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With their dishes, the Chinese emphasize both color, fragrance, taste, and presentation. While each region has its distinctive flavors, Chinese cuisine always aims for harmony in the combination of spices, ensuring both flavor and health benefits.
Chinese cuisine is divided into 8 major schools with unique characteristics in dishes, cooking techniques, and flavors, including: Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan, Hubei, Fujian, Jiangsu, Henan, and Anhui. Among them, the Shandong, Guangdong, Sichuan, and Jiangsu cuisines are the longstanding and renowned Four Great Schools of Chinese Cuisine.
Sondong Cuisine School
Sweet and Sour Carp Sculpture Sondong Style
Sondong Cuisine School is considered the foremost school of Chinese cuisine with an incredibly refined and long-standing culinary tradition. Sondong cuisine often carries warm, rich flavors characterized by frying, deep-frying, grilling, steaming, and the abundant use of onions and garlic in cooking.
Braised Snails Sondong Style
When visiting Sondong, you cannot miss the two main dishes that define the distinctive flavor of Sondong cuisine: sweet and sour carp and braised snails. With unique presentation, eye-catching colors, and incredibly delicious flavors, these dishes are capable of conquering even the most discerning guests.
Guangdong Cuisine School
Guangdong Cuisine
Guangdong cuisine can be considered the most versatile school in terms of cooking methods, with up to 21 different cooking techniques. Guangdong cuisine emphasizes four main elements: aroma, color, taste, and shape, with extremely strict demands for dishes: they must be tender without being raw, fresh without being rough, fatty without being greasy, refreshing without being bland, with spring and summer dishes being refreshing and autumn and winter dishes being warm and rich in flavor.
Roasted Cantonese Pig
Moreover, Cantonese cuisine can be considered a mobile culinary culture as it constantly evolves in flavor, presentation, ingredient usage, and preparation methods by incorporating elements from other culinary traditions. It learns, adapts, and even incorporates Western culinary techniques into traditional dishes, resulting in incredibly unique flavors. Signature dishes include Three Treasures Dragon Phoenix Soup and roasted pig.
Sichuan Cuisine School
Distinctive Sichuan Cuisine
If you're a fan of spicy dishes, then Sichuan cuisine is a perfect choice for you. Sichuan dishes captivate diners with their intense spicy flavor, enriched by chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and black pepper. There's a saying: “The flavor is in China, but the taste is in Sichuan,” which speaks volumes about the influence of Sichuan cuisine in China. Anywhere in China, diners can find the taste of Sichuan cuisine in the local dishes. Chili peppers in Sichuan are used with great versatility, sometimes as the main ingredient and sometimes as a supporting ingredient, and are most commonly used as a seasoning. In addition to its versatility, Sichuan dishes also use chili peppers flexibly in quantity and adjust them according to the season or diners' preferences. Sichuan dishes are not only rich and flavorful but also have a refreshing, fresh, dense, and elegant taste, making diners consistently praise and remember them. Signature dishes of Sichuan cuisine: dried fish maw stew and fragrant spicy crab.
Jiangnan Cuisine School
Steamed Jiangnan Crab
Known for its picturesque scenery in China, Jiangnan cuisine is also considered artistic masterpieces with extremely elaborate and eye-catching presentation. Jiangnan dishes emphasize the use of knives in cooking, delicate dishes, and a mild flavor profile. In particular, Jiangnan dishes do not use soy sauce to preserve the color of the dishes and often use a lot of sugar with vinegar in cooking to create a distinctive sweet and sour flavor. The dishes you must try when visiting Jiangnan are: steamed meat and steamed crab.
The culinary landscape of China is continually evolving with various culinary trends merging, yet the distinct flavors of the four great schools of cuisine are still preserved.
Tranquil Serenity
Image source: internet
