3 dishes people actually cook in China: what they are, how long they take, and what you need to buy.
What can you cook from China? 3 traditional China dishes, from Mapo tofu (30 min, the quickest) to Jiaozi dumplings (105 min, the longest). Each recipe is written step by step with full ingredient lists, free to read.
China on the map. Drag to spin the planet.
Hand rolled wrappers, thin at the rim and thick in the middle, around a pork filling beaten with water until it is juicy.
A Sichuan stir-fry built on the numbing tingle of toasted huajiao and a sweet-sour black vinegar glaze.
Soft tofu simmered in red doubanjiang oil and finished with ground roasted peppercorn for the numbing ma of its name.
Copper documents three dishes from China: Jiaozi dumplings, Kung pao chicken and Mapo tofu. Ginger and light soy sauce each appear in more than one recipe. Two of the three are fried. Not one needs an oven — they cook entirely on the hob. Between them they use 26 different ingredients.
The three recipes need 26 ingredients between them, of which 7 are shared by more than one dish. Light soy sauce and cornstarch the hardest to find: of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas, 6 use light soy sauce and 7 use cornstarch. Every ingredient list on this page is complete, with quantities, and free to read.
Mapo tofu is the quickest at 30 minutes. Jiaozi dumplings is the longest at 105 minutes. The median is 35 minutes — a weeknight, not a project.
None of the dishes from China here is rated easy, but every one has the full method written out step by step, free to read. Mapo tofu is the shortest way in.
China is part of East Asian.
Countries close to China on the globe — and close on the plate.
COPPER