6 Chinese restaurant dishes you can make at home! ❤️ | #AtHome #WithMe | Marion's Kitchen

Just look at that red, peanutty, porky sauce. This is definitely the noodle soup you guys need to know how to make. My version of Shanghai hot sauce noodles. You guys know me by now, I like all things noodle. Noodle soups, spicy, porky, all the good things. This one combines everything that's good about those things into the one dish. Yay, so exciting. I love this one. The savoury porky topping on this is like nothing else. Let's get started on that savoury porky topping first of all. Now we want to start off with a little bit of tofu. I've got some firm tofu here and I just want to cut that in half. I find so much joy in slicing tofu. I don't know why, it's just pleasurable. Now, across like this. I want a nice sort of small dice here. Now let's get into the wok. The defining character of this dish to me is the beautiful sheen of bright red chilli oil that magically appears in this sauce. And you need to start off with some oil to make that happen. Now some ginger. Some garlic. Just want to give that enough time for the garlic and ginger to start to become very fragrant. Now add the peanuts. Now I'm going to add in the pork. Here in Thailand, the fatty pork or what I call the good stuff comes standard. If you're using a leaner pork here, just be aware you won't get as much of that beautiful sort of red sheen on the top of the soup at the end. So you might want to add a little bit more oil. Now I want to let this pork sizzle away so that we render out some of that good fatty stuff that has all the flavour. Now I need to add in the dou ban jiang. So this is a bean and chilli paste that you're going to need to search out at an Asian grocer or have a look online. But this is what gives us the beautiful red colour and also characteristic savoury, salty umami flavour in this dish. Now I know not all of you are going to be able to get a hold of this. So what you can do is use Korean gochujang paste at a pinch. It's going to be a slightly different flavour. It's going to give you a good flavour nonetheless and that really beautiful red colour. Now the real secret to cooking this dish I think is being a little bit patient in between adding the different ingredients. I really want the chilli paste to kind of cling to and really season that pork mix before I add anything else. So I'm going to let that simmer away just a couple of minutes before I start adding extra bits and pieces. Okay so see how we've got that beautiful red oil starting to collect in pools on top of that yummy pork? That's what we're looking for. Now I'm going to add some extra seasoning here. I've got some soy sauce, some sugar and then I want to deglaze that pan with a little bit of Chinese Shaoxing wine. You could leave the cooking wine out if you want to but I love the little bit of extra flavour it gives. Now again allow that pork to really take on all of those seasonings and the flavour and you'll be able to smell as it cooks the cooking wine aroma will start to dissipate. That's what I'm waiting for. So now I'm going to add in some chicken stock and just a little bit to start with. And again let's let this pork do its thing. We're giving a lot of love to this sauce guys but it's going to be totally worth it in the end. So let that simmer for another 3 or 4 minutes until the liquid has almost all but evaporated. Alright so the one problem with this dish is having to wait around for so long when it smells so good. We're nearly there guys. Alright some more chicken stock here. Look at that colour, so gorgeous. Now I want to let this bubble away for 30 minutes to really develop all those awesome flavours. Come back soon. So my pork is now a few minutes away. I'm going to get my noodles done. Now I'm using these Chinese wheat noodles here. Basically you're looking for a noodle that's about the sort of thickness of angel hair pasta. Into some boiling water. Now these don't take long to cook and there is nothing worse than an overcooked soggy strand of noodle. So be vigilant. Now when these are just tender, I'm going to pull them out. Then I don't always do this but I quite like the flavour of sesame oil in this dish. So I'm going to toss a little bit of sesame oil in here. Mix those noodles through and that's going to stop them from sticking together as well. Now these go straight into my serving bowl. Now let's take a look at our beautiful porky sauce. You can see the liquid here has reduced by about a third, which means we're getting some good concentration there. The flavour, let me just try. Wow, that is so good guys. This is the kind of soup you need to be eating regularly, I think. Truly will make you very happy. Now I'm going to pop in my cubes of tofu now. I like to put them at the end because I don't want them to sort of boil and disintegrate in the soup as it cooks. I'm going to do a little bit of adjusting here. I'm going to add a little bit more chilli powder for my liking and a pinch of salt. Now we're ready to get this good stuff into a bowl. A little sprinkling of spring onion just to finish everything off. There you go guys. Look at that little or large, in my case, bowl of heaven right there. Noodle soups make me so happy, especially spicy ones. That beautiful chilli pork flavour, that soup broth is so incredible. It really hits you in the back of the throat with some spice as well. So good. And then the peanuts, I think the peanuts really kind of make this dish so good guys. You really need to make this one. Okay guys, here we go. This is my ultimate Chinese lemon chicken. It's fresher, it's lighter and we're going to make it all happen without that stodgy Chinese takeout batter. But first, let's marinate the chicken. So I've got some chicken breast here and I'm going to add some light soy sauce. And just the egg white. Using that egg white instead of the whole egg is going to keep everything lighter, which is what we're going for. And then I want a little splash of Chinese Shaoxing wine. Now this is a really fragrant Chinese cooking wine. If you can't find it, just use dry sherry. But a lot of major supermarkets have this in the Asian section now, or just head to your Asian grocer. And you just want to mix that through. Now give that a fairly robust mixing. You do want to break up that egg white. And you can see that this mixture is really quite wet. And that's going to be really important a little bit later when we're making the crispy coating for the outside of our chicken. Now we just let that chicken luxuriate for a little while. About 20 minutes. Now for the lemon sauce itself. I'm going to keep the lemon part and the rest of the sauce separate. We're going to add the lemon a little bit later. I'm going to start off with some chicken stock. And we want some soy sauce. And sugar. Just mix that through a little. Now for the lemon. I'm going to use the lemon zest as well. That's going to give us a really lovely tangy hit for our sauce. Now the juice. Just scoop out some of those little stray seeds. And now for the technique that's really special here. We're going to make our crispy coating with zero batter. So I'm going to pour all of the chicken and all of that liquid into the flour. And that extra liquid, that's what's going to make all these little craggly little bits all around our chicken and make that really crispy. So you'll see what I mean when I mix that through. And just smoosh and massage all of that sauce and the flour together. Now just pick up these individual pieces. Give them a bit of a squeeze. Make sure we've got lots of little craggly bits sticking to each piece. Now just gently shake off any excess flour from that chicken. And goes into some hot oil. There's something so deliciously satisfying about frying chicken. Now don't overcrowd your pan. Just add in enough so that every little piece has their own little bit of personal space. And these will take about three minutes until they're lovely and golden. And look at that. Look at those crispy little crunchy bits that we've got on the outside of our chicken. Ah, so good. And now for the final part. Get your wok nice and hot. Add in some oil. Some garlic. Finely grated ginger. Just give that a bit of a mix. And then we add in the sauce. Stir that through. Just make sure all of that sugar's dissolved. And then we're just going to simmer this for a few minutes. Let it bubble away and just thicken up a little bit and develop some flavours. And now for lemon juice. We've saved that till last because that's going to keep it really nice and fresh and tangy. If we added it in at the beginning, it would lose all of that beautiful flavour. And then straight away, we want to add in our mixture of cornstarch and water. And then look at that. Just like magic, we have a beautiful, thick, glossy lemon sauce. Now for the chicken. Stir all of that through. And look at how amazing and glossy and beautiful that looks. Just divine. And then to finish off, we want a few little decorative lemon slices. And some spring onion. And a final sprinkling of sesame seeds. This is the fried rice my childhood dreams are made of. It's a very special, to me anyway, Chinese sausage and egg fried rice. Everyone has that favourite childhood dish that their mum or their grandma or their family used to make for them. For me, it's this very, very simple Thai-style fried rice. And yet, the combination of the flavours and the aromas and everything are just one of those childhood memories that I just adore. Let's get started on the Chinese sausage part first. Because this is, I think, the real crux of this recipe for me. This is the Chinese sausage, also called lap cheong. This is like a sweet pork flavour. It is a cured pork. It's shelf-stable. So you can find it in the Asian section of a lot of supermarkets or from your Asian grocer or try online as well. It's really worth seeking out. Nothing else really has the same flavour. I want a couple of these and some very thin slices here. You can see that inside, it's a very firm sausage. And it really does have this beautiful porkiness. Those of you who have been watching my channel for a long time now would have met my mum, Noi, by now. Or Mama Noi. She's very famously known now. I grew up in a half-Thai, half-Australian household. Hence my Australian accent. But this fried rice dish, along with so many of my mum's other recipes as well, were favourites in my household. This is my gorgeous mum. This is my dad. Look how spunky my mum was when she was little. So cool. And to us, food was always the most important thing in our family. We loved to eat it, to travel to eat it, to talk about it, to cook it. I think this is where this passion for food that I have now has always come from. Just osmosis from the most amazing mother cook there is. Sausage is done. Let's get a couple of the other things ready. I want some onion as well. I want some spring onion here as well. I think the combination of the 2 onions is important here. The spring onion kind of adds a more intense onion-y flavour. Whereas the brown onion kind of turns a little bit sweet in the dish. Now I also want some eggs. Then let's talk about the rice. Being in a Thai family, Thai jasmine rice was always our choice at home. You could use any kind of long grain rice that you've got. I like to make it the day before if I can and keep it in the fridge. That makes it kind of loose and firm. I've also got a video on how to make rice, especially for fried rice on my YouTube channel if you want to check that out. Now we're ready to get everything into the wok. I want to get this wok smoking hot, people. I want it to really char and give that kind of smoky flavour to the fried rice. Some oil. In go the onions and the garlic. I just stir-fry these for about half a minute until the onion just starts to colour. Now that gorgeous ruby red Chinese sausage. Again, give that sausage some time to get some colour and some char on it. Good stir-frying or good fried rice making is all about time and temperature in the wok. You can see that kind of colour that I'm talking about there on the onion and on that sausage as well. Now I'm going to push everything to the side and add in a little bit of extra oil. Then in goes my egg. You want to give this egg a chance to form its own little omelette here. This is in lieu of doing the omelette separately, which I find is such a waste of time when you can just get it all done properly in the pan at once. I like to just move the egg around, swirl the pan, try and give it as much heat contact as possible. When it's almost set, now we flip it over. Mix everything through. Time for the rice. Soy sauce. Fish sauce. For me, always a non-negotiable for Thai fried rice, a little bit of white pepper. Look at that glorious kind of autumn colour. I love that. Just makes you want to dig right in. So simple and yet just wait till you try this, guys. Generous helping on the plate. Of course, every Thai fried rice needs a little bit of garnish as well. For me, that has to include a cucumber. In the style of my beautiful mother, I am going to make a decorative cucumber because that's the way I remember it as a child. It's just not the same without it. Use your julienne peeler if you've got one. Just cut the skin here all over the cucumber. You've got to be happy with that pretty little shape. Just makes me smile. That goes on the plate. Another non-negotiable for me with Thai fried rice, a little bit of lime juice. That goes there. There you go, guys. This is my childhood fried rice. Really simple dish. Every time I eat this, it's like my mum's right here giving me a hug or yelling at me. One or the other. You guys have seen her videos. I want some lime juice on here. Got to get some pork and some egg here. This to me is like the ultimate comfort food. Beautiful eggy egg and that pork with little sweet pops throughout the rice. Just perfect. Mum, are you going to come and eat some? Yes. I made it like you make it. Oh, okay. Like my dish. Oh, I didn't say you could have a cucumber. I like to eat mine with this one. I know you like it with the cucumber. Very tasty. Is that pass the test? Pass the test. I learned from the best. Sticky honey caramelised prawns. This is my lighter, crispier remake of that restaurant classic, honey prawns. I was always the kid ordering the honey prawns in the Chinese restaurant when I was little. One of my childhood favourites. Today, I'm going to be doing like this sort of lighter, crispier kind of version that you guys can make at home really easily. First off, we're going to start off with the prawns. I've got some really beautiful large tiger prawns here. But whatever prawns or shrimp that are local in your area, that's fine to use. I'm a tails-on kind of girl, but you could take them off if you like. Now I'm going to add a really good decent pinch of salt. Then I want some Chinese Shaoxing or cooking wine. This is not only going to add some flavour, but it's also going to help crisp things up when those volatile alcohol molecules hit the hot oil. Because I want this marinade to have quite a lot of liquid, and you'll see why a little bit later on, I'm going to add an egg white to this as well. Just mix that up. Just set those prawns aside to marinate while we make our honey sauce. The base of our sauce is going to be some chicken stock and some soy sauce. Of course, because it's honey prawns, we're going to add some honey. Even though we've got the honey for sweetness, I do find that you need a little bit of white sugar in here as well. The white sugar is going to turn into more of a deep, dark caramel than just the plain honey. You'll see what I mean when we put it into the wok. Give that a really good mix. There's going to be a lot of that honey and sugar stuck to the bottom of the bowl, so make sure that's all mixed through. Getting back to our prawns. Tip the whole lot, all of that marinade liquid and all the prawns into your flour. This is where we make our crispy coating. Traditionally, the restaurant version has that thick batter around the outside of the prawn. We're doing away with that for my version. I'm just going to have a really firm, crispy coating on the prawn, instead of a kind of stodgy batter. Because of the extra liquid in our marinade combining with that flour, you can see we've got all these little craggly bits and pieces stuck to our prawn. That's going to get super crispy once it hits the hot oil. Time to fry our little beauties. Into some hot oil. Carefully pop your prawns in there. Just keep them moving a little bit. Don't let them stick to the bottom of the pan. Just keep flipping these over a little. Making sure they're getting an even golden colour all over. Look how crispy they're turning already. Once these are a beautiful golden, crispy colour. Look at that. Take them out and drain them on some paper towel. Check out all of that crispy, crunchy goodness. So good. The last thing we need to do before we hit the wok is prepare our spring onions. I'm going to slice the pale, thicker part of the spring onion. I'm going to stir-fry that part first. I need them separate. Then this nice, lovely green part, we're going to use that part at the end. Here we go. Now the part where everything gets all sticky and delish. We need a hot wok and a little bit of oil. Then throw the pale part of the spring onion in. Then in goes that stir-fry honey sauce that we made earlier. Make sure you get every last bit of honey and sugar from the bottom of that bowl. Just let that simmer just for a few seconds until the sugar dissolves. Now we go in with a little bit of cornstarch that's mixed with water. This is where the magic happens. We're just going to simmer this. Give it a little bit of a stir until everything gets really thick and glossy. Will you have a look at this? This is what we're looking for. Look at that gloss, the honey, the sticky caramel, all the good things. Now we go in with our prawns. Once each of our guys is coated in that beautiful, glossy sauce, I'm going to add some spring onion and some sesame seeds. There we have it, honey prawns. A little different to my childhood restaurant version. Can I tell you, these are going to be so good. My 8-year-old self is very happy. Thanks for watching guys. If you've got any questions or comments, leave them below. If you enjoyed the video, why not hit subscribe and click that little bell button so you never miss out on another one of my recipes. Wow, would you check out that glossy, sticky chicken. My goodness, this is the chicken that dreams are made of. For that sweet glaze, we're going to start off with a little bit of hoisin sauce, and some honey, and some dark soy sauce because that's going to give us that really lovely mahogany colour. And some oyster sauce. Now some garlic. Then finally, some Chinese five-spice. I'm using my homemade Chinese five-spice. I've got a recipe for this on my YouTube channel. Just two good spoonfuls of that and give that a mix. Such a simple marinade and it is going to do magical things. Now for the chicken. To get that really glossy stickiness, you really want chicken pieces with the skin on. Whether that's chicken breast or chicken thigh, if you're having trouble finding the pieces with the skin on, just take a whole chicken and you can break that down yourself. But the important part is that chicken skin. This needs to marinate for... Overnight is best, but at least 2-3 hours. Let's see what we've got here. These chicken pieces have turned a beautiful, dark, deep colour. Almost looks like duck. That's how beautiful and dark they are. The best setup for cooking these is to line your baking tray with foil. This marinade is sweet, so it will burn and stick to the bottom of your tray. No one likes to deal with that when they're washing up. Put down some foil. Put a baking rack on top. Then place those chicken pieces nice and evenly spread out. First off, these just need 10 minutes in the oven. While my chicken is cooking, I like to get the rest of my dinner ready. I've just got some Chinese broccoli here or it's called gai lan. I love this because it has a really yummy, crunchy texture and great green vegetable flavour. But any kind of Asian green is fine. The easiest way to do this is I pop it into a bowl. Pour in a little bit of water. Then cover that up and just microwave it for 2 minutes. It's done, steamed, ready to go. I can smell that chicken. It's almost ready for a basting. I'm going to make a little caramel-based sauce here. I just need some honey. I'm going to add in a little bit of dark soy sauce and just mix that around. These guys are nearly dressed for the party. They just need a little bit more love. I'm just going to baste them with some of that mixture. That colour is just so tempting. Back in the oven for another 5 minutes until they're cooked through and just a little charry on the edges. Let's have a look at our greens. Beautifully steamed. I just want to serve these on some steamed rice. Now time for that chicken. What an amazing colour and sticky and glossy. So joyful. This one has all the goods guys. Spicy toasted sesame sauce. Juicy shredded chicken and some cucumber as well. This is the authentic version of Bang Bang Chicken. The number one key factor in making this dish amazing is the poached chicken. Poached chicken has a really bad name. It can end up really dry and really stringy. In our case, we want to make it really juicy. Still shredded but really juicy. I'm going to show you a couple of techniques for getting that just right. We also want to flavour the chicken as it cooks. I'm going to start off with some ginger. Nice chunky slices. Because I want to maximise the amount of ginger flavour I get, I'm just going to bruise these pieces a little bit. They go into my saucepan with some water. I want some garlic. Same again, just bruise those a little bit. Then some final aromatics, just some spring onion. Again, because I want to maximise the amount of flavour I'm getting out of this spring onion in a short amount of time, I'm just going to slice them a little bit so they can release all of their aroma. Now for the chicken. I've got chicken breasts that are about 200 grams each. This water is just room temperature. I'm putting those in. I'm going to turn the heat on to high. What we want to do is keep an eye out on that water for when it starts to bubble. For the minute, I'm going to let it go and start getting on with the rest of my ingredients. I want some Sichuan peppercorns and just a little scant teaspoon into just a dry frying pan. I want to heat these guys up until they're beautifully aromatic. These are ready to be ground up. You want a really nice fine powder, just like that. I'm going to put that into a small bowl. This is going to be the start of our dressing. The next all-important ingredient for our sauce is toasted sesame seeds. Just love the beautiful nutty kind of flavour they add to this dish. Just like when you're toasting pine nuts or peanuts, just keep them moving in the pan and don't walk away. They burn really easily. These have a beautiful golden sun-kissed colour. Now for the rest of the ingredients for the sauce. A little bit of soy sauce. Sesame seeds are hot. A little bit of sesame oil. Some vinegar. If you can get what's called Chinese black vinegar or dark vinegar from your Asian grocer, that would be the more traditional vinegar to use. I'm just using a plain old white vinegar because I know that'll be easier for you guys to find. Some sugar. Some salt. Now I'm going to use some of my homemade chili oil. I love this stuff. A lot of you guys have made my chili oil. I know because you've been sending me photos, and telling me all the different dishes you've been making. You can find the video for this on my YouTube channel. It really is a next level up from the store-bought chili oil. It's full of spices like star anise, cinnamon, and there's bay leaves as well. It's got a really big spicy kick which I love. Let's see how we're going with our dressing. I love this one guys. It has all the stuff going on here. I've got the chili. I've got the Sichuan peppercorns getting all tingly. So good. Now all the while, I'm keeping an eye on my chicken. I can see it's just started to bubble, the liquid. Now let's have a look. I don't want this to boil rapidly. If you've got a rapid boil, that's when you're going to dry out your chicken breast. Just that little hint of bubble. I'm going to turn the heat down now. I'm going to let that cook for 8 minutes. I'm going to put the timer on. Just because when I'm at home and I have the baby running around, I don't put the timer on. I forget things. So you might be the same as me. 8 minutes. While we're waiting, we can finish off our sauce. We just want some spring onions. Just a fine slice on those. It's smelling so good already. I can smell that lovely sesame and the spring onions. Okay, this guy is almost ready to party. But at the end, we're just going to add a little bit of that chicken cooking liquid. Now my timer still hasn't gone off. So I'm going to do my cucumber next. I want some really fine strips here. I'm going to start off by cutting the cucumber on the diagonal. Grabbing a few pieces and then just slicing lengthways. That gives you a really nice, fine shape. Now spread that cucumber out onto your serving plate. Ready for your chicken. So I like to keep everything quite cold for this dish. So I'll put this into the fridge while I'm waiting for the chicken to cook. Okay, step 1 of the cooking part of the chicken done. So it's not quite done yet. What we're going to do is turn the heat off. Then put the lid on and let this keep cooking super gently in that residual heat for another 10 minutes. This is the key part guys. Instead of rapidly boiling that chicken until it's really dry, this gentle technique is going to give you a really juicy, really yummy poached chicken. Okay, let's have a look at our chicken. I can smell that lovely ginger and garlic and spring onion. So comforting. Take that chicken out. Because I don't want it to cook anymore and dry out, I'm going to put my chicken pieces into a bowl of cold water. Also, this is not meant to be a hot kind of dish. It's more like a salad kind of dish. I don't want my chicken to be too hot. Just let those guys cool down until they're cool to the touch. While we're waiting, I'm going to finish off our dressing with some of this cooking liquid. So that's going to have all that ginger flavour, chicken flavour, garlic, spring onion. Now we've arrived at the banging part. Some of you might have been wondering why this is called bang bang chicken. This is why. Because the street store vendors who originally made this dish would use a utensil to bang the chicken to prepare it. I think it does 2 things. Of course, it helps you to break down the chicken, making it easier to shred. But it also kind of bruises the chicken meat and allows a lot more of that dressing to seep in. I don't know why, that's just my opinion. But I do think it's the best way to go about it. So use a rolling pin and just bang away. As I'm doing this, I can see a lot of chicken juices sort of coming out onto my board. That's a great thing. I can see that this chicken is really nice and juicy. Now we just shred that chicken into really fine little strips. Now this chicken goes out onto our cucumber. Then we get our awesome dressing and just drizzle lots of that over everything. You cannot have too much of this stuff if you like spicy things. Then of course, because I'm always OTT with the spice level, I'm going to add a little further drizzle of chilli oil. There you have it guys. This is one for all of the spice lovers out there. If you love hot, spicy, numbing kind of situations, this is the dish for you.