Cooking tools make our cooking lives easier.
This is an introduction to some of the common chinese cooking utensils and tools that can be found in the modern chinese kitchen.
Pots
You can cook many yummy chinese soups with a single large soup pot. But there are some cooking pots that can make chinese soup making easier. You may even have some of these soup cookers at home.
1. The slow cooker
Also known as the crock pot, this is one of my favourite cooking pot for making chinese soups. It is especially good for simmering soup. Read more about slow cooker and get some slow cooker soup recipes.
2. The thermal cooker
The thermal cooker is also branded as the magic pot because it seems to cook on its own as if by magic. It is the coolest energy saving soup pot. Read more about the thermal cooker.
3. The chinese double boiling jar
This little neat ceramic soup pot is used to cook nourishing tonics by a cooking technique known as double boiling. Read more about the chinese double boiler.
4. The electric rice cooker
A versatile kitchen appliance for cooking rice, congee and chinese soups. Read more about the rice cooker.
Chinese Lunch boxes
Chinese lunch boxes consists of tingkats, vacuum lunch boxes and thermal flasks. I picked food containers that can be used to pack chinese soups for lunch and even for picnics. Read more about various types of chinese lunch boxes, especially how these portable food containers can make an otherwise messy lunch item a breeze to cart around.
Small Accessories
1. Steaming wire plate
When I was growing up, there is no such thing as a electric steamer. When we need to steam food, we use the good ol' wok or a big pot to do it. The tricky thing about using them to steam food is how to place the food properly above the boiling water. I was told by my grandmother that they used to use plates as steaming bases. Just place the plates face-down into the wok and balance the plate of food to be steamed on top. Later, someone cleverly invented the wire plate which has 3 legs (which is why it is fondly known as the tripod). I don't know why they decided on 3 legs rather than 4. What I do know is that it provides better stability and support.
Here are 2 steaming racks selling at Amazon:
- Chrome plated steel footed wire plate steam rack, size 10"
This rack has long legs and is suitable for use with deep pots.
- 5 5/8" Kitchen Cookware Stainless Steel Wire Steaming Rack Stand
This rack has very short legs and is suitable for use with woks or smaller pots.
2. Plate Grabber
This little device grabs and removes steaming plates or bowls from the steamer or wok without your hands getting too close to the heat. It has the same function as the hot dish grabber that grabs hot items from the oven but it is designed to grab dishes vertically out from a pot or wok rather than horizontally from an oven.
Plate grabbers can come with 2 or 3 arms. I personally prefer the 3-arm plate grabber because it grips the plate firmly and requires less room to maneouver which means that you can use a smaller pot and thus use less water and energy to steam food.
I could only find a 2-arm plate grabber at Amazon. It is Helen Chen's Asian Kitchen Stainless Steel Plate Retriever Tongs. Tongs isn't really the right term for this but well, I have to admit that it is a challenge translating chinese cooking utensils. This is what it looks like.
Cookbooks
Cookbooks are indispensable cooking tools (^_^). Check out some of my recommendations.
A final note
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