If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 600+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Happy Lunar New Year friends and fam!

It’s been a minute since our last recipe video, but we wanted to do something special to ring in the Year of the Horse: Triple Seafood Yee Mein 三鮮伊面

On the personal front, it was a big year for the Lau family! We bought our first house and my parents welcomed their 5th grandkid :) I got to relive the moments by editing it into the end of our video and sharing it with you all.

Here’s the video on YouTube:

Here’s the full written guide on our blog: https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/longevity-noodles

Our noodle chapter draft:

We hope you have a great start to the Year of the Horse and get to enjoy some yummy food this weekend :)

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 650+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to every Cookbook Confidential newsletter and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Hi all! It’s been a few months since we’ve shared anything on the internet and we’ve gotten questions about where we’ve been.

(Someone even tried spreading a rumor in our YouTube comments about my dad’s health — he’s thriving. He still goes on long walks, loves to garden, is helping me write our cookbook, and loves being a granddad to 5 kids!)

As you might know, we are writing a cookbook. This is by far the largest undertaking I’ve ever attempted in my career. As I normally do, I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to make it approachable, accurate, authoritative, and most importantly something that honors my parents and our Cantonese heritage.

I haven’t been posting content because I have been overwhelmed with meeting our book deadline and making the best book possible (and raise 3 young children at the same time.)

Rather than trying to do a mediocre job at multiple things, I figured it’d be better to just write a really good book and be a really great parent.

I really apologize for the radio silence. I promise we will be back to our regular programming soon!

In the meantime, here are some cookbook drafts from our chapter on noodles. I am becoming really proud of the work we’re creating and I am so excited to continue to evolve and push the book forward.

I’m organizing most of the book around all of the major ingredients in Cantonese cuisine — how to buy them, how to store them, what to cook with them, and the recipes you can create each one.

Noodles aren’t as straightforward as other ingredients, since there are so many types of noodles, confusing names, and a bunch of different types of dishes.

I’ve been miles deep into a rabbit hole on noodles, parading down grocery store aisles, buying research papers on wheat composition, downloading noodle manufacturer product lists, peppering my parents with random phone calls when I have questions.

Through it all, I feel like I am producing guides and refining recipes that will hopefully help our current generations and future ones continue cooking the noodle dishes we know and love.

The following 16 pages are drafts that haven’t gone through the final rounds of editorial scrutiny, but I’d love to know what you think about the general direction of these ingredient cheatsheets and recipes!

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 600+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

This is our masterclass on cooking Chinese plant-based meals that are extremely healthy and equally delicious :)

This is a 3 course meal, complete with brown rice & mung bean, a tofu mushroom soup, and a stir-fried medley of vegetables + fungi + mushrooms.

We have the full walkthrough in our video, and the written guide on our blog:

https://madewithlau.com/recipes/plant-based-meal

(Also, thank you to Asian Health Services for collaborating with us to bring this video to life!)

Hope you enjoy :)

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 600+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

As we write our cookbook, I am thinking a lot about how in/accessible certain traditional ingredients are to some, especially if you don’t have an Asian grocery store nearby.

Fresh noodles can be hard to come by, but especially in the United States, spaghetti is universally available AND affordable! Creatively approaching seemingly strict dishes is a great way to get comfortable making adjustments and playing in the kitchen.

That’s why we wanted to share how my dad makes a classic Ginger Scallion Lo Mein recipe, adapted with the ubiquitous spaghetti.

Watch the video for the full walkthrough, and visit our blog for a unit-converting, scalable serving size calculator:
https://madewithlau.com/recipes/ginger-scallion-spaghetti

I hope you enjoy!

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

P.P.S. - If you want to dive deeper, this clip is a portion of a longer module in our Mini Masterclass series on “Noodles”, which you can preview here:
https://www.madewithlau.com/club/courses/8

If you’re interested in truly understanding how to cook Cantonese food, go to madewithlau.com/club to get access to all 21 Mini Masterclasses or preview every single lesson for free.

P.P.S. - Mid Autumn festival is right around the corner and I wanted to highlight another Asian American small business: Little Moon Bakehouse.

(Not sponsored, we just love what they’re doing!)

Annie runs Little Moon Bakehouse out of Oakland, CA, focused on creating vegan versions of classic Asian pastries. Every fall, they make specialty mooncake gift boxes for the Mid Autumn season.

This year, Annie sent our family a very special set of four full sized mooncakes made using custom mooncake molds designed by artist Kai Kwong. When the mooncakes are lined up, they create one continuous image of a snake going through the Chinese "Flowers of the Four Seasons".

If you’re interested in getting some, Little Moon Bakehouse ships nationwide. Also, if you’re in NYC, Annie’s doing a pop up from Sept 22 - Oct 5.

Check it out and support a fellow Asian American business in the process :)

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 600+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

I had always heard from fellow cookbook authors how difficult and time consuming writing a cookbook is. Since I’ve been in the thick of it, I fully get it.

This whole process makes me wonder if I have ADHD or something similar (a whole different topic), as I’ve had several stretches where it’s been very difficult to get into a rhythm and flow of writing.

Recently, I started taking a different approach. As opposed to trying to create a cookbook solely by banging my head against a keyboard into text editor, I started drafting my cookbook visually in Canva.

This approach has a lot of downsides, mainly that it couldn’t be further from one of my “final” deliverables - a Microsoft Word document.

However, it’s re-engaging the parts of my brain that I love - information design, layout, typography, and visual storytelling. And ultimately, at this phase, the top priority is for me to work with my parents to distill their wisdom and get more words on pages.

What I’m about to share is raw, unedited, and far from what our final cookbook will look like, but represents how I am thinking and approaching the first major section of our book.

For now, I’m calling it “Skills”, and it will hopefully be a helpful framework for breaking down and replicating how my dad approaches every meal he cooks.

I haven’t completed the entire section, but here are the first pages.

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 550+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

We can’t make a book about Cantonese cooking without including the iconic Salt & Pepper Tofu (or really Salt & Pepper anything.)

In the past, we've shared different Salt & Pepper dishes, like Salt & Pepper Pork Chops. This is a seasoning that goes so well on any dry fried dish. Other popular fried dishes that get this salt & pepper treatment are shrimp, squid, and chicken.

Ingredients

Main Ingredients

• 16 oz firm tofu

• 3 stalks green onion (white part only)

• 2 oz mini bell pepper (also labeled "sweet peppers")

• 2 clove garlic

• 4 cup boiling water

• 1 tsp salt

• 0.50 egg

• 6 tbsp cornstarch

• 16 oz oil (for deep-frying)

• 2 tbsp oil (for stir-frying; can re-use oil from deep-fry step)

Seasoning

• 1 tbsp garlic salt

• 0.25 tsp white pepper

Step 1: Cut ingredients

First, cut to separate the green and the white parts of the green onions (3 stalks). We're only using the firmer, more pungent whites for this dish. Dice the green onion whites.

Halve the bell peppers (2 oz) so that it's easy to scoop out the core and seeds. Cut into strips, and then rotate 90 degrees to dice them.

Smash, peel, and finely mince the garlic (2 clove).

Step 2: Cut tofu

Cut open the package of firm tofu (16 oz) and drain away the soaking liquid. Give the tofu a quick rinse with clean water, and then cut into cubes.

My dad cuts it in half horizontally, then from top to bottom, and then halves each section again and again to end up with 36 cubes. These pieces are on the larger side.

The smaller the cubes, the more surface area you'll get for crust. The larger the cubes, the more volume you get in each piece for soft, tender tofu. It's up to you which aspect to prioritize.

Step 3: Boil tofu

Boil hot water (4 cup) in a pot with the heat on high. Add salt (1 tsp) and stir to dissolve. This salt will help to season the tofu. When the water is boiling, add the tofu cubes. Use chopsticks to shift the tofu around so they’re all fully submerged.

Cook for 3 minutes with the lid on, and then lower the heat to low and uncover the pot. Cook for another 2 minutes.

Carefully pour the tofu into a colander to drain the water out. Let it start to cool.

Step 4: Dry & coat tofu

Line a plate with a paper towel (or for more absorbency, a clean kitchen towel). Transfer the tofu cubes onto the lined plate in an even layer. Lay another paper towel (or kitchen towel) on top and gently press to remove excess moisture.

Spread a layer of cornstarch (4 tbsp) on a separate, large plate. Transfer the tofu into a bowl and add the beaten egg. Gently mix to evenly coat the tofu.

Transfer the egg-covered tofu cubes to the cornstarch plate, making an even layer of individual cubes. Don't stack them, or it'll be hard to coat them correctly.

Sprinkle more cornstarch (1 tbsp) over the top of the tofu. Use chopsticks to flip and mix the tofu until all the pieces are evenly coated in cornstarch.

Step 5: Fry tofu

Add oil (16 oz) to a large pot and set the heat on high. As the oil heats, mix together garlic salt (1 tbsp) and white pepper (0.25 tsp) in a separate bowl. This will be added to the stir-fry at the very end.

Prepare a batch of dredged tofu in a spider strainer. If you're not used to deep-frying several items at once and are worried about them sticking together, we recommend cooking in smaller batches.

When the oil reaches 400°F (or 200°C), carefully set the tofu in the oil. At the beginning, let the tofu cook undisturbed so that the crust can set. If you move the tofu too soon, the batter will fall right off and you won't get a crust on the tofu.

When the tofu has started to set and the oil has started to recover from the temperature drop, you can add the rest of the tofu. Make sure to set them down along the sides of the pot so they don't stick to the other pieces. Gently mix the pieces around so they fry evenly.

When the tofu is golden brown, or after about 5 minutes of frying at 360°-380°F (180-190°C), turn off the heat and carefully remove the tofu. Let the excess oil drain from the tofu. My dad just keeps the tofu in the spider and sets it on a plate from earlier.

Step 6: Stir-fry everything

Heat a wok on high. Add oil (2 tbsp) (we usually take this from the deep-frying oil). Before the oil gets too hot (before it starts to shimmer or smoke), add the dried chili and stir immediately. Fry for just 8 seconds to extract the flavor, and then remove them.

Add the minced garlic and fry it for 15 seconds, stirring the entire time.

Add the diced bell peppers and green onion whites. Fry for 20-25 seconds, still stirring constantly.

Add the fried tofu and stir-fry for 10 seconds.

While stirring constantly, sprinkle the garlic salt+white pepper seasoning mix over all the ingredients in the wok until the tofu cubes are evenly coated. You probably won't use up all of the seasoning. We only used half of what we prepared.

Step 7: Plate & serve

Turn off the heat and plate. Make sure to scoop up all the little bits of vegetables; they're delicious. Enjoy!

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 550+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

For our cookbook, my dad and I are exploring all the different types of pork dishes featured in Cantonese cuisine, organized around the different cuts of pork.

While it will be a challenge to figure out exactly which recipes to include in a physical book with limited space, there is no absolutely question we will be including Char Siu, the iconic Chinese BBQ Pork.

We have covered Char Siu in the past, but this recipe has been simplified and is faster to execute, without sacrificing any of the taste of the first Char Siu recipe we shared.

Ingredients

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 550+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

For our cookbook, my dad and I are making way through what I call “pork week”, exploring all the different types of pork dishes featured in Cantonese cuisine, organized around the different cuts of pork.

Today’s recipe is one of my absolute favorites, and also one of the easiest pork recipes to execute.

Hakka-style Fried Pork Belly

Ingredients

Main Ingredients

• 14 oz pork belly (no skin)

• 10 oz neutral oil for frying

• 1 egg

Coating

• 4 tbsp flour

• 3 tbsp potato starch (or cornstarch)

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Marinade

• 3 cloves garlic

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 6 oz red fermented bean curd

• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine

• 1 tsp sesame oil

• 1 tbsp sugar

Instructions

1. Prep pork belly - Cut the pork belly into slices, between 1/2 or 1/4-inch thick. Thin slices will cook faster, but you still want enough volume for a satisfying bite. Transfer the slices to a bowl.

2. Prep flavors - Trim the ends off the garlic, mince into small pieces, then smash it into a paste. The smoother the paste, the more flavor you’ll extract from the garlic. Add the smashed garlic paste to the pork belly.

   In another bowl, combine oyster sauce, red fermented bean curd, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, and sugar. Pour this marinade into the bowl with pork belly and garlic, and mix it all together.

   
   Crack an egg into the now-empty marinade bowl, then transfer half of the egg to the pork belly. Mix well. The egg will help flour adhere to the pork belly later. Set this aside.

3. Dry dredge - In a new bowl, combine flour, potato starch, and baking powder. Once thoroughly mixed, transfer to a plate. One slice at a time roll the pork, belly in the flour, making sure both sides are well-covered.

4. 1st fry - In your deep-frying vessel (a wok/deep pot is best, in our opinion), heat up oil to 300-320°F on high heat. Once the oil reaches the right temperature, lower the heat to medium. Gently add the pork belly pieces into the oil individually.

   
   Allow the pork to fry undisturbed for 1 minute, then stir. If you stir immediately, the coating will fall off. Remove the pork with a spider strainer after frying for about 1.5-2 mins, or when it turns golden.

5. 2nd fry - Turn up the heat to get the oil up to 370-380° F. Transfer the meat back into the oil and fry for 45 seconds, or until golden-brown. Take the deliciously crunchy pork belly out with spider strainer. Plate, and enjoy!

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 550+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Quick breakfast? Light snack? Ramen topping? Cantonese Fried Eggs are an essential recipe to have in your repertoire. They can be simply flipped like an over-easy egg, or folded in half like a half-moon for more texture.

With fragrant, crispy edges and a yolk just the way you like, this is a can't-miss style of egg that you definitely want to master!

Is this much different from an over-easy egg from your local diner (if you happen to live somewhere that still has diners...)? Yes, it is!

When cooked in a wok or frying pan, the egg stays nice and round when you drop it in. Our recipe calls for a little more oil than you might expect for a simple fried egg, but it's the key to getting those crispy, crunchy edges. Yes, you do want browning on this egg. No, don't baste the whites with the extra oil. You're either going to flip the egg, or...

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

For our cookbook, my dad and I are making way through what I call “pork week”, exploring all the different types of pork dishes featured in Cantonese cuisine, organized around the different cuts of pork.

While it will be a challenge to figure out exactly which recipes to include in a physical book with limited space, there is no absolutely question we will be including these 3 pork dishes:

• Char Siu (叉燒) - Chinese BBQ Pork

• Siu Yuk (燒肉) - Crispy Pork Belly

• Salt & Pepper Pork Chops (椒鹽豬扒)

Coincidentally, these are 3 of our top 20 most popular videos on our YouTube channel, with over 10 million combined views!

For the full written recipes:

• https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/char-siu-chinese-bbq-pork

• https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/siu-yuk-crispy-pork-belly

• https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/salt-pepper-pork-chops

Reply or let me know in the comments - what are your favorite pork dishes?

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Fried Metallic Dumplings: this was one of the more interesting dishes from multi-week deep dive into chicken dishes from our cookbook shoot.

I faintly remember eating these as a young Chinese restaurant kid. Apparently these were pretty popular on my dad’s old menu, especially with little kids!

These are essentially marinated chicken mushroom “dumplings” that are very unique in preparation and very easy to cook and assemble.

Fried “Metallic Dumplings”

Ingredients

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Today my dad’s gonna show us one of the most important and traditional techniques in Cantonese cooking - how to make a very simple “lo fo tong” (老火湯), or literally “old fire soup”.

Old Fire Soup (老火湯) is a beloved Cantonese tradition and a staple of home cooking. It’s a slowly-simmered soup with simple ingredients, gently bubbling until every ingredient has given its flavor, nourishment, and warmth to the pot. In our family, this isn’t just soup; it’s comfort, care, and history in a bowl.

Once a daily ritual in many Chinese homes, this practice is slowly fading, but we hope to keep it alive by sharing simple recipes (like this one) in our cookbook.

Pork Radish Soup

Daddy Lau uses a boneless cut of lean pork to demonstrate this recipe. For soups like this, you can use any basic boneless or bone-in cut of lean pork.

Avoid fatty cuts; too much fat can result in a greasy soup that leaves your lips weirdly sticky after each sip.

14 ounces of lean pork
1 large Chinese or daikon radish (about 2 pounds)
2 medium carrots (about 4 ounces)
1 ounce of ginger
2 ounces of dried shiitake mushrooms
1 can of chicken broth (14 ounces)
8 cups of boiling water
2 teaspoons of salt

1. Cut the pork into 1-inch cubes, or a bit larger. These medium-sized chunks are easier to parboil and are a more suitable size for eating.

2. Add the pork to a pot. Add enough cold water to cover all the meat. Turn the heat to high to bring everything to a boil.
   
   Cook for 3-4 minutes. You’ll see a lot of scum and foam gathering at the surface of the water. Transfer the meat to a bowl of clean, cold water. Rinse off the scum and foam from the meat, and drain.

3. Snap off the stems from the dried shiitake mushrooms while they’re still dry (or, you can wait until they’re soft, then cut the stems off). Rinse, then rehydrate the mushrooms in warm water. Let them soak while you prepare the vegetables.

   Trim the ends off the radish, then peel. Do the same with the carrots. Cut the radish in half lengthwise so you’ll end up with two long pieces, each with a stable base. Halve each piece so you have four long quarters of radish.

   From here, you can choose the shape. You can either cut thick slices or use the oblique cut to create medium-sized angular chunks. Similarly, cut the carrots with an oblique cut to create angular chunks.
   
   Smash the ginger with one good smack to open it up.

4. Fill a tall soup pot with boiling water and chicken broth. Add all the

   ingredients into it: the radish, the carrot, the ginger, and the pork. Cover the pot with its lid, then boil the soup to a boil over high heat.

5. Once it comes to a boil, you may see scum begin to float to the surface. Use a ladle or fine-mesh skimmer to remove the scum and foam.

   As a reminder, the scum and foam are not harmful in any way, but making the effort to remove it will improve the taste and appearance of your soup.

6. Cover the pot partially with the lid by setting the lid on a little crooked to leave a small gap. This will help reduce the risk of the soup boiling over and making a mess. Turn the heat to medium-low and let the soup simmer for 30 minutes, until the vegetables have softened and the flavors of all the ingredients have had time to harmonize.
   
   When time is up, uncover the pot and season with salt. Give it a quick stir to help the salt dissolve. Steal a quick taste to check the seasoning; you can adjust with more salt if needed. Serve out of the pot or transfer to a serving bowl.

Enjoy!

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Surprisingly, we haven’t covered much lotus root yet on our blog or YouTube channel.

So, as a part of our cookbook’s vegetable deep dives, one of the first veggies I wanted to cover was the almighty lotus root.

I’m still working on synthesizing the full lotus root guide, but today I wanted to share one of my favorite childhood recipes from our cookbook shoots:

Braised Pork Belly & Lotus Root

This is the epitome of my dad’s home-cooked meals: nourishing, hearty, and packed with flavor. The crunch from the lotus root and carrots pair extremely well with the tender bites of pork belly, enveloped by an thick, umami-laden sauce from red fermented bean curd, hoisin sauce, and chicken bouillon.

Ingredients

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

The moment I’m sharing in this video basically validates my entire existence. I’m only half joking, but especially if you are a child of immigrants, you’ll probably understand why I wanted to share this moment.

This isn’t the usual cooking / cookbook wisdom that we’ve been sharing in our newsletter, but does kinda speak to my parents’ unconditional love and emotion that I want to weave throughout the book.

For context, this clip is from a Q&A on the final day of the James Beard dinner events we hosted in January. I felt like this clip didn’t fit the story, which was more focused on how my dad basically came out of retirement to cook for 100+ people, and all of the challenges, emotions, realizations, and conversations that sprung out of that experience.

If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend it (especially the ending). And if you have - THANK YOU! We feel so overwhelmed with love reading all of the touching, tear-jerking comments and we are so grateful to have you in our community.

Our full James Beard Dinner vlog:

Thank you for listening & watching :) It’s the moments like these that I’ll carry with me forever.

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Popcorn Chicken: this was one of the more surprising recipes from our recent chicken cookbook shoot.

(We covered something like 20 different chicken recipes and a lot of them might not make it into the final book… but we’ll definitely get around to sharing the recipes!)

I always thought this was exclusively a Taiwanese snack / Western appetizer, but for our cookbook shoot, my dad wanted to showcase a Cantonese version. This one utilizes the “salt & pepper” Cantonese flavor profile, which is less spicy, and with chicken breast instead of thighs.

Dad’s Popcorn Chicken, Cantonese-style!

Ingredients

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

As we write our cookbook, I am thinking a lot about how in/accessible certain traditional ingredients are to some people, especially if you don’t have an Asian grocery store nearby.

Fresh noodles can be hard to come by but, instant noodles are universally available and also, affordable! Creatively approaching seemingly strict dishes is a great way to get comfortable making adjustments and playing in the kitchen.

That’s why we wanted to share how my dad makes a classic Soy Sauce Chow Mein recipe, adapted with the ubiquitous instant noodle.

Watch the video for the full walkthrough, and visit our blog for a unit-converting, scalable serving size calculator:
https://www.madewithlau.com/recipes/instant-soy-sauce-chow-mein

I hope you enjoy the sauce!

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

P.S. - If you want to dive deeper, this clip is a portion of a longer module in our Mini Masterclass series on “Texture Control”, which you can preview here: https://www.madewithlau.com/club/courses/9

If you’re interested in truly understanding how to cook Cantonese food, go to madewithlau.com/club to get access to all 21 Mini Masterclasses or preview every single lesson for free.

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

This is one of many ingredient deep dives we’re planning on doing for our cookbook. The aim is so that when you and I go to 99 Ranch or an Asian supermarket, we feel as confident as our parents’ generation does with shopping and cooking with Cantonese ingredients.

This is a first draft straight from my questionnaire / cooking shoot with my dad. I plan on adding illustrations and editing it down with my editor when it comes time to compile all of the ingredients together.

This guide will answer the most burning questions:

• What does it taste like?

• What are the varieties within this ingredient? What is most common within Cantonese cooking?

• When shopping, how do you find the best product?

• What is the seasonality of this ingredient?

• How do you extend the shelf life for as long as possible?

• What types of cooking methods work? What are example dishes?

• How do you wash/prep?

And afterwards, we’ll share my dad’s Pickled Daikon recipe (my mom’s favorite!)

My parents’ guide to Daikon

My dad used to grow daikon (and other crops) in a little plot of garden space in his village in Toisan, probably about the size of our current kitchen island or a twin-sized mattress. He and his mom used to tend to their garden together, deepening their bond with each other with every passing season until they were separated.

Given their limited garden space, it would take 2-3 months for the fruits of their labor to be realized, but it was always well-worth the effort come springtime.

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Running a restaurant boils down to efficiency, which is why my dad used to spend hours in the morning prepping for the day’s lunch and dinner services.

If you ever get the opportunity to be a fly on the wall in a Chinese kitchen, you might notice they keep gallon tubs of sauces on hand. With a gigantic rounded spatula (their tool of choice), every time a stir-fry order comes in, they’ll quickly dip into the gallon tub and splash some ready-made stir fry sauce into the wok.

This sauce is called “Brown Sauce” or “Black Sauce”, and it’s the foundation of many different types of stir fries.

For home cooks, we don’t need to prep gallons of it at a time, but if you cook Chinese food regularly, you can save a lot of time by prepping a few portions of this brown sauce, refrigerating it, and pulling from the stockpile whenever you need to cook Chinese food.

Here’s the sauce:

• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

• 3 tbsp light soy sauce

• 1 tbsp oyster sauce

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp chicken bouillon

• 1/4 cup boiling water

Watch the video for the full explanation, and visit our blog for a unit-converting, scalable serving size calculator:
https://madewithlau.com/recipes/stir-fry-sauce

I hope you enjoy the sauce!

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

P.S. - If you want to dive deeper, this clip is a portion of a longer module in our Mini Masterclass series on “The Elements of Flavor: Savory”, which you can preview here: https://www.madewithlau.com/club/courses/4

If you’re interested in truly understanding how to cook Cantonese food, go to madewithlau.com/club to get access to all 21 Mini Masterclasses or preview every single lesson for free.

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 450+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

Surprisingly, we haven’t covered lotus root yet on our blog or YouTube channel.

So, as a part of our cookbook’s vegetable deep dives, one of the first veggies I wanted to cover was the almighty lotus root.

I’m still working on synthesizing the full lotus root guide, but today I wanted to share one of my favorite childhood recipes from our cookbook shoots:

Lotus Root Soup

This relatively simple soup is brimming to the top with lotus root, shiitake mushrooms, lean pork, dried scallops, dates, and carrots :)

It’s a traditional homestyle “old fire soup” (an entire category of Chinese soups that are simmered for a very long time), which a lot of you have been asking my parents for.

Here’s where our current recipe draft is at

Headnote

I’m experimenting with a POV where I’m writing directly to my kids. Thoughts?

Much like you toddlers right now, I didn’t fully appreciate lotus root as a little kid. For you, as toddlers, I imagine you don’t like lotus root just because you can be picky eaters.

But for me, I grew up in a time where I just wanted to feel, eat, and live a little more like an “American”. Lotus root looked and tasted like the antithesis of what I thought my white friends ate at home – hot dogs, instant mac and cheese, hamburgers, and pizza.

Yeh Yeh used to spend hours patiently simmering a pot of lotus root soup for us, just like his mother did for him. When Yeh Yeh was little, his mom would throw in preserved meats and dried jujube dates to make a nourishing soup for him. For my sister and I, Yeh Yeh’s soup usually had peanuts and chunks of carrots softened by hours of loving heat, with bites of pork that melted away.

I remember Yeh Yeh and Ngin Ngin always had to try very hard to get me to finish the soup, whether it was a bribe, a scolding, or through sheer will.

Not that I have anything against hot dogs and instant mac and cheese, but I wish I appreciated those soups. In my youthful ignorance and naivete, all I wanted were crappy, mass-produced hot dogs. With lotus root soup, all I saw was a chore, a bowl I had to chug to appease my parents. I couldn’t appreciate the hours that went into making each pot of soup, the nourishment I received by drinking each bowl of lotus root soup.

Ingredients

Read more

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 475+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

Subscribe now

My dad never lets food go to waste, and that’s why, in our upcoming cookbook, I want to uncover how he manages his fridge and how he keeps food fresh.

To write our book, I’ve been spending the last few weeks doing deep dives into how my dad stores specific ingredients and keeps them fresh, but today I thought it’d be fun to share an extended clip from our Mini Masterclass library, introducing the techniques behind what I call “Fridge Management” and how my dad never lets food go to waste.

There are a lot of subtle tips and tricks my dad uses to keep a constant, fresh rotation of food at home.

I hope you enjoy the video!

With love,
Randy & the Lau family

P.S. - If you want to dive deeper, this clip is a portion of a longer 13 minute lesson in our Mini Masterclass series on “Storing Perishables”, which you can preview here: https://www.madewithlau.com/club/lessons/2.1

If you’re interested in truly understanding how to cook Cantonese food, go to madewithlau.com/club to get access to all 21 Mini Masterclasses or preview every single lesson for free.