not set with gelatin, they’ll even be vegan if you seek out sugar that’s labeled vegan.

Snow skin mooncakes (Bing Pei Jyut Beng) are a soft and chewy mochi-like treat stuffed with a variety of dense, sweet fillings. Sharing mooncakes is an important part of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although the cakes traditionally use a wheat flour pastry, cakes with a rice flour dough that’s steamed, not baked, began appearing in Hong Kong in the 1960s and are now popular in China and elsewhere. If you’d like to make mooncakes at home this is an especially easy version to try.

Kung Pao originated from Southwest China and is popular in the states. The classic version has peanuts, but Jet Tila likes substituting cashews for their crunch and flavor. A pinch of ground Szechuan peppercorn powder is traditional. Add it if you have it, but you’ll be fine without it. Also, you can substitute any meat, seafood or tofu for the shrimp.

This noodle dish makes for a filling and pretty complete meal. The key is to use Shanghai-style noodles, which are thick and bouncy. If those are difficult to find, Japanese-style udon noodles are a great substitution. While the dish calls for pork, it's not central to the flavor, so vegetarians can omit it if they wish.

Steamed black bean spareribs (si zap zing pai gwat in Cantonese) are popular at dim sum restaurants but they can be a great go-to dinner at home. With just a little marinating and simple steaming you have a tasty dish that is easy to round out with rice or noodles and blanched or stir-fried vegetables. (You can prepare them while the ribs cook.)

Eggplant is a popular vegetable in many parts of China, as well as throughout the Diaspora. However, the eggplants used in Chinese cuisine are different from what you may find at a Western market. They are long and slender with lilac-colored skins and the creamiest, softest, most velvety flesh you can imagine. The combination of fried eggplants and a spicy, aromatic pork sauce will make this dish part of your weekly rotation.

Crispy pan-fried noodles originated in the Shanghai and Suzhou region of China. As Shanghainese people migrated to Hong Kong, the dish came with them and became very popular there. It’s known by a number of names, including "Hong Kong–style noodle" and "pan-fried noodles" in English; in Cantonese, it’s often called "gong sik chow mein," and also the traditional "liang mein huang" (literally "two face golden," describing the two golden sides of the noodle nest). This recipe is the restaurant-style version with crunchy deep-fried noodles surrounding sautéed chicken and vegetables covered in brown gravy.

In this version of chow mein, you’ll get a crispy-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside noodle cake, smothered with a rich savory chicken and bok choy gravy.

Looking for something cooling on a hot, humid day? Across East Asia there’s just about nothing more popular for taking the edge off the heat than a red bean pop. Known as hung dau syut tiu in Cantonese, this creamy, lightly sweetened frozen treat takes advantage of the nutty flavor of red beans for a unique refresher on a stick.

Grass jelly drinks like this one are popular in Hong Kong–style cafés, where they might also be referred to as leung fan bing (literally “grass jelly ice” in Cantonese). Grass jelly (leung fan or liang fen) is made from a Chinese plant closely related to mint. With a distinct herbal flavor and slight bitterness, it’s typically paired with sweet ingredients, particularly sugar syrups or fruits. This version mixes cubes of it with a brown sugar syrup, soymilk and ice for a refreshing and slightly creamy drink that mimics boba milk teas.

Grass jelly dessert is a harmony of rich coconut, bright fruit, chewy tapioca pearls, taro balls or mochi and ice cream of your choice. Asian dessert shops in Chinatown usually sell this dish as a set combination, but there are rare shops that sell a mix-and-match version where you can create your own based on your preferences. Our coconut milk mixture is similar to the ones from the dessert shops, with a balanced flavor that goes with any topping, but feel free to make it more or less sweet by adjusting the amount of sweetened condensed milk.

Chinese candied sweet potatoes are a popular restaurant dessert consisting of tender, fluffy fried sweet potatoes coated in golden brown caramel. As it cools, the caramel becomes a crunchy shell that shatters when you bite into it, creating a wonderful contrast of textures. Some restaurants put the just-coated potatoes into a bowl of ice water tableside to quickly set the sugar; feel free to do the same at home. If you don’t, serve the dish as quickly as possible because as it cools, the caramel will stick to the plate. We used orange sweet potatoes, but any type is fine.

Smashed cucumber salad (or pai huang gua) is a staple side dish in many Chinese restaurants and usually consists of cucumbers tossed with black vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and sesame seeds (or oil). In other variations, chiles and sometimes Sichuan peppercorn are added. We started with the technique of smashing the cucumbers, which creates jagged edges and more surface area for the dressing to get absorbed, and salting them, which softens the skin, firms up the flesh and releases some water to concentrate the flavor, then added a twist. This version combines the freshness of sweet watermelon and an abundance of herbs with a little heat from chiles and ginger. It's a bright summer salad that hits all the flavor receptors.

Bean sprouts are a favorite ingredient throughout East Asia, including China. Like the name implies, these crunchy little guys are the sprouts of either mung beans (the more common variety) or soy beans. If you don't eat them when they're sprouts, they'll continue to grow into full-fledged bean plants. This is a great side dish or topping for rice and can me modified to suit your tastes.

The condiment sū méi jiang is typically made with plums, vinegar, sugar and some spices. Our version of plum sauce has the perfect balance of sweetness, brightness and light spice. It’s traditionally used as a dipping sauce for fried foods like spring rolls, egg rolls and fried wontons, and for basting duck, chicken and pork. But there’s no need to stop there. Try it tossed with noodles or a stir-fry, or mixed into a salad dressing for a twist.

Tofu pudding (also known as dou fu hua), has a light, fresh taste and incredibly soft texture – softer than silken tofu. It can be a great canvas for any flavor, from savory bright pickles to spicy chili oil with soy sauce, but the dish is typically found in dim sum restaurants as a dessert option, usually in a large metal pot within a large wooden basket on its own cart. The server will always ask "with syrup?" which means a sweet ginger syrup that pairs well with the pudding.

This popular dim sum dish – stir-fried sticky rice with Chinese sausage (or lo mai fan in Cantonese) – is packed with sweet Chinese sausage (lap cheong), shiitake mushrooms and dried shrimp, a savory seasoning sauce and fresh herbs to brighten the dish. Roasted peanuts aren’t the most traditional, but they provide pops of crunch and nutty flavor. The lap cheong is typically cut into small dice or even finer for this dish, but we like the prominent sausage flavor when it's cut into thin half-moons. Feel free to chop it smaller or larger if you’d like.

Pepper steak is a Chinese American stir-fry dish that coats tender sliced steak and crisp-tender bell peppers in a deeply savory and slightly sweet sauce. We used flank steak here, but it is equally delicious with skirt or flap steak. No matter the cut, make sure to slice it thinly across the grain to ensure the meat is tender in the final dish. We tested bell peppers cut into a variety of sizes and found that one-inch pieces worked best, yielding peppers cooked to the perfect doneness (not too snappy but not at all mushy).

As an early morning accompaniment to hot milk tea or the end to a flavorful dim sum brunch, steamed custard bao is the perfect combination of warm pillowy dough and lightly sweet creamy filling. It's a pairing that fills the soul. The Chinese name, nai wong bao, translates to milk yellow bun. The milk refers to the milk-enriched dough, the yellow to the bright filling and the bun is just another word for bao. Custard powder isn't a traditional ingredient in the buns, but it's an easy way to boost the creamy flavor and yellow color of the filling.

Recipe developer Vivian Chan shares, “After a long day of running errands in Chinatown with my parents, they would treat my siblings and me to a clay pot of black bean spareribs with rice. The rice soaked in all the flavors of the delicious spareribs; my favorite part was always the crispy rice that formed on the bottom of the clay pot, almost like the socarrat on paella. Once the small but extremely hot clay pot arrived at the table, my dad would drizzle in the sweet soy sauce and a sizzling sound would tell us it was time to dig in. This recipe gives the same flavors, sizzle and warmth of that dish from years ago, but is scaled for a large donabe, so it can be enjoyed as a family.”

No dim sum table is complete without siu mai – open-faced dumplings with a thin wonton wrapper and savory "bouncy" filling – and every restaurant’s recipe is slightly different. We’ve created a pork and shrimp version for a delicious "surf and turf" combo. The baking soda marinade for the pork and shrimp helps develop the optimal texture of the filling, as does the process of tossing the filling against the bottom of the bowl. Hand-chopping the pork belly also adds to the unique texture, but ground pork could be substituted in a pinch.

Har gow – or crystal shrimp dumplings – are a staple on any dim sum restaurant table. Known for their slightly chewy translucent skins, bright orange shrimp filling and many small pleats, they are the hallmark of a great dim sum chef: the more pleats and the more translucent the skins, the more skilled the chef. Using a baking soda soak helps improve the texture of the shrimp, making it more "snappy," while slowly adding boiling water to the wheat starch helps create the signature translucent skins.

Inspired by an appetizer served at Potluck Club in Manhattan, this recipes showcases jellyfish, which has a pleasant texture similar to squid – tender with a satisfying bounce and chew. We call for instant jellyfish here, allowing you to skip the lengthy soaking and boiling process; after just a 10-minute salting, it's ready to use. The bright, slightly acidic and savory flavors of the sauce pair well with Chinese celery, resulting in a refreshing salad. You can use regular celery here as well, but be sure to peel the first layer of stringy strands.

With its pleasantly chewy texture, jellyfish is a blank canvas ready to soak up whatever flavor one chooses. We opted for a savory-sweet soy vinaigrette for this easy dish that was inspired by the lavish platters of sesame seed-topped jellyfish served on beds of pickled daikon, cold cuts and other sliced meat served in Chinese banquet halls during weddings and celebrations. This recipe focuses on the jellyfish and pickle elements. But feel free to dress it up with your favorite cold cuts, such as sliced roast beef or ham, pickled onions, and even white wine chicken feet for the adventurous.

Hong Kong-style mango pudding is an often underrated dessert on dim sum carts and menus, but it deserves to be as coveted as flaky egg tarts. This mango pudding has a silky-smooth texture and relies heavily on ripe mangos for a natural sweetness and bright flavor. A drizzle of sweetened condensed milk and a few cubes of fresh mangoes on top make this a perfect sweet treat for a warm, sunny day or ending to a dim sum feast.

A refreshing treat after a nice meal, mango pomelo sago may have been invented in Hong Kong but is popular in many Southeast Asian countries. The dessert is traditionally made from sago, an edible starch made from the pith of various tropical palm trees, but you can also use tapioca pearls.

This hearty tender pork belly in a rich, savory sauce is made entirely in a rice cooker with flavors inspired by the Chinese classic, steamed pork belly with preserved mustard greens (mui choy kau yuk in Cantonese; mei cai kou rou in Mandarin). This celebratory dish is often served on special occasions, like Chinese New Year, with rice on the side. Here, we’ve streamlined the process, cooking the pork and mui choy (preserved mustard greens) all together with jasmine rice.

XO sauce originated in Hong Kong in the 1980s and is usually credited to Spring Moon restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel. Although the sauce was named after the “XO” (extra old) designation for expensive, aged Cognacs, it doesn’t contain any of its namesake alcohol. The “XO” reflects the luxurious nature of this umami-rich sauce, made with top-quality and expensive ingredients, such as dried scallops, dried shrimp and premium Jinhua ham. Serve it on fried rice, stir-fried noodles, sauteed vegetables, seafood, chicken, even plain rice — any time you want to add some depth and complexity to a dish.

Rice cakes can be served sweet or savory. Here, Jon Yao’s recipe, with luxurious XO sauce, is a dish worthy of any celebration.

Pineapple buns (or bo lo bao in Cantonese) are a Chinese bakery classic. They can vary in terms of the sweetness of the cookie topping as well as by the shape, size and softness of the bun. This version has a soft and fluffy bun inspired by Chinese milk bread, crowned with a sweet cookie dough that melds onto the top during baking. Despite the name, no pineapple is actually used in the recipe. It refers to the crosshatch pattern in the topping that evokes the exterior of the fruit.

With a crispy, fried exterior, soft, chewy dough and sweet filling, the fried sesame balls called zin deoi in Cantonese (also spelled "jin deui" and "zeen doy") are a staple in dim sum restaurants and some Chinese bakeries. The mochi-like dough gets its texture from glutinous rice flour, while adding wheat starch makes it easier to work with and prevents the dough balls from breaking as they expand. You can find fried sesame balls filled with red bean paste, which is traditional, or with peanut butter or chocolate hazelnut spread, which are less so. We filled ours with a traditional lotus paste, made from dried lotus seeds that are soaked and sweetened. The lotus paste has a subtle chestnut and almond flavor that pairs especially well with the coating of nutty sesame seeds on the fried dough.

With just a few fresh vegetables, lots of pantry condiments and only one chicken breast, this recipe serves four. If you have any leftovers or are meal planning, the velveting technique ensures that the chicken will remain succulent even when reheated.

Congee is a porridge that's essentially just made of extremely saturated rice — it’s the ultimate form of comfort. It’s often served with Chinese crullers, which aren’t too sweet. Molly Yeh loves the texture that they add.

Steamed shrimp rice rolls are a staple at any dim sum restaurant. The homemade versions are even more delicious — just minutes out of the wok, the noodles melt in your mouth. Making them takes a little practice. The rice roll itself needs to be thin enough so you can see the just cooked pink shrimp peering out through the translucent “blanket,” yet it must be sturdy enough to wrap the seafood without any tears or cracks.

Steamed beef rice rolls are another highlight of dim sum. The trickiest part of the dish is perfecting the beef mixture. It has to be thin enough to steam within the same time frame as the rice noodle, yet there has to be enough of it to fill the whole piece. This recipe helps you achieve both.

This combination of thin chewy rice noodles wrapped around crunchy fried dough with a drizzle of sweet soy sauce is irresistible.

Recipe developer Vivan Chan says, “For as long as I can remember, my family always ate joong, as they’re called in Cantonese (or zongzi in Mandarin), around Dragon Boat Festival. But I only learned how to make them as an adult when I asked my mother-in-law about the process. Her family recipe originated in her village of Toishan in Guangdong Province, China. I was shocked but also intrigued by the level of dedication required for this humble dish of stuffed glutinous rice cooked in bamboo leaves. There were weeks of coordinating among a group of ten aunties to decide when and where to hand-stuff and tie 150 to 200 of the bundles (a two-day process). They would then find the largest stockpots in the neighborhood to boil the joong for about eight hours per batch over the course of another two days. The enormous effort resulted in enough food to share among friends and family while commemorating the holiday. This adaptation of my mother-in-law's recipe uses much smaller quantities and employs an Instant Pot, drastically cutting down on the cooking time of these delicious sticky rice dumplings. I hope this streamlined version makes it easy to enjoy the dish with your loved ones.”

There is some controversy as to whether this dish originated in Sichuan province or Hunan province, both known for their boldly-flavored cuisines. Regardless of where you think this dish originated, smoking the duck with Chinese black tea gives it a deep, fragrant aroma that complements the other aromatic spices.

Thin layers of bean curd skin are rolled around a filling of juicy, flavorful julienned vegetables, soaked in a rich, mouthful sauce. Served as a vegetarian centerpiece on any spread.

This Chinese classic is an all-time favorite: A bouncy seasoned shrimp filling is spread between slices of sandwich bread, then fried in hot oil until crunchy for a delicious mashup. The seasoned shrimp paste is easily pulsed in a food processor until smooth, then thrown back and forth into a bowl by hand to create the signature springy texture the shrimp is known for. We tested the recipe with a few different breads but settled on very thin white sandwich bread: This bread not only fried up super-crunchy, but also without getting too greasy. It offered a delicious balance between bread and spread for excellent shrimp flavor. Following deep frying with a quick bake in the oven ensures the shrimp filling is cooked all the way through. Pile the sandwich quarters on a large platter with a side of sweet chili sauce for a crowd-pleasing appetizer, cocktail treat or casual meal.