4 Top Recipes You Loved this Year

Wow, can you believe another year has come and gone? I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas season spent with your family and friends. Now, more than ever, we are all feeling the pinch, but that doesn't mean we have to eat unhealthy or highly processed foods. With just a few Chinese ingredients, you can make delicious Chinese food at home, and it's easier than you think. These four favourites of 2025 are my easiest and tastiest and inexpensive recipes that you've just got to try. Kung Pao chicken, egg fried rice, classic Chinese greens, and chicken chow mein. Happy New Year. We'll see you in 2026. We're going to start off by marinating the chicken. I have about a pound and a half of boneless, skinless thighs, and I cut them up into about one-inch pieces, bite-sized pieces. You can also use chicken breast if you prefer, and you would marinate it the same. I am using one tablespoon of soy sauce, light soy or regular soy, one tablespoon of Shaoxing wine. Shaoxing wine is a rice wine. If you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use a regular rice wine or a sherry or white wine, something to just add depth of flavour. I'm also using a tablespoon of oyster sauce. Oyster sauce kind of gives it its umami, also deepness of flavour. Just one tablespoon of that. I'm adding a teaspoon of dark soy sauce just for colour. If you don't have dark soy sauce, you can just add a little bit more of the soy sauce. A teaspoon of sugar just to balance out the flavours. It doesn't make it sweet. You can omit the sugar if you don't want it. Just know that it might be a little bit more salty. We're adding about a tablespoon of cornstarch. Corn starch helps to velvet the meat to make it more tender. I'm also adding about a tablespoon of water. This is just going to marinate for as long as it takes for me to prepare the rest of the other ingredients. That's it. If you want to, you can also marinate overnight. Totally up to you. As you can see, I just used the basic sauces that I normally have in my kitchen to make most of the dishes for Chinese cooking. Check out that video for Cantonese basic sauces. While I have all my sauces out, I might as well prepare the sauce that we're going to use for the stir-fry. I have a teaspoon of sugar still in the bowl. I'm going to add all of the same sauces. A tablespoon of soy sauce. A tablespoon of Shaoxing wine. I'm almost out. A tablespoon of oyster sauce. A teaspoon of dark soy. And I'm also going to add about half a teaspoon of chili oil. Well, and the bits that are in it. So maybe about that much. Totally up to you. If you can take it a little bit more spicy, by all means. If you don't want the spice, just don't put it in. Give this a stir. Let's make sure that sugar is dissolved at the bottom. And again, the sugar is there to balance out all the flavors. My Kung Pao chicken is a little bit sweet. It's a little bit spicy and savory. So you do want to have a little bit of sugar in there to add some sweetness. Setting this aside. I'm using one onion that I'm going to cut into pieces. I also have three green onions. You can use more or less. Up to you. I found them a little bit small, so I thought I'd use three. I'm going to cut this part to add to these onions to cook at the same time, because I want them to be cooked a little bit more. And the rest is going to be used for, well, added at the end, like garnish. Set these aside. I also have one red pepper. Now you can add whatever vegetables you like for your Kung Pao chicken. I'm going to keep it simple and just use a red pepper. And take out the pils and the seeds. You can add whatever vegetables you like. Celery or carrots, broccoli, or I don't know what else. Zucchini. And if that's what you like in your Kung Pao chicken, by all means, add what you like. Also using three cloves of garlic that I'm going to mince. I'm just going to remove the skin. And I find that if we bash it a little bit, first of all, the skin is easier to come off, but also it's easier to chop up. I also prefer mincing with a knife versus putting it through a garlic press for Chinese cooking, because I find that the garlic can burn quite easily since we cook at such a high heat. So in bigger chunks, it's less likely to burn. Feel free to chop up the garlic as finely or as chunky as you like. I'm also using a couple of dried chili peppers, and they look like this. I am going to remove the seeds because that's where all the spiciness is. So I'm just going to shake out the seeds. If you like it spicy, you can leave the seeds in there. It's totally up to you. You can use more if you want more spice, but remember we also added chili oil to the sauce. So be aware of how much chili you're actually adding. Heating up my wok on a medium high. I'm going to stir fry about a quarter cup of peanuts. These are already roasted, but I think by adding it to the wok and stirring them up, it adds a little bit more flavor. Once you see that wisp of smoke, add two tablespoons of oil. I'm using avocado cooking oil today. I'm actually going to turn this down a little bit. I don't want my peanuts to burn. I'm also adding just a teaspoon of sesame oil. Stir fry this for about a minute or two, just until you start to smell them. We're going to take them off, put them into a paper towel on a plate just for them to absorb some of the extra oil. Okay, adding another tablespoon of oil. You can use any kind of oil that has a high cooking temperature. And we're adding our chicken. We'll let this sear on one side before moving it around. So a high cooking temperature oil would be like a canola oil, vegetable oil, peanut oil, avocado oil. I would probably avoid olive oil because it doesn't have as high a smoking temperature and it might add some extra flavor. But if you are going to use olive oil, just make sure you turn down your heat so that you're not burning your oil. Flip them over and sear the other side before stir frying it more. If you don't have a wok, you can always use a frying pan. I just like using the wok because I can cook a lot more at once and stir fry it easily. But if you're doing it in a frying pan, you might want to split up the chicken into two separate batches so that you don't overcrowd and so that you can get a good sear on each side. I'm going to turn off the heat while I take the chicken out. You want to make sure that your chicken is completely cooked through. What I like about using chicken thighs is that I can cook it a little bit longer and it'll still be really tender and juicy. Turning my wok back on, turning it down to a medium and adding just a tablespoon of cooking oil again, adding my chili and also my garlic. Once you start to smell the garlic, it should only take about 30 seconds or so, we're going to add our onions and red pepper. And you're going to cook this until it's tender or the texture that you like. Just take a couple of minutes for me here. All right, adding the chicken back in with the juices. I'm also going to add our sauce at this time. Looks and smells so good, you guys. Adding about a quarter cup of water. I'm also scraping up the brown bits at the bottom of the wok. That will add to the overall flavor of the dish. I'm just going to make a cornstarch slurry here. About a tablespoon of cornstarch. Almost out. I'm running out of everything today, which is good. It means I'm cooking at home. And about a tablespoon of water. Make sure the water is cool or room temperature so that the cornstarch will dissolve. Okay, adding to the middle. Give it a good stir. Get this shiny sauce that's covering all of your chicken and vegetables. I'm going to add our peanuts back in and green onions. All right, just until everything is heated through. Turning off the heat. And I just wanted to say, if you wanted to add some tongue numbing effect to your Kung Pao chicken, which often they use Sichuan pepper, you can totally add this too. So I have it in powder form and I'm not going to add it because we already have added so much chili in the dish. But if you wanted to, you can totally do that. All right, let's get this into a serving bowl. Look at how much it makes, guys. When you get takeout, you're not going to get this much, that's for sure. Chicken was about 10 bucks for me today. I know chicken in Canada is expensive. My bell pepper was about $2.50 and everything else I had at home. So let's say this dish was $15. Telling you guys, this recipe is so fast, I'm going to heat up my pan right now. So I've got a nonstick pan and we're going to heat it up to a medium high. And I'm going to add one tablespoon of avocado oil. Just use a neutral tasting oil. And I have two stalks of green onion. I'm going to chop them up. I'm going to separate the white and the light green parts from the dark green. I'm using three eggs today, but you can use two or three, depending on how much fried rice you're trying to make. Put this into a bowl. These are also extra large eggs. My mom always told me that when you're making fried rice, if you don't have enough rice, just put in more stuff. If you don't have enough stuff, put in more rice. Pretty simple concept. Give this a beat. And our pan should be hot enough by now. Add the eggs. This is also a part I always forget, just to season the eggs a little bit. Just a pinch of salt. Using kosher salt. And I'm going to move the eggs to the side. Adding in another tablespoon of oil. And I'm using two to three cups of day-old rice that's cold and dry from the fridge. And we like to use day-old rice because it's drier. It will absorb the flavors of whatever you're putting into your fried rice. But we're keeping it super simple today. Just want to heat that rice through so that the grains separate. In my excitement, I totally forgot to add the green onions. So doing that now. Just the white and light green parts. And we're going to start moving the rice around. So we always have leftover white rice in the fridge. I always make extra just in case we want to make a fried rice. And just the simple egg fried rice. Breaking up the egg now. Just give you a little bit of variety, not just having leftover white rice. You can just turn this into lunch or a side. I'm going to turn the heat down to medium. I'm adding about two teaspoons of soy sauce. Just keep stirring until all the rice is evenly browned. If you want your rice to be a little bit darker in color, you can also add a little bit of dark soy sauce. I think even dude can do this. The rice is almost all separated now. Everything's been heated through. And if you wanted to, of course, you can add meat or vegetables. Again, we're just keeping it super simple and showing you just how quickly this comes together. It's even faster than instant ramen. I think, dude, you're going to be shocked. That's pretty much it. No way. That's it. Stirring in the last of the green onions. I'm even going to turn off the heat. You also want to add a drizzle of sesame oil, maybe like half a teaspoon. Give it one last stir. Oh, that sesame oil really does just give it extra flavor and fragrance. This is probably our fastest recipe ever. Definitely less than five minutes. All right, getting this into a bowl. There is probably about two to three cups of leftover rice, and I use jasmine rice because that's what we normally eat. Sometimes I'll have Japanese rice, and sometimes I also make fried rice with that rice. Doesn't really matter. Whatever rice you have. But if you want it to taste like the restaurants, I would recommend using jasmine. These really are my favorite Chinese greens. I have gai lan, which is this one. This is a pretty big stalk, actually. It's got a thick stalk with some really great dark leafy parts, and it's kind of like a Chinese broccoli. This is probably one that you're most familiar with. Then we have yau choy or choy sum, and that's these little ones. They also grow quite big, but these are the size I got at the store. They are not like baby gai lan. They're a completely different vegetable altogether. They're a little bit sweet, and the stems are more tender than the gai lan. And we have the bok choy, and this is Shanghai bok choy. These are slightly different from the regular bok choy that are white with the dark green leaves. We just like the texture of these better, and they come in this size and also like the little mini sizes, but we like the size best. To clean the vegetables, I usually soak them in salt water for about three to five minutes. I use about a teaspoon of salt for a bucket of water, and you can see that it just kind of loosens up some of the dirt, and it kills any bugs that are in there. And you can, I don't know if you can tell, but there's some grit from the dirt that was in the veggies already. I'm going to go back to the sink and run water in between the leaves to get out any more dirt, and then I'm going to rinse it another time or so to get rid of as much, well hopefully getting rid of all the dirt and bugs that may be hiding in the leaves. The bok choy is a little bit different. I'm going to cut it in half, and then I'm going to run water in between the leaves, because you can't really run the water in between the leaves as it is, so we're going to cut it down anyways to cook. When you're buying the gai lan, you want to make sure that at the bottom of the stalks that it looks fresh, and that there isn't a white dot in the middle. When it's white, it means that it's starting to dry out in the middle of the stalk, and it means that the vegetable is a little bit older, and it probably won't taste as good or be as tender. Another thing to look for is where the flower is, and if it's starting to bloom. First of all, if it's blooming, that's where the bugs are hiding, so you might want to just pick those pieces off. Sometimes it's still tender with a few flowers, but you don't want the whole flower to open up. Each of these buds will be like one little flower, so you can just pick them off. I'm just going to trim off the bottoms, and I'm going to leave them whole, because my mom says when you cook them whole, they taste better. Since I'm keeping them whole, and the stalks are so thick, I'm just going to cut right down the middle, so that it gets cooked evenly when I throw it into the water. This is the choy sum, so same buying principle. If you're going to buy them, make sure that there's no dot. So this one has like a little bit of a dot here, so what we want to do is, we're going to trim these ones, just trim off the bottom, and then the one with the dot, we're going to have to trim all of that white part off, otherwise it'll be not so great to chew through. Yeah, so I just cut off a little bit more, and we're going to leave these ones whole. In my effort to clean them after I sliced them in half, some of the leaves came off, which is fine. I'm still going to trim the bottom, and I'm going to cut it one more time, because this will be really, it would take a long time to cook through this, so I'm just going to cut these in half again, so into quarters, these bok choy. You may notice that in most of my home-style Chinese cooking, that there isn't a lot of vegetables, because we always had vegetables on the side, and it's because the greens are so easy to make, and they're tasty, and we don't need a lot of flavor with them, because whatever meat dish we're serving for dinner also has a lot of flavor already. Now, my mom used to make like four or five dishes, along with like a daily soup, that she would provide every meal for dinner, and there was always a plate of vegetables that were kind of plain on the side. So we're going to start with a basic, look at how simple it is. So we're bringing a pot of water to boil. I'm just going to put it on high, adding about two teaspoons of salt, and one tablespoon of oil, cooking oil, whatever cooking oil you're using, even if you have like chicken fat or beef fat, whatever, you just need a little bit of fat in the water, so that when the vegetables cook, they'll come out with that beautiful shine. Once your water is rolling boil, I'm going to add, we're starting with the choy sum. I'm going to add that, and it's going to take a minute. You can see that it's turned this beautiful dark green. If you leave it in too long, it will then turn yellow, and then that would not be good. You want the stems to be slightly crispy still, and the green part dark green and beautiful. I'm using the same water to do the gai lan. So again, two teaspoons of salt in your boiling water, plus a tablespoon of oil. I'm just going to add a little bit more, because as we pulled up the choy sum, the oil would have clinged on to the leaves of the choy sum. I'm also adding half a teaspoon of sugar, and the reason is for gai lan, sometimes you might get like some bitterness with gai lan. So if you add a little bit of sugar, it kind of protects you from that, because you don't want to eat it if it's kind of bitter tasting. Well, you might just eat it anyways, but it's not a good meal to have. So I'm just going to cook the stems here, to kind of lean them in the pot, and we're going to cook the stems for about a minute. All right, so after the stems have been cooking for about a minute, I'm going to push the green into the water, and cook for another minute. All right, I'm just going to turn off the stove, and we'll pull these out. Whoa, these are two giant stems. Obviously, I'm not cooking a full portion, what I would cook for the whole family. I usually cook about a pound of vegetables for a meal. That's enough veggies for everyone. When I was a kid, I remember my mom used to heat up the oil on the side instead of putting it in the boiling water, and she would just fry up a piece of garlic, like a clove of garlic, and just let the garlic heat up in that oil, and then she would pour the sizzling oil over the vegetables. But then she started just adding the oil to the water, which is what I do now, which I don't need that garlic flavor. But you may be tempted to skip the oil part, and it really does make a difference. If you don't put any oil into your vegetables, or pour it on top, it will not have the right texture. It will feel dry in your mouth, and it won't be very pleasant. With the bok choy, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to stir-fry it with some garlic, get the pan going, medium heat, and I'm just using a non-stick frying pan. Adding a tablespoon of cooking oil. I'm using avocado oil, and I chopped up about one clove of garlic. I'm just going to add that, and I'm going to stir-fry that for about 30 seconds, just until it's fragrant. Okay, adding my bok choy. Cook this for about 30 seconds also. I'm going to add about a quarter teaspoon of chicken bouillon. You can just add water, but I like the added flavor. And about a tablespoon of water. I'm going to cover this, and let it cook for a minute. Just around. We don't want this to be overcooked either, otherwise the stems get mushy, and it's just not a good texture. So it's better to be undercooked than overcooked. We'll just let this cook for another minute or so, until it starts to feel fork tender. Turning off the heat. You can do this with the other vegetables as well, not just bok choy. I just wanted to show you another method in cooking the vegetables that's still easy and tasty. Get this into my onto my plate. I'm just going to drizzle with about a teaspoon of soy sauce, and a little bit of sesame oil. And that is it! With the choy sum and the gai lan, usually we just either serve it plain, or we serve it with a little bit of oyster sauce on the side that you can just dip. In Vancouver, as far as I know, we have three styles of cooking mien. We have yun chow mein, which is a soft chow mein. We have a crispy chow mein, which is often called liang mien wong. And then we have lou mien, which is completely different. So the soft chow mein is a stir-fried chow mein. The crispy chow mein is the mien is crispy on both sides, and then there's like a gravy type of topping that goes on top of the chow mein. Then we have lou mien, which is the noodles are cooked, and then you're just adding the sauce and the meat, or the filling, and you're just tossing it all together. And you're not really stir-frying it. So I hope that makes sense. We're making a soft chow mein today. I'm starting with about 400 to 500 grams of chicken thighs. It's about a pound. And I'm going, you can use breast meat as well, but I prefer thighs. And I'm just going to cut these into strips. And we're cutting them into strips because noodles are long, and it just adds to the mouthfeel when you eat the chow mein, that everything is kind of in the same shape. I'm just going to move that over into a bowl. Okay, adding our marinade to the chicken. I've got one teaspoon of rice wine. And if you have Shaoxing wine, you can use that. One teaspoon of soy sauce. This is just regular soy or light soy. And one teaspoon of oyster sauce. And about half a teaspoon of sugar. And one teaspoon of cornstarch. The cornstarch is used to make the chicken more tender and a better mouthfeel. We're not using a whole lot of sauces here to marinate the chicken because there will be a sauce that goes into the chow mein. All right, that's good. And we'll just set this aside while we prepare the remaining ingredients. While I have my sauces out, we're going to make the sauce for the noodles. So two tablespoons of oyster sauce. Two tablespoons of soy sauce, regular soy, light soy. One tablespoon of dark soy sauce. And dark soy sauce is going to give it extra color. And a teaspoon of sugar. And the sugar helps to balance out all the flavors. Just want to mix this until the sugar is dissolved. You can hear it at the bottom of your bowl. All right, setting this aside. Okay, moving on to aromatics. I've got a onion. It just happens to be red. It doesn't have to be red. I like to cut my onions from top to bottom. I'm just taking the top and bottoms off and just thinly sliced. I'm also using two green onions to cut off the butts. And then the white and light green parts, I'm just going to add to this pile to cook. And the rest we will add at the end. I just have a small nub of ginger, but I'm just going to use three slices from here. Okay, never mind. Just use it all. Also have two cloves of garlic that I'm going to mince. Crush them a little bit so it's easier to chop. I don't usually have my mallet handy, but it's okay. It's only two. That looks good. I'm using these chow mein noodles today. They are like an eggy noodle. And I have a pot of water boiling on the stove because these need to be blanched for about 30 to 60 seconds before we put them in the wok. I'm heating up my wok on a medium high. If you don't have a wok, you can always use a large frying pan. Adding about a tablespoon of avocado oil to the wok. You'll know the wok is hot when you start to see that whiff of smoke before you add the oil. And I'm going to add my chicken. I'm going to fan it out a little bit, making a single layer. Just let it sear for a minute. I'm going to flip them over as much as I can. Try to get a sear on the other side. Get that golden brown that we see. Let it sear for another minute on the other side. I'm just going to stir fry it now until all the chicken is put through, no longer pink. Turning off the heat as I remove the chicken. Putting it into a bowl. Oh, it smells so good, guys. All right. Turning the wok back on. I'm going to turn it down to a medium. Adding my tablespoon of avocado oil. And you can use any neutral tasting oil. Adding the onions in there, along with the white, light green parts of the green onion. I'm just going to cook this for about a minute or two until the onion is softened. Okay, don't forget your ginger. I left the ginger big so that I can pick it out. If you like ginger, you can still eat it the way it is, or you can grate it into the mixture as well. Totally depends on what you like. Adding my garlic in. I'm going to stir fry this for another 30 seconds or so, just until the garlic is fragrant. I'm turning off the heat. I'm going to transfer the onion to the same bowl as the chicken. Okay, I cleaned out my wok because there was a lot of bits that were stuck on the wok. And we want a clean wok to do the noodles. So I'm going to turn it on to a medium low. And again, I blanched these noodles for about 30 to 60 seconds. And there's about a pound here. That's 454 grams. And they were two bucks, guys, for all these noodles. Two dollars. Okay, adding two tablespoons of avocado oil. And we're going to get our noodles in there. It's a lot, guys. I just want to move it around kind of quickly. I'm going to keep the noodles separated. You just want to have a little bit of browning on the noodles, but not crispy. All right, a little bit more brown than I was expecting. That's okay. I'm going to add our sauce. And then we're just going to stir this until it's evenly colored. All right, so all the noodles are evenly colored and they're separated. They're not really clumping. And we're going to add our chicken and red onion mixture back in with all the juices. All right, so I said that the noodles were two bucks for the package of noodles. My chicken probably cost me five. That's it. Like less than 10 bucks for sure, guys. Maybe eight dollars if you want to include the two sprigs of green onion, two cloves of garlic, and the sauces that you already have on hand. Once everything is warmed up again, we're going to add eight ounces, half a pound, of bean sprouts and our green onions. This will take about a minute for the bean sprouts to be kind of wilted. Okay, turned off the heat. I'm going to add two teaspoons of sesame oil. That will just add some extra flavor. Toss that in. Okay, this makes a mountain of noodles, you guys. I don't even know how I'm going to get this into a bowl. Definitely way more than what you would get in the restaurant. And again, seven bucks. Can't go wrong. What did I say? I even bumped it up to eight bucks. Okay, I'm going to transfer some of the noodles into the bowl, the serving bowl. This is not an individual size serving. This is like would serve maybe two people as their full meal. So here is our usual serving bowl. And look at what's left in the wok. Amazing. Eight bucks, guys. You got to do it.