4 Side Dishes for any Chinese Meal

Have you ever wondered what to serve with Kung Pao chicken or Mongolian beef or any other Chinese main dish? My mom usually made three main dishes every day for dinner along with a daily soup, plain white rice, and Chinese greens. I honestly have no idea how she did that while she was running her own business. When I'm making a Chinese meal, I make one main dish with a plain white jasmine rice and Chinese greens. If I want to bump it up a notch, I'll make some fried rice or a noodle dish instead of the plain white rice. That's it. Here are four simple sides that will go perfectly with any Chinese main, whether you make one or more. Perfect jasmine rice, Chinese greens, garlic mayo fried rice, or garlic noodles. Today we're going to talk about rice. A lot of viewers have asked what kind of rice we eat and how to cook it. Rice is the main staple served with Chinese meals. I remember hearing the phrase, which means eating with rice is good. We usually eat jasmine rice with a Chinese food. It's not too dry and it's not too sticky and it adds to the overall mouthfeel. Let's get started. I am using a rice cup. This rice cup will come with your rice cooker if that's what you're using. Essentially, they're different from a regular cup size. This cup is approximately three-quarter of a regular cup. These cups actually correspond with the lines in your rice cooker. I'm going to use two cups of rice. I'm putting in the sieve because I need to wash it, just using tap water. We want to wash out the extra starch that's in the rice. I would normally do this under the sink with a tap, but because our kitchen is not conducive to filming, there's just not enough room in there. I'm just going to do it all here. You can see that the water is getting quite murky. You want to wash the rice until the wash rinses out clear. This is after the first round of washing. I just filled the tub with some water. Already, you can tell that it's not as murky. You can see the rice through here. Can you tell? All right, that's good enough. I'm just going to show how clear the water should be after you rinse a couple of times. My mom uses a rice cooker. That's why for many years, I used a rice cooker. I went through a phase where I was trying to get rid of all the non-stick appliances that I had at home or cookware. I wanted a stainless steel rice cooker, but I couldn't find one at the time. I bought an Instant Pot. I bought a multi-cooker. The one I bought at the time comes with these cup lines. These cup lines coincide with the rice cup so that when you make your rice, if you're making two cups of rice, you fill the water to the two line, etc. I'm going to put my rice in the stainless steel liner. To prove to you that it coincides with this cup, I'm going to fill the cup with water and show that the line of the water will go up to two. It's equal parts rice to water. I'm just going to level out the rice. Look, the line of the water is at the two. Getting the lid on, locking it into place. The sealing knob is on sealing. I know that there's a rice function on the pot, but I can't be bothered with that because I have the perfect way of making rice and that's what I like to use. I'm going to do a manual four minutes on the rice on high pressure. I like to let it soak for 10 minutes before moving forward. So I set a timer for 10 minutes and then the rice is going to cook for four minutes and then it's going to keep warm for 10 minutes and then the rice will be perfect after that. If you're using a rice cooker, you'll have all the functions that you need and you just follow the directions of your own rice cooker. I grew up with a rice cooker that was just one button that you press down and it works perfect every time. My grandmother used to make her rice on the stovetop. She never used a rice cooker. So let me show you how to do that as well. So again, I've washed the rice already and this is two cups and the water to rice ratio is one to one and a quarter. So we will want to use two and a half cups of liquid. After you've let your rice soak for about 10 minutes, we're going to turn the heat on to a medium high and bring it to a simmer. Once it starts to simmer, we're going to turn the heat down to low and put the lid on. Now we're going to let it cook for 18 minutes. Once your 18 minutes is up, turn off the heat. I'm going to get a glove because I know that's going to be hot. All right, you want to make sure that there's no more water at the bottom. So I'm taking a spatula, I'm just going to lift it up, make sure there's no water. And if you want to check the doneness of the rice, you can just take one and make sure that it's cooked all the way through. It's perfect. So a good thing to do at this point is to just fluff the rice and then just let it sit until with the lid on. Keep it hot until the rest of your meal is ready. If it's not cooked through, then you need to add a little bit more water. So I mean like a tablespoon more water and put it back on the heat for another three to five minutes to make sure that all of the rice is cooked through. After cooking the rice for four minutes in the pressure cooker, we let it natural release for 10 minutes. And if there's any more pressure left that needs to be released, do that. Shouldn't be pushing in the wrong way, that's why. There shouldn't be much left. And again, we will also just move the rice around to fluff it up. And then we can just let it sit until it's ready with the lid on. These really are my favorite Chinese greens. So I have gai lan, which is this one. This is a pretty big stalk actually. It's got a thick stalk with some really great dark leafy parts. And it's kind of like a Chinese broccoli. This is probably one that you're most familiar with. Then we have yau choy or choy sum. And that's these little ones. And they also grow quite big, but these are the size I got at the store. They are not like baby gai lan. They're a completely different vegetable altogether. They're a little bit sweet and the stems are more tender than the gai lan. And we have the bok choy. And this is Shanghai bok choy. These are slightly different from the regular bok choy that are white with the dark green leaves. We just like the texture of these better. And they come in this size and also like the little mini sizes, but we like the size best. To clean the vegetables, I usually soak them in salt water for about three to five minutes. I use about a teaspoon of salt for a bucket of water. And you can see that it just kind of loosens up some of the dirt and it kills any bugs that are in there. And you can, I don't know if you can tell, but there's some grit from the dirt that was in the veggies already. I'm going to go back to the sink and run water in between the leaves to get out any more dirt. And then I'm going to rinse it another time or so to get rid of as much, well hopefully getting rid of all the dirt and bugs that may be hiding in the leaves. The bok choy is a little bit different. I'm going to cut it in half and then I'm going to run water in between the leaves because you can't really run the water in between the leaves as it is. So we're going to cut it down anyways to cook. When you're buying the gai lan, you want to make sure that at the bottom of the stalks that it looks fresh and that there isn't a white dot in the middle. When it's white it means that it's starting to dry out in the middle of the stalk and it means that the vegetable is a little bit older and it probably won't taste as good or be as tender. Another thing to look for is where the flower is and if it's starting to bloom. First of all, if it's blooming that's where the bugs are hiding so you might want to just pick those pieces off. And sometimes it's still tender with a few flowers but you don't want the whole flower to open up. Each of these buds will be like one little flower so you can just pick them off. I'm just going to trim off the bottoms and I'm going to leave them whole because my mom says when you cook them whole they taste better. And since I'm keeping them whole and the stalks are so thick, I'm just going to cut right down the middle so that it gets cooked evenly when I throw it into the water. This is the choy sum, so same buying principle. If you're going to buy them, make sure that there's no dot. So this one has like a little bit of a dot here. So what we want to do is we're going to trim these ones, just trim off the bottom and then the one with the dot, we're going to have to trim all of that white part off. Otherwise it'll be not so great to chew through. Yeah, so I just cut off a little bit more and we're going to leave these ones whole. In my effort to clean them after I sliced them in half, some of the leaves came off, which is fine. I'm still going to trim the bottom and I'm going to cut it one more time because this will be really, it would take a long time to cook through this. So I'm just going to cut these in half again, so into quarters, these bok choy. You may notice that in most of my home-style Chinese cooking that there isn't a lot of vegetables because we always had vegetables on the side and it's because the greens are so easy to make and they're tasty and we don't need a lot of flavor with them because whatever meat dish we're serving for dinner also has a lot of flavor already. Now my mom used to make like four or five dishes along with like a daily soup that she would provide every meal for dinner and there was always a plate of vegetables that were kind of plain on the side. So we're going to start with a basic, look at how simple it is. So we're bringing a pot of water to boil. I'm just going to put her on high, adding about two teaspoons of salt and one tablespoon of oil, cooking oil, whatever cooking oil you're using. Even if you have like chicken fat or beef fat, whatever, you just need a little bit of fat in the water so that when the vegetables cook, they'll come out with that beautiful shine. Once your water is a rolling boil, I'm going to add, we're starting with the choy sum. I'm just going to add that and it's going to take a minute. You see that it's turned this beautiful dark green. If you leave it in too long, it will then turn yellow and then that would not be good. You want the stems to be slightly crispy still and the green part dark green and beautiful. I'm using the same water to do the gai lan. So again, two teaspoons of salt in your boiling water plus a tablespoon of oil. I'm just going to add a little bit more because as we pulled up the choy sum, the oil would have clinged on to the leaves of the other of the choy sum. I'm also adding half a teaspoon of sugar and the reason is for gai lan, sometimes you might get like some bitterness with gai lan. So if you add a little bit of sugar, it kind of protects you from that because you don't want to eat it if it's kind of bitter tasting. Well, you might just eat it anyways, but it's not a good meal to have. So I'm just going to cook the stems here to kind of lean them in the pot and we're going to cook the stems for about a minute. All right, so after the stems have been cooking for about a minute, I'm going to push the green into the water and cook for another minute. All right, I'm just going to turn off the stove and we'll pull these out. Whoa, these are two giant stems. Obviously, I'm not cooking a full portion what I would cook for the whole family. I usually cook about a pound of vegetables for a family of four and that's enough veggies for everyone. When I was a kid, I remember my mom used to heat up the oil on the side instead of putting it in the boiling water and she would just fry up a piece of garlic, like a clove of garlic, and just let the garlic heat up in that oil and then she would pour the sizzling oil over the vegetables. But then she started just adding the water, adding the oil to the water, which is what I do now, which I don't need that garlic flavor. But you may be tempted to skip the oil part and it really does make a difference. If you don't put any oil into your vegetables or to pour it on top, it will not have the right texture. It will feel dry in your mouth and it won't be very pleasant. With the bok choy, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to stir fry it with some garlic. Get the pan going, medium heat, and I'm just using a non-stick frying pan. Adding a tablespoon of cooking oil. I'm using avocado oil and I chopped up about one clove of garlic. I'm going to add that. I'm going to stir fry that for about 30 seconds, just until it's fragrant. Okay, adding my bok choy. Cook this for about 30 seconds also. I'm going to add about a quarter teaspoon of chicken bouillon. You can just add water, but I like the added flavor. And about a tablespoon of water. I'm going to cover this and let it cook for a minute. Move this around. We don't want this to be overcooked either, so otherwise the stems get mushy and it's just not a good texture. So it's better to be undercooked than overcooked. We'll just let this cook for another minute or so until it starts to feel fork tender. Turning off the heat. And you can do this with the other vegetables as well, not just bok choy. I just wanted to show you another method in cooking the vegetables that's easy and tasty. Get this onto my plate. I'm just going to drizzle with about a teaspoon of soy sauce and a little bit of sesame oil. And that is it. With the choy sum and the gai lan, usually we just either serve it plain or we serve it with a little bit of oyster sauce on the side that you can just dip. I'm going to start off with chopping up my garlic. I've got three cloves here. I'm going to give them a little crush to get the skin off. These came from my mom's garden, so they're really juicy. Not like the stuff that you buy in the stores. You can chop the garlic as finely as you or not. Totally up to you. Okay. Also chopping up a stalk of green onion for some extra freshness and garnish at the end. I'm using three eggs. We're just going to lightly beat them. That's it. Now here's where the mayo comes in. I have three cups of cold leftover Japanese rice. And apparently this is a Japanese technique to use. Kewpie, which is the Japanese mayo, I'm using three tablespoons. Japanese mayo is eggier, richer than regular American, North American mayo. But you can use North American mayo if you want. We're just going to mix this around until all the mayonnaise is kind of coating all the grains of rice. So the amount of mayo that you're adding, it doesn't actually add a mayonnaise-y type of flavor to it. It just kind of coats the kernels and it allows the kernels of rice to cook evenly in the pan. You'll see. I love sharing these new techniques that I find, so hopefully they'll be helpful to you and hopefully they'll work. All right, we're going to get our pan heated up just to a medium because I'm using a nonstick pan today. Adding about a tablespoon of avocado oil. Any cooking oil will do. And we're gonna get our eggs going because it's a nonstick pan. I'm not really used to using it as I am. I walk. So usually I need the oil to be really hot and then the egg just scrambles, but this will be just fine. Okay, I'm going to remove it now. Put it back in the same bowl. I'm turning the pan back on to a medium. Adding another tablespoon of oil. Maybe not quite a tablespoon, a couple teaspoons. And adding my garlic. I just want the garlic to cook but not brown. Adjust the heat accordingly. And once you start to smell the garlic, I'm going to add our rice. I'm just going to let this gently cook. I can totally smell that garlic and you can hear the sizzling of the rice that's being cooked because each kernel is being, well, was covered by the mayo. So the fat that's just sizzling away. All right, so the rice you can see has plumped up a little bit. So I'm going to add about a tablespoon of soy sauce, just regular soy sauce or light soy sauce, and a tablespoon of oyster sauce. We just want to make sure that the sauce evenly coats the rice so that it's an even browning of the sauce on the rice. Okay, adding the egg back in. Chop it up a little bit. Get it mixed up with the rice. This is just a simple version of fried rice. You can eat it as a light lunch or as a side to a larger meal. But if you wanted to add meat or veggies, you can totally do that as well. All right, I'm going to turn off the heat. Add my green onions and we're going to get this onto a platter. Oh, it smells so good, you guys. Putting this into a bowl. This is me being impatient, trying to scoop into the bowl. All right, looking pretty hot. All right, adding the remaining green onion just for some garnish. I'm using about eight to ten cloves of garlic and these were from my mom's garden. So I know there's only like four or five cloves per bulb. I'm just going to peel my garlic. I find it easier to peel if I break the skin with my mallet because the back of the knife is just hard on my wrist. All right, then we just want to roughly chop this up. You can chop it up as chunky or as fine as you'd like. You can also run this through a chopper if you want, but I think that's good. You want it to be not too fine because we want to put this in the oil and butter mixture that is going to cook the garlic without burning it. Also, using a green onion for garnish. I'm just going to slice it now. I'm also using about half a cup of parmigiano-reggiano, which is parmesan cheese, and I like to grate my own cheese because I find that it melts better in the pasta or the noodles. If you use the stuff that comes in the little green box or container or even the grated cheese that you get in the deli section of your supermarket, that grated cheese probably won't melt as well, so then it'll be all kind of grainy and won't give you a nice mouth feel. That's about enough. You may not think that parmesan would work in an Asian noodle dish, but the umami and the saltiness of the cheese really does make a difference. On to the sauce. Super simple. I've got two teaspoons of brown sugar. You can use regular white sugar if you like. I'm adding a tablespoon of soy sauce, just light soy sauce or regular soy, one tablespoon of oyster sauce, and one tablespoon of fish sauce, and give that a stir. Brown sugar also melts more easily or dissolves more easily in the sauce. All right, that's all that's needed to prepare to get your noodles going. I have my wok ready, setting it on a low because I just want to melt the butter. I've got a quarter cup of butter, adding a tablespoon of avocado oil so that it doesn't burn. So the oil has a higher heat temperature and butter has a lower heat temperature, which means it will burn more easily, so I'm adding the oil so it doesn't burn as easily. And once your butter is mostly melted, I'm going to add the garlic and we're just going to let that cook for about two to three minutes to really get that flavor going. I have this Thai chili in the fridge, so I thought maybe I'll use like half of it because we're wimpy. It's going to be really spicy, so I'm just going to use yep just half of it and toss it in with the garlic. All right, just a little bit of heat. You don't have to if you don't want to. Okay, I just turned off the heat because it was starting to stick at the bottom and that's when you know that it's done because you don't want it to brown. So I'm going to leave that while I get my noodles started. I'm using these yellow noodles. They're fresh noodles. There's about 600 grams, which is about a pound and a quarter-ish and they just need to be blanched for about a minute in hot water. So I'm going to go do that right now and I'm going to toss them directly into the wok after they're ready. All right, so the noodles have blanched for a minute. I'm just going to turn my garlic butter back on to low just to heat it up again and we're going to transfer our noodles to the wok. You don't need to drain the noodles because you do want some of the liquid to be added as well. This just helps to get all the flavors clinging on to the noodles. Just mixing it up a little bit. Oh, look at all that garlic. All right, I'm going to add our sauce and we just want the noodles to absorb all of the sauce. Almost there. If you have all the sauces already at home, the noodles will cost me less than $5, so maybe $4.50. That's it. That's all that it's going to cost you to make these noodles and look at how much there is. So much. Adding the parmesan cheese. Turning the heat off. I'm just going to let the cheese melt into the noodles. Adding about half of the green onions. The rest will be garnish. Just drizzle a teaspoon or two of sesame oil. That's it, guys. Let's get this into a bowl. Oh, that sesame oil smells so good. I think I can get the rest of it into the bowl, dude. All right. Look at all the garlic. No garlic left behind. Oh, yeah. I don't think you'll get this much in the restaurant and who knows how much they're charging for this bowl of noodles these days. Talk about a mountain of noodles. Garnishing with some of the remaining green onion and some more parmesan cheese on top.