Real Chinese Appetizers (开胃小菜)
Like, the stuff that you'd actually snack on before a meal at a Chinese restaurant.
So this week I wanted to talk a bit about appetizers in Chinese cuisine.
I’ll be honest, I conceptualized this post when it did a quick search for “Chinese appetizers” on YouTube on a whim. There was… a lot of garbage out there (what is god’s name is with the fixation on “wonton cups”?) so I kind of wanted to clear the air a bit.
Of course, appetizers are one of those concepts that’re kind of tough to translate between cultures. Growing up in America, ‘appetizers’ could start a meal at a restaurant, or, you know… they’re also a mainstay at a Super Bowl party. In Italian cuisine, would you consider Antipasti or Aperitivo appetizers? The latter bears a cognate of a name but is more of a drinking thing than a little snack. What about Korean Banchan? That’s usually translated as ‘side dish’ (when I’ve gone to Korean restaurants here in China though they’re always served before the meal though? Is it like that in Korea?), and then, there’s also restaurants that serve just that stuff.
There’s a few different candidates for what an “appetizer” could be thought of in China.
Kaiweicai. (开胃菜) Literally, ‘opening the stomach food’ – these are free little snacks that are served right as the meal starts. These are often really quite small though (you can’t exactly give away dishes that’re too expensive), nothing like the American sense of an ‘appetizer’.
Soups. After the little snacks, in (most) traditional banquet structures soup would be next on the menu. I don’t really think of soups as ‘appetizers’ though (even though historically in the West soups were the first appetizers IIRC).
Lengpan Cold Dishes. (冷盘) After the soup in (most) traditional banquet structures would be cold dishes. I.e. something like white cut chicken in Cantonese cuisine, or perhaps something like drunken crab in the Shanghai region. These might feel closer to what an American might consider to be an ‘appetizer’, but then… a couple issues. First, in a traditional meal structure we’ve already arrived at the third course – like, the Italian equivalent would be Primo, yeah? Also, spreading out from the traditional banquets, in most restaurants these are served as dishes like any other.
Dim Sum. Referring to Dim Sum dishes as appetizers is a weird pet peeve of mine. To me it feels akin to calling a waffle an appetizer.
So after looking at that list, we settled on Kaiweicai – i.e. little snacks that’re served before the meal. Now, I know that that might not get the vast majority of people’s blood pumping in the same way that most ‘normal’ dishes would. But, these do have the benefit of – unlike many of the dishes that we share here – of being (relatively) dirt easy to make.
We thought of three major ‘categories’ of Chinese appetizers that we see outside at restaurants most often (1) Liangban Cold Dishes (different from Lengpan cold dishes, these are vegetables not meats) (2) Fried Peanuts or Peas and (3) Pickled Vegetables. For each, we’ll do one dish, although for the Liangban Cold Dishes I’ll also give you a recipe for an ‘all purpose’ liangban sauce that you can top over pretty much anything.
Liangban Cold Dishes
Ok, so this would probably be the least common of the three to see as a free snack at restaurants. But given I’d gather that it’s likely the dish that would be most likely for you to replicate, I figured it’d be a good place to start.
While Smashed Cucumber salad is probably the most popular Liangban dish on the planet… if you get a Liangban dish free at the start of the meal, most likely this is going to consist of strips of kelp. Another popular Liangban dish uses Mu’er Wood Ear Mushrooms, which I have seen as a Kaiweicai before, so… let’s do that one.
Ingredients, Liangban Cold Mu’er Mushrooms:
Mu’er Wood Ear Mushrooms (木耳), 30g. These are purchased dried, either loose or packed in a little box.
Ingredients for the Liangban sauce: 4 tbsp light soy sauce (生抽), 2 tbsp dark Chinese vinegar (陈醋/香醋), 1 tbsp oyster sauce (耗油), 1 tbsp sugar, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 fresh heaven facing or Thai birds eye chili (朝天椒), ~two sprigs of cilantro (香菜), ½ tsp salt, sprinkle of MSG (味精), ½ tbsp toasted sesame oil (香油). The garlic’s minced and the chili’s sliced. For the cilantro, we’ll be using half of that in the sauce itself, and use half in to top off the final dish. Because it’s still ambiguous to me what a ‘sprig’ of cilantro is, this is how much we’re using.
Process, Liangban Cold Mu’er Mushrooms:
So that sauce is literally called ‘Liangban sauce’ – you can really use it on whatever. There’s a few different sauces that you see in cold dishes (e.g. chili oil, sesame) but that one’s the bog standard sort.
Because it’s so useful and stores well, we’ll start with that sauce, then move to the mushroom.
Slice the chilis, chop the cilantro, mince the garlic.
Mince together all the ingredients for the liangban sauce. Then toss in the fridge to store – last a couple days at least. Remember to reserve half your cilantro for later.
Reconstitute the Mu’er wood ear mushrooms in cool water. For 30 minute to 3 hours. Mu’er is fluffier if you go the whole three hours, but you could get away with as little as a half hour soak in a pinch.
Thoroughly rinse the Mu’er. If you Mu’er aren’t quite bite sized, rip into 2-3 pieces. If your mu’er are a bit on the sandy side, that rinse might actually take a few good minutes to work through. Also rip the mu’er if you need – some packages have larger mu’er than others. No need to be paranoid here… basically go as small as you think you’d enjoy eating.
Blanch the mu’er in boiling water for 2 minutes. After blanching, either rinse under running water or toss in a pot of cool water to stop the cooking process.
Drain, then keep in the fridge until cool enough for you liking. I like my liangban dishes quite cool, so I personally would toss it in there for at least three hours. But you can get away with as little as 15-30 minutes or as long as 24 hours.
Mix the liangban sauce in with the mu’er. And that’s it!
If you’re using the liangban sauce with some other sort of vegetable, know that (1) you should generally have enough sauce so that there’s an ever so slight pool of liquid at the bottom and (2) it’s better to over-do the sauce quantity than under-do it.
Fried Peanuts or Peas
If you did an exhaustive search through all the restaurants in China, I’d imagine that either fried peanuts or peas would be the most common appetizers out there.
The latter one, the fried peas, are one of my personal favorite snacks – if a restaurant sets a bowl of them out, I usually find myself cleaning it pretty handsomely. I really did want to figure out how to make them for you guys, but… there’s really not a ton of information out there. Restaurants usually just buy them bagged (like in that picture), so… right. If you have any information on how to do it, definitely let me know – I failed a few batches before giving up.
The fried peanuts might seem less interesting at first blush, but the technique they use is really quite cool.
Ingredients, Fried Peanuts:
Peanuts (花生), 250g.
Oil for frying. Enough to just submerge the peanuts, I used a touch over a cup’s worth with the round bottomed wok in the video.
Seasoned Salt: 2 tbsp salt, 1 tsp five spice powder (五香粉). You won’t need this much seasoned salt for the peanuts… sorry. It’s just really awkward to make small quantities of the stuff. You can use any leftover for dipping deep fried foods in.
Process, Fried Peanuts:
Make the seasoned salt. First heat up your salt over a medium flame until it becomes uncomfortable to touch, ~2 minutes. Shut off the heat, add in the five spice powder, mix, and then remove.
Add the peanuts in a wok with enough oil to cover them, then turn your flame to low. Cool wok, cool oil. We’ll be slowly bringing this up to temperature – there’s no need to soak your peanuts beforehand, the cool oil does the trick.
Stir every 3-4 minutes until the peanuts starts bubbling, ~10 minutes. At first, you really don’t need to go too crazy here. Just stir every once in a while to ensure that the peanuts aren’t scorching at the very bottom of the wok – a low risk, but a risk nonetheless. Once you see bubbles aggressively coming up from the peanuts, that means that the oil’s up over 100C and that the peanuts are expelling their moisture. At that point, you’ll want a more watchful eye.
Grab a beer, stir constantly, and start tasting the peanuts after a couple minutes. Once they taste ‘cooked’, they’re good to go, ~5-10 minutes. Note that the peanuts’ll still be soft when you taste them – they get crunchy a couple minutes after you take them out.
Remove the peanuts, lay out on an oven sheet. Sprinkle over some of your seasoned salt, and let cool down completely. For reference, I believe I used about a teaspoon of the salt… but yeah. Definitely one of those ‘to taste’ situations, sorry about that.
Pickles
So yeah – in a number of regions in China, having a big jar of lacto-fermented pickles lying around is a relatively commonplace occurrence. We do need to get there, and I’ll toss a comment down below with a couple resources on that front, but… we didn’t want this to be our pickle post. That deserves its own whole thing.
So instead, I’ll teach you a Cantonese 24-48 hour quick pickled Daikon. It’s a sweet and sour sort, and it’s pretty damn easy.
Ingredients, Cantonese Quick Pickled Daikon:
Daikon Radish (白萝卜), 1/2 . So yeah, half a Daikon. I know that’s not an exact quality, but this doesn’t have to be an exact science.
Salt, ½ tsp. For purging the Daikon of excess moisture.
Pickling liquid: 250 grams sugar, 250 grams distilled water, 50 grams dark Chinese vinegar (陈醋/香醋), 50 grams rice vinegar (百米醋), 40 grams light soy sauce (生抽), 30 grams dark soy sauce (老抽), optional 1 tsp fish sauce (鱼露), 2 cloves garlic, ~1.5 inches ginger, optional 1 heaven facing or Thai birds eye chili (朝天椒). Mince the garlic and the ginger. Slice the chilis. Fish sauce makes a rare cameo in Southern Chinese cooking – we use it, but there’s no need to go out of your way for it. The chilis are also optional, but we like them.
Process, Cantonese Quick Pickled Daikon:
Peel the Daikon, then slice into a ‘comb’ shape. So this cut in Chinese cooking is called ‘comb shape’. Always tough to explain this kind of thing with the written word, but what you’ll do is first cut the Daikon down hotdog style, then cut into ~1/2 cm semi-circles. Then make little cuts into the Daikon semi-circles, slice in half at the halfway mark, then continue. This is what it looks like in the end – and again, if my crappy explanation didn’t get you there, definitely check out the video before making. The comb shape has two benefits (1) it allows the pickling liquid to better infuse into the Daikon and (2) it kind of looks cool.
Sprinkle over that ½ tsp salt, mix well, and let it sit for ~5 minutes. This purges excess moisture much in the same way it does when you make coleslaw. Also helps remove some of the harsh ‘raw’ taste of the Daikon.
Transfer to a strainer, do a bang up job rinsing. Lay in one evenish layer, then let it dry completely – 2-3 hours. Right, the annoying part – drying. We’ve also sped this up by tossing in front of a fan before. You’ll be fine so long as the Daikon’s dry on the surface.
Make the pickling liquid. Mix together the sugar and the water, then stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Then, add in the remaining ingredients.
Add the Daikon to the liquid. Keep in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours. Should keep up to ~5 days or so… after that point the Daikon starts to get quite dry.
Random aside on the concept of appetizers, feel free to disagree:
Appetizers seem particularly beloved by us Americans, don’t they? It seems a little strange that before I eat my burger we’ll have a ‘starter’ of mini-burgers, yeah? Hell, even Chinese takeout joints in America had to adapt, take a page from Tiki restaurants and serve ‘Pu Pu platters’.
The question – why? In my personal opinion, I believe Americans have a deep seeded desire to eat family-style. The beauty of the appetizer tray is that there’s no order-regret: everyone at the table’s eating the same thing. Even at a higher end restaurants, there’s something about a shared appetizer that feels relaxed, casual, and correct. And it’s precisely this reason why, while I do love Western food as well, I vastly prefer the Chinese restaurant experience – when all the dishes are shared, it makes the whole thing more… communal and fun?
This is why I always roll my eyes a little bit when I see high end ‘modernized’ Chinese restaurants mimicking the structure of a Western restaurant in order to chase that Michelin star. If anything, I’d be much more interested in the roles flipped: I’d love to see Western food served in the same style as Chinese food is. Imagine a restaurant with a round table, a lazy susan, little ‘ganbei’ cups for beer, all serving a variety of large American-style appetizers. That’s what I want right there…