Top Ten Chinese Food Recipes

Chinese food is a good way to expand your personal recipe book, particularly if you love using simple, fresh ingredients in quick cooking. These ten dishes are famous all over the world and are must-haves in your collection of Chinese food recipes.

Fried Rice - A must-have dish in Chinese restaurants, fried rice is the ultimate Chinese food and can be one of the most flexible in your cookbook, because you can use leftover rice and ingredients to make it. Of course you can use fresh ingredients, but it is best to use rice that has been kept in the refrigerator overnight for best results. Ingredients usually involved in making fried rice, egg, spring onions, chopped meat, either beef, chicken or pork, ham, shrimp and vegetables such as celery, peas, carrots, bean sprouts and corn. There are many varieties of fried rice, but the more popular are the Yangchow and Fujian fried rice.

Kung Pao Chicken - Kung Pao Chicken and Kung Po chicken is a Chinese dish from Szechuan cuisine and considered a delicacy. The recipe for this delicious right generally requires diced chicken, which is pre-seasoned and quickly stir-fried with unsalted roasted peanuts, red pepper, rice wine or sherry, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce and chili peppers. Alternatively you can use shrimp, scallops, beef or pork instead of chicken.

Moo Shu Pork - This is a dish of northern Chinese origin and a favorite for many. Ingredients in a Mu Xu pork recipe often contain green cabbage, wood ear mushrooms, scrambled eggs, carrots, bean sprouts, day lily buds and spring onions. Celery, onions, bell pepper, snow pea pods, bok choy and shitake mushrooms are used occasionally. Vegetables are cut into long, thin strips before cooking, except for bean sprouts and day lily buds. Fried Mu Xu pork is then wrapped in moo shu pancakes, which are brushed with hoisin sauce and eaten by hand. Moo Shu pancakes are thin wrapper made of flour, which are readily available in supermarkets and steamed just before you eat.

General Tso's Chicken - General Tso's chicken is a Hunan dish that tastes spicy and sweet and very popular in Chinese restaurants in the U.S. and Canada, where it is often marked as a "chef's specialty". General Tso's Chicken recipe commonly involving battered chicken deep-fried and marinated with Hot Chili Peppers, onions, sugar, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic and ginger.

Egg Rolls - Egg rolls are one of the most popular Chinese food, and with good reason. This spicy roll is made by wrapping a combination of chopped cabbage and meat, and sometimes noodles in a sheet of dough. It is then dipped in egg and fried to perfection. Egg rolls are generally larger in size than his cousin spring roll, its skin thicker and crunchier and have more fullness.

Fortune Cookies - Chinese cooking would simply not be complete without the addition of a recipe for fortune cookies. The ingrediesnts you need to make these treats are some sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla extract, making them a simple way to add some fun to your home cooked Chinese food.

Orange Chicken - This delicious Chinese dish made of chicken chopped into bite size pieces and battered, then fried with a thick sweet and spicy chili sauce flavored with orange. The traditional Chinese recipe for orange chicken, which is sometimes called, is to deep fry the chicken first and then stir fry it in a slightly sweet soy-based sauce flavored with dried orange peel. Vegetables like baby carrots and bok choy are used as garnishing. But chefs in Western restaurants do not use dried orange peel, but rather orange juice or fresh orange peel and a significant proportion of sugar to make sauce. Chili peppers and steamed broccoli used as garnishing instead.

Sweet and Sour Pork - This spicy-sweet famous Chinese dish is the Cantonese origin. It is a good dish to prepare when you are planning to have guests that will be wildly impressed with your cooking skills. As with other Chinese food recipes for main do a great Sweet and Sour Pork dish is the sauce made of sugar, ketchup, white vinegar and soy sauce. Its ingredients include pork, onion, green pepper and pineapple, chopped into bite size pieces.

Mapo Dofu - Mapo doufu or Mapo tofu is a popular Chinese dish from Szechuan province. Ingredients used for this recipe include tofu, or beancurd, and minced beef or pork cooked in a spicy red sauce based chili.

Chop Suey - Chop Suey or "za sui" or "shap sui" literally means "mixed pieces' is an American-Chinese dish usually employs leftover vegetables and meat stir fried quickly in a sauce thickened with starch. It is a great dish when you must use up the last of yesterday's chicken or pork and can incorporate meat of any kind, such as pork, shrimp, beef, fish or chicken and various vegetables from bean sprouts to cabbage and celery. Chop Suey is often eaten with rice.