Cooking in Oil

Cooking in oil consists of stir-frying, shallow-frying, and deep-frying. Each of these basic techniques has its own set of procedures that brings about distinctly different results.

There is one factor crucial to all three, however—the cooking oil itself. Chinese cooking demands that the oil be able to tolerate high heat without vaporizing into smoke. Liquid oils made from either corn, soybeans, cottonseeds, or peanuts have that strength, and are suitable to use for Chinese cooking. Butter and olive oil cannot be used: butter smokes easily and both have distinctive flavors that are foreign to Chinese tastes. Sesame oil, with its heavy density and strong aroma, is used primarily as a flavoring. As a cooking agent it not only smokes but also overpowers the ingredients and flavor of the dish. I never use lard, a favored cooking fat in China and preferred by most professional Chinese cooks here, because I find it too greasy. But it does enrich the flavor and gives food a beautiful sheen.