Notes about Recipes in this book

• Shrimp toast (Xia tusi)

  • gootenbeez on January 04, 2025

    Addicting. As long as you don't mind deep frying these are easy to throw together. I used potato bread because it was what I had on hand and served with kewpie mayo and bulldog worcestershire sauce.

• Smashed cucumbers (Pai huanggua)

  • springandfall on March 20, 2024

    Especially good if you can get aged Chinese black vinegar (mine is 3-year) - it's much smoother than the regular, and not expensive.

• Hot and sour soup (Suanla tang)

  • Aggie92 on February 05, 2024

    Wow, just Wow!!! So good and quite possibly the easiest soup I've ever made. I'll never order take-out hot and sour soup again. Omitted the pork since I didn't have any. Also substituted chile crisp for the chile oil, and 1 ounce of dried wood ear mushrooms (soaked in cold water for 2 hours) for the shiitake mushrooms. Used the full amount of chile crisp and it was very pleasantly spicy.

  • ebalk02 on May 03, 2024

    Left out the chili oil. Outstanding recipe! Will definitely make again, and add a little bit of sesame oil at the end. Also - could add wood ear mushrooms for texture if desired, but not necessary.

• Hot water dough dumpling wrappers (Tangmian jiaozipi)

  • ethedens on January 21, 2024

    These were not too hard to do and were absolutely delicious.

• Pork filling (Zhurou xian)

  • ethedens on January 20, 2024

    Overall very good, though found the Napa cabbage to be a bit overpowering.

• Shrimp filling (Xianxia xian)

  • ethedens on January 20, 2024

    Very good. Better without any dipping sauce.

• Shanghai pan-fried pork buns (Shengjianbao)

  • ethedens on February 03, 2025

    These were indeed very hard. Think we needed more even wrappers/better skill rolling. The filling needed more salt and I wish I had tasted it first. We think maybe smaller dumplings would have been better. I think we needed way, way more dumpling making experience. 3/5

• Dan dan mian (Dandanmian)

  • sarahawker on May 05, 2026

    LOVED THIS. My local asian grocery did not have the tian mian jiang or ya cai so per google I substituted Hoisin and chopped Kimchi respectively. I will go further afield to find the correct ingredients and definitely make this again. It was absolutely terrific but I want to actually follow the recipe and see how much better it can get. Note that these ingredients are used multiple times throughout the cookbook.

• Pork stir-fried noodles (Rousi chaomian)

  • PickyPalateMom on February 16, 2026

    This was terrific. I used an equivalent amount of baby bok choi for the Napa cabbage.

  • PickyPalateMom on February 16, 2026

    This was terrific. Substituted an equivalent amount of baby bok choi for the Napa cabbage.

• Beef ho fun (Ganchao niuhe)

  • PickyPalateMom on March 21, 2026

    Very tasty. My family doesn’t like bean sprouts so I dropped that ingredient and substituted in a bag of Shanghai baby bok Choi.

• Three-cup chicken (Sanbei ji)

  • jaxcap on November 14, 2023

    This was really good, very flavorful! I used the Taiwanese michiu because I already had it, but I think it would work just fine with Shaoxing wine if you can't find it.

  • ozzzzzz22 on April 22, 2025

    This was great - will definitely make again. I used mirin instead of michiu and granulated sugar instead of rock sugar just to avoid having to shop more. Also in future I'll cut out the 1/3 cup of water added with the other sauce ingredients. My chicken gave off enough water during cooking that it wasn't necessary. But because I had both watery chicken and added the extra water with the sauce, I had to reduce the sauce for a long time to get it thick and it ended up breaking. Still tasted really good though!

• Stir-fried cumin lamb (Ziran yangrou)

  • shapije1 on April 13, 2026

    This was my first attempt at cooking this dish, which is usually one of my favorites at Chinese restaurants. I didn’t have lamb on hand, so I cooked it using beef instead. The taste was OK, but it missed that irresistible, magical note that I often get in the restaurant versions.

• Mongolian beef (Menggu niurou)

  • MattKG on March 02, 2025

    I found this recipe to be way too sweet. Followed it as written in the book. Willcut back the sugar next time and maybe add some vinegar to balance it out.

• Lion's head meatballs (Shizitou)

  • ethedens on October 16, 2024

    Wow, this was so easy and so good. Would ABSOLUTELY make again. 4.5/5 but may be even higher.

• Baby bok choy with ginger and garlic (Suanrong xiaobaicai)

  • Aggie92 on February 08, 2024

    Very easy and very good! This recipe calls for tiny baby bok choy and mine were normal baby bok choy size. So I used the same weight of veg and sliced the crunchy stems and stir-fried those, added the sauce and then the leaves. Cooking time seemed to be the same as the tiny ones cut in half.

  • jenburkholder on April 28, 2024

    Agree with prior review - very good! My bok choy were also regular baby ones (4 oz, not 2!) so I chopped leaves off and then quartered the bases. Definitely a repeat.

• Gai lan with oyster sauce (Haoyou jielan)

  • shapije1 on April 13, 2026

    My ratio of veggie-to-sauce was off, resulting in very drenched greens. Overall, I think this dish has strong potential.

• Eggplant with black bean sauce (Chizhi oiezi)

  • shapije1 on March 31, 2026

    The suggested technique in this recipe interested me because I love Chinese eggplant but hate the traditional (and messy) method of frying the eggplant. It stir-fried beautifully after pre-cooking in the microwave. Loved this recipe and will definitely keep making it!

• Stir-fried tomatoes and eggs (Xihongshi chao jidan)

  • ebalk02 on March 04, 2024

    Maybe a little more more complicated than other versions, but very tasty. The egg technique worked well with no sticking to the wok.

• Homestyle tofu (Jiachang doufu)

  • chawkins on June 06, 2025

    This was okay. I did not deep fried the tofu, just pan fried them in a non-stick pan till crisp. It just felt like something was missing. A few slices of pork might help.

• Mapo tofu (Mapo doufu)

  • ebalk02 on March 10, 2024

    Really enjoyed this. Made a few personal adjustments but overall an excellent mapo tofu recipe. Make sure to use high quality, fresh sichuan peppercorns.

  • MattKG on April 26, 2024

    I am a massive fan of this book, and this recipe. I made it for my wife and I and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. She doesn't mind spicy food, but I didn't think she'd like how spicy this recipe would be, so I toned back the chili paste. Still very scrumptious, and had enough for lunch the next day! I would put this book in my top 5 (out of 700) books that i own: the tone is very casual; the pictures saturated, but very well done; the text itself conversational, hilarious and very informative; and if it's possible to judge a book by a recipe, a compendium of absolute bangers. I think this cookbook will be a mainstay in our dinnertime rotation!

• Hong Kong-style Portuguese chicken (Gangshi puguo ji)

  • superZONic on March 13, 2026

    Tastes like a casserole my Meemaw woulda brought to a church supper, basically. Decent comfort food with easily found ingredients but not terribly interesting in flavor. I might make this again and amp up the ginger juice and use vadouvan curry powder instead, perhaps inhancing the excitement level for this recipe.

  • brenda_bv2nm8 on March 29, 2026

    The chicken along with the curry and cream of chicken soup is much like my recipe for Chicken Divan, which I prefer. Still, it is a tasty comfort food.

• "Taste of Sichuan" beef shank (Chuanwei niujian)

  • zacharyzachary on January 17, 2024

    It took a long time to reduce the sauce, and even then this wasn’t as full-flavored as I thought it would be. It was deliciously beefy, but the doubanjiang could be doubled to ramp up the salt/spice/umami flavor. It tasted great when I topped it with chili crisp. It took about 6 pounds of bone-in shank to yield 3 pounds of boneless.

• Hong Kong-style baked pork chop rice (Gangshi ju zhupa fan)

  • gootenbeez on January 04, 2025

    Absolutely delicious. I thought it sounded a bit strange but I loved it. The pork is flavorful on it's own and would totally make it as a main without the rice. Next time I would increase the amount of veggies.

• Sticky spareribs with chinkiang vinegar (Zhenjiang tangcu paigu)

  • PickyPalateMom on January 22, 2024

    This recipe is fried, not long baked. Author notes that it the final texture will be tough and chewy; that this is the desired goal. Personally I'm a sucker for a really enticing recipe title & I really want to make this so I'd give that a try, at least once, but it won't go over with my family who will prefer the meat soft. So, I slow roast the ribs according to Mark Bittman's slow-roasted ribs recipe in "How to Cook Everything", and then use the sauce in this recipe to replace Bittman's sauce for that last half hour in the oven at 400 degrees where the crusty glaze forms. It worked out really well. My main comment is that the sauce involves a caramel method. You start by cooking the sugar in fat (they call for oil; I used pan juices). I also didn’t have rock sugar so I swapped out in equivalent amount of turbinado. Remember to turn off the heat and put the pot somewhere safe in case the caramel bubbles up when you add the liquids.

• Dry chili chicken (Lazi ji)

  • brenda_bv2nm8 on February 20, 2026

    Very tasty, but also VERY spicy. The spice mix did not stick to the chicken like it does in the picture.

• Red-braised pork belly (Hongshaorou)

  • KSmithberger on May 25, 2026

    Reduce the overall amount of liquid, perhaps make it all stock

• Bolo bao (Boluo bao)

  • klrclark on January 10, 2024

    These are a sweet yeast roll. Filled with the custard recipe listed with it and it was like a custard doughnut.

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