When I worked at the Trail Lounge in York it was owned by a Greek and he had Greek food, but he also had a Chinese cook that specialized in wok cooking amongst other dishes that she would prepare and the menu was varied. They also served American, Italian, and Indian dishes so you could pretty much get whatever you desired.

Susie was pretty cool though and I loved watching her cook, the Chinese cook and she liked to give tips which I found very interesting. Chinese recipes usually call for very specific ingredients and ways to cook everything. There are many tips you can use to save time and money and still have a top notch meal or add ingredients to make a good meal great.

She would tell you how to cut corners on rice, and different kinds of oil, even the kind of meats you use. Many people take the meat out of a recipe and call it vegetarian. A delicious alternative to regular cooking oil is sesame oil. Sesame oil will give any dish a very unique flavor simply mix a few drops with your normal oil or use by itself.

When cooking shrimp in vegetable oil it simply makes it taste like greasy shrimp, but shrimp cooked in sesame oil taste like a Chinese treat. Sesame oil has a strong and unique flavor that many people automatically associate with Chinese food.  It is higher in fat so if you are on a diet, it might not be a good choice.

Rice is common in all kinds of Chinese recipes. If you make a lot of Chinese food, you can cook a lot more rice than you know you will use. You can freeze the excess rice and use it later for fried rice. This will save the trouble of cooking a whole new batch and it tastes just as good. You shouldn’t  be afraid of changing the  recipes.

Many Chinese recipes call for noodles and the Chinese noodles cook a lot faster than Italian pasta because the ingredients are different and the shapes vary greatly. Boiled noodles can be used in soups, stir fry, with a hearty sauce, or almost anything. Noodles can also be substituted for rice in many different dishes.

If you have a great recipe for chicken, you can use crab or shrimp the next time or change up some of the vegetables to make your own unique recipe. Bill is such a stickler for following a recipe and he is very precise with ingredients, not so for myself. I change everything because it’s fun and you can create all kinds of different meals.

I have so many cookbooks, but I never follow any, well sometimes I do, but I still change things. We love a good stir fry and Bill is great with those and it’s such a simple meal to prepare. I love salt, but I have to stay away from soy sauce the amount of sodium in that would kill a Horse.

If you’re a beginner then you might want to start with something easy and fun for most people, the best Chinese recipes to start with are single course dishes. The easiest are usually rice, a few vegetables and one kind of meat and that’s why we love a simple stir fry. Bill is making Chili tonight, but I’m hungry for Chinese now.