Types of Chinese Food – Prevalent Culinary Traditions in China

China has 5 thousand years of history. The culture has a long history, the same with the food culture. With the wide distribution of the land, the cooking styles differ in different location, which are distinguished into eight culinary traditions.

  1. Shandong Cuisine

Shandong cuisine is awarded as the top of the eight cuisines, originated in Shandong. It is the biggest royal cuisine. There are two genres of the Shandong cuisine, Jiaodong cuisine is based in seafood, and the Kongfu cuisine based in wired animals in the land.

Jiaodong cuisine is known for good with cooking seafood and preserve the original characteristics of the seafood.

Kongfu cuisine is even better, known as the head of the head. It is commonly seen in the royal dinner. No matter in ancient China or the important government dinner, most of the dishes are Kungfu cuisine.

The “top” cuisine is not as popular as before, mainly because the selection of ingredient is very delicate. You need to invest a lot of energy and money to make Shandong cuisine. In fact, it is more accurate to say that the Shangdong Cuisine is not that common anymore. It becomes a sign of luxury.

  1. Sichuan Cuisine

Sichuan cuisine is the most widely served cuisine in China. The most direct reaction is the Sichuan restaurants in every street and every alley.

There are three genres, upper river, lower river, and small river. To simply state, upper river is the one in Sichuan cuisine that makes dishes for the royalty.

The lower river is mainly in Chongqing. What is the most famous dishes in Chongqing? Spicy, hot pot – which is the character of lower river. It is known everywhere in the country, which is the representative of the Sichuan cuisine. For small river, it refers to the snacks. 90% of the snacks you seen in Sichuan is from small river.

  1. Jiangsu cuisine

The first impression I have on Jiangsu cuisine, is very well refined. No matter the main dishes or the snacks, the shape is pretty, which all say that not only the scene and people in Jiangnan are pretty, but also the cuisine.

The desserts in the Jiangsu cuisine are what I am familiar with. The most famous one is the Jiangsu iced skin mooncake.

Jiangsu cuisine pay attention to the exquisite of the display, no matter the dishes or the desserts take a long time to make, only people in Jiangnan has the patience to produce such delicate cuisine. No wonder people say, Shandong Cuisine is for officials, Cantonese cuisine for business, Sichuan cuisine for folks, and Jiangsu cuisine for scholars.

  1. Cantonese cuisine

The second largest cuisine among folks, started later. The biggest thing for Cantonese cuisine is the sweetness.

For me, growing up in Chongqing and eating pepper, I still don’t understand why is there sweetness in the dishes. It is like my friend who stayed in Chongqing for four years and still don’t understand why we put pepper in the fried vegetables.

But I like the display of the Cantonese cuisine, colorful and complement each other, making you want to eat more.

  1. Zhejiang cuisine

As the third largest cuisine for the royalty, it is the oldest cuisine. However, I am not very familiar with. It should be similar to Jiangsu cuisine. But the Jiangsu cuisine is sweeter, Zhejiang cuisine is lighter.

  1. Hunan Cuisine

If Sichuan cuisine is concerned about spicy, then Hunan cuisine is all about hot and sour.

  1. Fujian Cuisine

My friend is from Fujian, what she usually eats is light or sweeter. Anything I don’t like, she will like. Personally speaking, besides Sichuan, Hunan cuisine, other cuisines always make me feel they don’t have much flavor. Forgive me, as a person grown up in Chongqing.

  1. Anhui Cuisine

Anhui cuisine emphasize on using the ingredients that you can find locally, which wins with freshness. The biggest characteristic is using food to compensate the health need of the body.

Add comment

Comments

Comments are closed.