Chaozhou Cuisine

Chaozhou Cuisine is well received in Shenzhen and there are numerous restaurants around town serving up this cuisine. This type of food is characterized by its refreshing, crisp and lightly seasoned flavors. The emphasis is placed on maintaining the natural flavor of the raw ingredients. Shark fin is a popular meat used in Chaozhou style recipes.

Characters of Chaozhou Cuisine

The main dishes included in this one are seafood and vegetarian food. So the taste of this food emphasizes the freshness and quality of the ingredients. Its use of flavoring is much less heavy-handed than most other Chinese cuisines.

Chaozhou cuisine is also known for serving rice soup in addition to steamed rice or noodles with meals. The Chaozhou porridge is rather different from Cantonese porridge or congee. The former is very watery with the rice sitting loosely at the bottom of the bowl.


• Eat Table
There is a famous feast in Chaozhou cuisine/banquet called "jiat dot" which roughly means "eat table". A myriad dishes are often served, which include shark fins soup, bird's nest soup, lobster, steam fish and braised goose.
 

Some famous dishes

• White radish cake
A savoury fried "cake", made of white radish and rice flour. It is a popular dim sum commonly stirred fried with soy sauce, eggs, garlic, spring onion and occasionally dried shrimp.

• Oyster omelette
Oyster omelette is a Chinese dish which originated in Chaozhou and Fujian.
The dish consists of an omelette with a filling primarily composed of small oysters. Starch is mixed into the egg batter, giving the resulting egg wrap a thicker consistency. Depending on regional variation, a savory sauce may then be poured on top of the omelette for added taste.
Spicy or chili sauce mixed with lime juice is often added to provide an intense taste.


• Steamed dumpling
This is usually filled with dried radish, garlic chives, ground pork, dried shrimp, Shiitake mushrooms and peanuts. The dumpling wrapper is made from a mixture of flour or plant starches mixed together with water. In Cantonese, these are called "Chew Zhao Fun Guo", where the character used is "fruit" instead of"dumpling".