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Flavors of Shandong Cuisine
The chefs pay attention to the original taste of raw materials. Many dishes like steamed stuffed tofu are lightly seasoned mainly with salt and soup, making dishes taste umami and fresh with a flavorful taste of the original material. Sweet and sour is also a representative flavor of Shandong dishes, like the famous Sweet and Sour Carp, and Sweet and Sour Pork Fillet.
Frequently Used Seasonings of Shandong Cuisine
Soup is the secret seasoning of Lu cuisine. Two types of soup, clear soup and milk white soup, are always applied in cooking. The clear soup is usually made of chicken and duck. The milk white soup is made of greasy meat such as pork knuckle and pig bones. These soups are not eaten directly, but used to freshen dish when cooking as a seasoning. That’s the chefs’ knack to make dishes umami.
Most dishes especially the sea food and meat dishes need to be sautéed with scallion, ginger and garlic to release the strange smell. In addition, when frying, simmering, braising, etc., the green onions is the essential seasoning. Braised Sea Cucumber with Scallion even takes scallion as the main ingredient.
Exquisite Cutting Skills of Shandong CuIsine
The cutting skill of Shandong chefs is second to none. All bones of a whole chicken can be taken out without cutting any pieces off. The slices they cut is extremely thin that you can see the bright light from the other side, and the shreds they cut can be thread into a needle. The cutting skills also give Shandong dishes the appealing appearance.
Special Cooking Techniques of Shanong Cuisine
The special and outstanding cooking technique is Flash-Frying, called “Bao” in Chinese. The Flash-Frying skills contains frying with oil, frying with sauce, frying with green onion, and frying with soup. The heat is precisely controlled when flash-frying. This cooking method can best keep the original taste of the material.
Another special cooking technique is braising, called “Pa” in Chinese. After preliminary cooked like frying and quick boiling, the raw materials are placed in the big round-bottomed frying pan, and then cooked again. You can see the complete shape of the raw material even after being cooked. The classic dish made by this technique is Dezhou Braised Chicken which the whole chicken is properly retained.
“Ta” is the unique cooking technique of Lu cuisine. The ingredient is marinated and coated with the starch or flour paste, fried until it turns golden, then slowly simmer with the seasonings and prepared soup. By this way, the dish is tasty, tender and umami.
Crisp Frying with Syrup is a Lu cuisine cooking skill for making sweet dish that is followed by other cuisines. The sugar is stir-fried in oil and then melted and turns golden, and then the fried diced ingredient like sweet potato is put into the syrup and stir-fried. The diced sweet potato is coated with crisp and golden syrup and you can see the candied floss when pick up one dice.
Many cities in Shandong are close to the sea and is rich in seafood which plays a crucial role in Shandong cuisine. Shandong sea food dishes pay attention to the quality of the raw materials, and the soup worked as a seasoning to strengthen the umami flavor and highlight the natural taste of food materials.
Notable Dishes in Shandong Cuisine
After long-term development, Lu cuisine gradually formed the middle Shandong style, the east Shandong style represented by Fushan and Qingdao dishes, Jinan style including Dezhou and Tai’an dishes, Confucius cuisine, as well as various local dishes and snacks. Among them, Jinan cuisine is the main part of Shandong cuisine. It is famous for its soup; Confucianism cuisine used to be popular among government officials which is extremely exquisite and gorgeous, representing the high level of Shandong cuisine; east Shandong dishes pay most attention to the raw materials and natural taste and the chefs are good at cooking sea food, and the cutting skills is of high degree.
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