As former Serious Eats editor Adam Kuban put it, crab rangoons, those little parcels of creamy filling surrounded by crunchy shell, are "just a big ol' excuse for crazy non-Chinese people to eat deep-fried cream cheese." And it's true—but that admission doesn't make them any less delicious. At your local Chinese-American joint, the crab rangoons are almost certainly made with surimi, those artificially colored sticks of reconstituted fish that you find in California rolls. Using real crab instead will give the dumplings a more assertive fish flavor; stick with surimi if you'd like to re-create the "crab" puffs of your youth.

While you might not know the name, you've probably eaten lots of dishes that fall into the category of ding, a type of stir-fry made with diced chicken and vegetables. A ding also needs something crunchy, such as the nuts in the takeout classic cashew chicken. Jicama adds even more crunch, and we round out the assortment of vegetables with mushrooms, celery, and sweet bell pepper.

The second great thing about making dan dan noodles—it's an exceedingly simple dish to make. Once you've put together your roasted chile vinaigrette (which holds for months in the fridge, by the way), it's just a matter of cooking your noodles, frying your chopped pork, and throwing everything together.

"There are usually many components to juggle; is the dish light or heavy, is the spice character low or aggressive, is the heat character mild or strong? With that said, here are some guidelines with a general range of dishes. Dim Sum can throw a dizzying amount of complex pairings your way. Stick with a high acid wine that also has significant weight. Riesling from Alsace (seek out the wines of Andre Ostertag) or Austria (Johannes Hirsch from the Kamptal is a rockstar!) would work great here and will keep your palate pristine in-between bouts with the steam cart. For spicy noodle Game DLC|Https://noodleinsight.Com/, rice, or tofu dishes, texture and heat are the main concern. I like wines with softer acidity and a rounder texture as it will help balance the heat component. Gewurztraminer from Alsace (Zind-Humbrecht for a richer style) and Viognier from the Northern Rhône (any cuvée from Yves Cuilleron) or Central Coast of California (Morgan Clendenen’s Cold Heaven) are round and lush and can lend their own exotic profile to the dish. For smoked or roasted proteins with sweet sauces, such as Peking duck , red wine can be the go-to for you to build on the umami factor. A Barbera from Alba (Vietti’s bottling from the Scarrone vineyard is a prime example) or a Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (look for Failla from Ehren Jordan) will be dexterous with their acidity and high- toned red fruit."— Ehren Ashkenazi, The Modern (NYC)

Grind a combination of beef and smoky, spicy Cajun andouille sausage for burger patties. Grill, then top with blue cheese and a sauce of mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, mustard, parsley, lemon juice, cayenne, horseradish, and garlic for the most spicy and flavorful burgers.

To make the roasted chile oil, just toast a handful of whole Chinese chiles (or if you want, red pepper flakes) in a dry skillet until fragrant and ever-so-slightly smoking (about 30 seconds). Transfer them to a food processor with a cup of neutral oil, like canola, and whiz the whole thing up. Let it sit in a sealed container in the fridge for a week or so, and you're good to go. You can even top up the jar with more oil and toasted chiles every time you seem to be running low. Make some, have it on hand at all times, and it will revolutionize your mapo tofu, ramen, dumplings, stir-fries, and countless other dishes.

You have to do ribs on the grill at least once in the summer, and if you're looking for something beyond your basic bottled barbecue sauce, you've come to the right place. Here, apricot preserves give the sauce a sweet, fruity flavor, and chipotle chiles add a contrasting earthy, spicy flavor to the sauce that tastes just as good when licked off your fingers as it does on the ribs.

The pork is the odd man out in the traditional recipe. Fortunately, much like with the beef in Sichuan mapo tofu, the pork is not the star player of the dish. Its role is mainly textural, adding a bit of meaty, bouncy chew that clings to the slippery noodles as you slurp them up. Having already addressed an identical issue when finding a suitable replacement for ground beef in my vegan mapo tofu recipe, I knew what I had to do here: I chopped up a bunch of mushrooms in a food processor, then employed the Chinese technique of dry-frying—cooking them slowly in oil—until they were mostly dehydrated, lightly shriveled, and deeply browned. The resulting little nuggets have great texture and a flavor that is not really pork-like, but savory and rich in its own unique way.

Our original attempt at real-deal Chinese kung pao chicken , adapted from a recipe by a Sichuan chef working in Boston, gets its mouth-numbing heat from Sichuan peppercorns. So does the kung pao chicken from Kenji's book , based on the version he tried in Sichuan Province. This Chinese-American take, meanwhile, is much less spicy, with cubes of chicken in a thick, slightly gloppy sauce, permeated by a gentle heat. It's a quick and easy recipe, too: Just stir-fry marinated diced chicken with roasted peanuts, diced celery and peppers, ginger, and red Chinese or árbol chilies, then coat it all in a mixture of soy sauce, chicken broth, vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, and cornstarch. Dinner's on the table in 30 minutes.