Americanized Chinese Food That Was Not Created in Asia

Submitted By: J. Highland
What most Americans are familiar with as “Chinese cuisine” may actually have some Chinese chefs scratching their heads in amazement with when ordered in the authentic restaurants on mainland China and Hong Kong. The foods served in the US were not created in Asia, but are Americanized Chinese foods that were developed to suit the tastes of Americans.
Lots of what would be considered in America as “classic” Chinese food actually isn't. The traditional Chinese chefs base their food on contrasting textures as well as contrasting taste. This goes a lot farther than the “classic” thick, sticky, gooey sweet-and-sour sauce that seems to drape over everything that is deep fried, especially chicken. Traditionally, there are actually five basic flavors that must be represented in Chinese cuisine to make the taste complete: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and pungent. It's definitely more complicated and not a taste that the typical Western palate is used to.
But like any adaptation, the origins come from the mother country but have been tweaked a bit in order to make them tastier to the natives and also to make use of the indigenous ingredients of the new country. This adaptation to the local tastes make both the food and the immigrants more palatable to the natives.
That's why food like chop suey (adapted from a traditional braised vegetable dish but using Western cabbage, carrots, onions, and broccoli), General Cho's Chicken (which is non-existent in China where the real-life general is only known for his war tactics), and the very famous fortune cookie (which has its origins in Japan, not China, and was first served in Los Angeles in 1916) have come to be known as comfort food and classics.
Fried rice in China isn't brown, it's white. Apart from the fact that it's got little bits of vegetables and meat in it, it in no way looks like the fried rice you get in those cardboard boxes. To this day, brown fried rice means that it's burned; a common mistake when mostly men were immigrating to the New World and were forced to work at jobs which didn't threaten the local men, which was washing clothes and cooking food.
Much of Chinese-American food was concocted by these thrifty Chinese cooks who had to make use of the leftover food. The most famous of these is a story about miners barging into a chow-chow, the old term for a Chinese restaurant and demanding to be fed after the restaurant was closed. Not wanting a riot or to lose money) the cook just mixed together all the leftovers he had, seasoned them with soy sauce, and served it. He named the dish “tsap seui,” which actually means “mixed or chopped pieces.”
Chow Mein, literally “fried noodles” are stir-fried crunchy or soft noodles usually topped with Chop Suey. Sesame Chicken, Egg Foo Yung, and barbecued spareribs were also American Chinese concoctions. But, it doesn't really matter if the food is authentically Chinese or not – what most of these diners care about is that it's delicious.

Published At: Isnare.com