ChineseCookingDemystified
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Early Look: The Complete Guide to 63 Chinese Cuisines
🕑 Added 2024-11-11 07:00:58 +0000 UTCOkay, so this video has been... a long time in the works. It was supposed to be a quick one while Steph was away in Yunnan and, uh, I might be guilty of a little bit of feature creep.
People say that there's eight Chinese cuisines - something that's always sort of bothered me, because like, quite obviously there's way more than that. The so called 'big eight' doesn't just overlook some pockets of China that we love like Guizhou and Guangxi… it’s overlooking literally the entire North of the country. No Lanzhou Hand-pulled noodles, no Biang Biang noodles, no Beijing Duck.
So with this video, we endeavored to make a more complete count. It was... a lot.
We're going to have a written post accompanying this, which is where I think this content'll really shine. I hope that we can have something nice and browsable so that y'all can have a nice starting point to really see everything that China has to offer, culinarily. Finishing the written bit will definitely take a hot second too (I'd guess another two days of work at least? But I might be underestimating), but I figured we could give you guys the video while we were waiting at the very least :)
Also uploaded the map itself, in case you were curious to poke around.
Comments
Kasper Hjelvik Skilbrei
Curious about potato ciba
Ste & Danni JM
(And as an aside, given the hate that UK Chinese takeout food gets from the US,* I'd almost class them as separate cuisines too lol) * unfairly, imho. Both are Cantonese at their roots, but the UK style developed from Hong Kong immigrants taking over fish-and-chips shops, so it leans heavily into the deep-fried side of Cantonese cooking. It looks ugly in a video, particularly after it's been shoved into a takeaway container and filmed under a harsh fluorescent light, but it still tastes good.
Ste & Danni JM
I wish this video had been around years ago, when I was a student - a friend of a friend from Northwest China invited me to a dinner, and at the time I was really confused and disappointed that the food she cooked seemed nothing like the Chinese food I was expecting (IIRC, the centrepiece was minced lamb with green peppers, served kind of like a pilaf). I wish I could go back, knowing what I do now about all the regional variation, and give her meal a fairer taste.
Alice Wonderchek
Pretty much spot on assessment. It's not bad stuff at all (with Skyline as my basis), but people do have a certain idea of what chili is and it doesn't meet that. There's too much arguing over whether or not beans have a place in chili. From my perspective, if you grew up (or are living) on lean times, beans will get you full and make the pot go further.
Ellen Bloomfield
Now I want to go to a local Shaanxi restaurant and take my husband. Did not try the noodles that time. I had Guo-Yu Pork. Which was very good.
Ellen Bloomfield
Yum, crawdads
Adrian Slider
Cincinnati chili is really tasty. I think the only problem is calling it "chili"! If they simply called it "Cincinnati-style Macedonian-American meat sauce" (or maybe something a little easier to say), I don't think anyone would make a fuss about it, and it might be better-appreciated outside western Ohio.
Adrian Slider
Wow! A fantastic breakdown. When I first started watching your channel years ago, it was because I, a Westerner who likes Chinese food, had decided I wanted to learn about the distinct cuisines of actual China. I also had it in my head that I was going to do a “unit” on each cuisine and cook some representative dishes. The first sources I encountered mentioned the big eight cuisines, but it was obvious they were leaving out a lot. Then I read Carolyn Phillips’ All Under Heaven, in which she identifies 35 cuisines. And now you’re telling me there are 63? Ai-yi-yi! Phillips breaks the country down into five major culinary regions: The north and Manchurian northeast, the Yangtze River and environs, the coastal southeast, the central highlands, and the arid west. What do you think of that as a framework for trying to grasp the big picture of all this diversity? Thanks for putting together this rigorous explainer. Very educational.
Alice Wonderchek
Chris and Steph, I enjoy these cultural insights into the food of China that the two of you can provide us. In my area of the US, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, the bulk of Chinese restaurants are Cantonese with mostly the heavily Americanized fare (far too sweet and very mild). There's one or two places that have a menu that's far more varied in terms of options (especially spicy that means spicy) and one place that does dim sum (awesome in large groups when splitting the bill equally & holy shit, I'm an expensive glutton when indulging the craving alone). There's also my mom's favorite Chinese-American dish created somewhere in the Midwest (Detroit, MI or Columbus, OH): War Su Gai (honestly, she has a thing for warm lettuce). Regional variants in Ohio abound: there's Barberton Chicken created by Serbian immigrants; Cincinnati-style chili (highly controversial inside and outside the state) & Goetta sausage (German immigrants mixed the sausage meat with oats, herbs, and spices to make the meat last longer); Polish Boy sandwich from Cleveland's Polish immigrants; and sauerkraut balls from the German and Polish throughout Northeast Ohio.
