Emma Chung: How to make Chinese food easily at home

RTÉ News​

4 days ago

It was Shanghainese spring onion oil noodles that catapulted Emma Chung to TikTok success four years ago.
"It's a fragrant oil that you make by frying spring onions and mixed with noodles, it's really easy! It's five ingredients in the whole dish," says the now Hong Kong-based chef and content creator. "I just casually posted, not even telling anyone."
Chung, 28, who posts under @iam.chungry, had spent her life in food already, though, working as a recipe developer for a food box company and teaching at London's School Of Wok.
With Hong Kong parentage, she moved to Shanghai at the age of five. "So I actually lived more in Shanghai than I did in Hong Kong, however, I've always felt really tied to my Cantonese roots, to my Hong Kong family."
Her food is heavily influenced by both areas. "They're really different," says Chung. "I would say Shanghainese food is a little bit sweeter overall, we use more dark soy sauce, so dishes tend to have that dark brown colour. Because it gets quite cold in the winter, it's heartier than Cantonese food, it's quite filling, you've got braised meats, delicious noodles and rice dishes.
"In Hong Kong, dishes are lighter in flavour, a lot of seafood, dishes are often steamed."
Chung remembers her grandmother ("the best cook I've known") rustling up all her meals on a small electric stove in a tiny kitchen, with tools hung everywhere and meat drying at the windows.
"The dish I miss the most when I'm away from home is her stir-fried greens. I also really remember her doing a whole steamed fish in a massive wok. They'd be 20 of us [eating] in this tiny flat and this boiling hot dish of steamed fish coming out."
Chung's debut cookbook, Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make, aims to prove that forgoing your local takeaway in favour of home cooking is a lot more simple and accessible than you might think. Think easy weeknight dinners like ketchup prawns, to takeaway classics like sweet and sour pork and beef chow fun, and sticky mango rice for pudding.
So what's her advice for beginners to the cuisine at home?
Get four basics in your pantry
According to Chung, all you need is a light soy sauce, a dark soy sauce, sesame oil and oyster sauce. "A light soy sauce is going to be very salty, it adds a bit of seasoning. Dark soy sauce gives it that lovely golden brown colour – when we think of a really delicious stir-fry noodle that has a dark brown colour, that's what's giving it its colour. Sesame oil has a really delicious nutty taste.
"Oyster or mushroom sauce [for a plant-based alternative], they taste really similar, adds a nice salty taste to your food that's different to a light soy sauce.
From those few basic sauces, you can make so many different types of dishes, says Chung. "When I go to my grandmother's kitchen, when I look at her pantry, she's literally got four large bottles."
Stop buying packet supermarket stir-fry sauces
"It's just a mixture of sesame oil, light or dark soy, maybe sugar, maybe a few other things to make it taste a little bit better. I would say if you just had those basic ingredients yourself, it's going to taste a lot better, a lot fresher, and probably be a lot healthier than when you buy those packaged ingredients with things that you don't even know what's in it – same as if you were buying like a jar of pasta sauce from the aisles.
"Start with a little bit [of each thing] and you can always add a little bit more."
It's likely to work out cheaper in the long-run too.
Start with fried rice – but don't over-stir
A Chinese fried rice dish is usually made of "the most basic of ingredients", says Chung, "some maybe you already have at home – it's an amazing way to transform a very simple ingredient, or leftovers.
"I always have lots of different things lying around the fridge, like a half-chopped courgette, or like the end of a spring onion. It's a great way to use what you already have and transform it into something that tastes really different.
"If you get that technique right (you don't necessarily need a wok), it can go from a kind of average fried rice to really, really good fried rice."
Chung, who taught at London's School of Wok for many years, says the pan needs to be very hot – and not to mix it around too much.
"I've taught many fried rice dishes. Almost every class had some kind of fried rice. What I saw all the time were just people constantly mixing it, and when you mix it so much, it's almost like you're breaking the grains of the rice. And so that's why it gets wet and a little bit mushy."
"With risotto, they encourage you to continually stir it because you want to break up the grains of rice, you want to kind of release some of that starch. But in the fried rice, that's not what you want. So I would say actually the best tip is to actually not do so much and just let it cook in the pan."
Make your own dumplings – with minimal pleats
Chinese dumplings or wontons are easier to make than we might think, says Chung. "Making any type of dough, whether you're baking or making pasta, can seem daunting. But I think once you try it a few times, and then you get familiar with how the dough feels – it becomes really easy."
In Chinese restaurants, you'll see wontons with many pleats, she notes, but that's just "a plus".
"The most basic dumpling, when you go to dumpling stalls in Shanghai, they're doing the most basic fold because they have to make a hundred a day. They're not going to bother sitting there making 10, 12, 14 pleats on each dumpling, they're just squeezing it, sealing it shut and then moving on to the next one."
Her best tip for filling dumplings is to cook a little bit to taste it, before putting the rest of the mixture inside. "Like you would if you were making meatballs at home to make sure the seasoning is right. Just cook off a small bit."
Chop everything before you start cooking
"With Chinese food, everything happens quite quickly. Often, things are being stir-fried within 10-15 minutes. So I would say, make sure you have everything that you need ready and measured out right by you for the very beginning. And if you need garlic, ginger, spring onions or peppers, have that all already chopped."