35 Copycat Chinese Restaurant Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How do Chinese restaurants make their food? ›

Chinese restaurants pre-cut their meat and veg into small pieces and they use extreme high heat to cook their dishes. That is why they can cook a dish in less than 5 minutes. The sauces they are using are all pre-mixed. They may add a few things on top of the sauce while cooking like garlic or sesame oil or hot oil.

Why do all these menus look the same? It turns out, they are printed and designed by the same few printing shops located here in New York. There is a row on Market Street, Chinatown, where roughly 15 prints shops produce almost all of the Chinese takeout menus for the East Coast.

A good rule of thumb is to order one dish per number of diners, plus soup and rice. (This is why dining in big groups is more fun – you can munch more and the cost per person is lower.) The concept of starters, mains and desserts doesn't apply, so order everything at once.

Temperature plays an important role in the taste of a dish. “There is a way to prepare Chinese food at home. Get all the ingredients ready, let the pan get super hot and then add one ingredient after the other quickly in the pan. The food prepare this way, I guarantee, will have a restaurant-like taste,” said the chef.

Many Chinese restaurants, like other types of restaurants, use sugar in their cooking. Sugar can be added to dishes to balance out salty or spicy flavors and to enhance the sweetness of the dish. However, the amount of sugar used in Chinese cooking can vary depending on the recipe and the individual cook.

It's so widely used because it taps into our fifth basic taste: umami (pronounced oo-maa-mee). Umami is less well known than the other tastes like saltiness or sweetness, but it's everywhere – it's the complex, savory taste you find in mushrooms or Parmesan cheese.

Yes, many or even most Chinese restaurants do indeed use MSG in their food unless asked not to. The further bad news is that many will even use it when they say they're not using it, or when you ask them not to!

There is an important 'etiquette' involved when it comes to sharing these communal dishes. Typically at the place setting each guest will have two sets of chopsticks. One set to use to serve themselves from the communal dishes and the other set is to eat their food from.

Each year, millions of Americans gather at Chinese restaurants on Christmas day. In fact, Christmas and Christmas Eve are the busiest day of the year for most American Chinese restaurants.

Meal patterns: Consumption of three meals per day is common (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Dinner is usually the main meal. Eating practices: It is common to share a number of dishes at the main meal. There are usually a variety of bowls and plates for rice, soup and vegetable/meat dishes.

How are Chinese dishes prepared? ›

Although these restaurants may make their foods from scratch, many Chinese foods from restaurants lack the freshness that can often be found in Chinese home cooking for they are premade and have been frozen to prevent rotting.