chinese recipes are here to stay!!

i also love chinese recipes. my dad is chinese and every time he prepares a chinese dish, i am the first one to stay in the dining room. however, i dont know how to cook any chinese foods. i know korean dishes. =)

I'll share with you one secret on fried rice my chinese friend taught me which i do and became a standard whenever we eat fried rice at home, first make sure that the rice is cold, hot rice makes it stick together when frying, also make sure that you mush the cold rice with a fork,spoon or whatever and the grains are separated individually, ever noticed when you eat in a Chinese that their fried rice is separated into individual grains instead of large and wet lumps. When frying the rice and you think that you are almost done , break an egg into the rice and mix it as fast as you can, turn off the fire and cover the dish, observe that the egg is totally gone and each individual rice grain is totally covered somehow by the egg substance, also consider putting small pieces of charcoal roasted pork shreded into tiny pieces, this and the egg will will give the dish that distinctive chinese flavor and odor. This will off course only work if you know the basic of sauteeing first in garlic ,onion in a wok together with the rice, you may als oconsider adding soy sauce, pepper . salt, msg Not the healthiest of dish though but who cares if you just eat it once in a while to satisfy your craving, and who ever said that chinese cooking is good for the health?

I love Chinese food as well, it is incredibly tasty, so I totally know what you mean. But I do not think the secret ingredient is the same in all dishes, so it depends on what dish it is. But they do use a lot of soya as the base of their sauces, I know that much. And they add a small amount of sugar to a lot of sauces as well, I think.

My husband is Chinese. He cooks under big fire. He uses a lot of spices like yellow ginger, curry, garlic, 5herb combination of spices that come in 1 tiny pack, peppers, mushroom and other stuff that can be bought only in Chinatown. He always put soy sauce and sugar instead of MSG. He makes use of Chinese dark soya sauce instead of the traditional Filipino soy sauce. He adds sauces available by Lee Kum Kee.