Is the meat in a Chinese restaurant really beef and chicken?
Do you have a particular restaurant in mind? I’ve gone to Chinese restaurants where the meat was… not really beef and chicken. In one restaurant, those little fishy-tasting drumsticks were actually… FROG. In another, they replaced sensible beef and chicken with RABBIT. Those kinda tough noodles? That ain’t beef or chicken. That’s JELLYFISH. Once I got this cold salted dish with drumsticks, and I thought it was chicken… Nope! It was… DUCK! And those eggs are definitely not chicken eggs. They’re… QUAIL! That soft white meat isn’t chicken either. It’s… TILAPIA! I once found these arthropods in my food. Kinda looked like cockroaches, but they were actually a substitute meat: CRAWFISH. And I thought the brown stuff was beef, but it wasn’t. It was… LAMB. That “chicken” with the ginger scallion sauce wasn’t really chicken either. It was… LOBSTER. And the white stuff? Not beef! It was EEL! In fact, I think it was alive earlier that day, too. They just found it and served it up! Not to mention the weirdest substitute I’ve ever seen. There are these strips of meat and they’re kinda fatty. They’re done in a really spicy black bean/Szechuan peppercorn/chili sauce to mask what they really are, but I figured out their secret. You know what that meat is? PORK!I think you’re right to be suspicious of the meat in a Chinese restaurant. It could be anything. It could be CUTTLEFISH or SHRIMP or ANCHOVIES or MUSSELS or CLAMS or SCALLOPS or SQUID, too; I didn’t mention those. And it could be beef or chicken but be something weird, like CHICKEN FEET or BEEF TONGUE or OXTAIL or CHICKEN HEARTS or CHICKEN GIZZARDS or BEEF STOMACH. When you’re at a Chinese restaurant, watch out!The good news is that most of these things are delicious. And also labeled on the menu. Because that’s how restaurants work in real life.
Why does the chicken from chinese restaurants not look the chicken I use in my kitchen?
It just doesn't seem to pull apart like chicken and always seems to have a fatty layer around it under the sauces. It really grosses me out. My husband loves chinese but the chicken dishes gross me out by the way they look. Why does it look different?
What is that brown jelly like sauce Chinese restaurants use on chicken and broccoli?
The jelly consistency comes from the cornstarch they use to thicken it. Look in the oriental food section of your supermarket and you will see a lot of ready-made sauces like what you are looking for. It's not peanut sauce. Not that hard to make, either. Lots of recipes online - here's a few: http://eatclosetohome.wordpress.com/2008... http://chinesefood.about.com/od/saucesma...
Is the dish "honey chicken", common in Chinese restaurants in Australia, based on an actual traditional dish from some Chinese cuisine?
Unlike your other question about beef in black bean sauce, where black beans are actually used to make the sauce of a wide variety of different dishes (even though there is no one 'black bean sauce' dish), there is no honey chicken nor any dish that i'm aware of that uses honey in the ingredients list, other than perhaps as a baste and marinade for cantonese BBQ.The 4 most commonly found sweet dishes in China, indeed sweet dishes other than these might be extremely rare, are, in order of popularity:Sweet & Sour Pork Fillet 糖醋里脊Literally 'sugar vinegar fillet', this is just lean strips of pork, coated in a light batter, deep-fried, and covered in a sauce comprising some sort of sugar and vinegar in about equal proportions, with some tomato ketchup and sometimes a dash of soy sauce. Sometimes the pork fillet is replaced with ribs that are cunt into 2-3cm chunks - 糖醋排骨.Cantonese-style Sweet & Sour Pork 咕咾肉This one is more familiar to Western palettes and is probably very similar, if not identical, to the dishes you'll find in Chinese-style restaurants all over the world - chunks of pork, not just lean meat, coated in a thick and crispy batter and deep fried, then mixed with slices of onion, green bell pepper, and pineapple chunks, along with the sugar/vinegar/ketchup sauce. It's mostly found in Cantonese restaurants.GuoBaoRou 锅包肉A northeastern dish made of very thin slices of lean pork, coated in a very thick and chewy batter (usually made with cornstarch or suchlike), deep fried and served in a thin and sharp sauce of white vinegar and sugar, verging more on the sour than the sweet, along with very thinly sliced carrot, onion, and coriander.Squirrel fish 松鼠桂鱼Not an actual squirrel fish, the name comes from the fish being presented like a bushy squirrel's tail. The flesh is sliced into branches while remaining attached to the main body of the fish, then it's coated in batter and held upside down while hot oil is poured down the sides of the fish. This way the 'branches' curl outwards from the body, making for an impressive centrepiece when brought to the table swimming, so to speak, in the red, sugar/vinegar/ketchup sauce.
Chinese restaurant red sauce?
After calling my favorite Chinese restaurant and explaining to them which sauce i was talking about, that its the one that sits next to the batter fried chicken and that it was bright red, almost transparent and real thick, the answer is.......sweet and sour sauce, BUT she said it doesn't actually taste sour, thats just what its called. I know EXACTLY which one you are talking about cause i absolutely love it and i mix it with the hot mustard that they keep on the cold bar. Makes for a spicy/sweet dip for the egg rolls, chicken, etc. okay now that you've made me HUNGRY for chinese.... I GOTTA GO!!! as for a recipe, Krogers sells it in their "ethnic" aisle. krystan
Where do Chinese restaurants get their sweet and sour sauce?
I worked at a chinese restaurant in my teens (40 years ago or so). I made the rice, fried rice sweet and sour sauce and chopped lots of meat and vegetables.We started with a very large pot half filled with boiling water. Add sugar, white vinegar, red food colouring, pineapple juice, tomato sauce, ketchup, almost any barbeque sauces etc. We may have even added soy sauce I don't recall. Perhaps starch to thicken it.
In chinese chicken and broccoli, what is the sauce thats on it?
typically its a mixture of sauce and spice... common ingredients are oyster sauce, soysauce, salt, sugar, maybe msg... can be all part of the "sauce" on chicken and broccoli...but different restaurants have their own recipe... with greater % of one ingredient or smaller % of another ingredient