Selected top Chinese dishes for cold summer. Summer is a really a contradictory season. We love the bring light and lovely sun but hate the high temperature. Usually we choose simple dishes that require less cooking time in front of the fire and ingredients with cold attributes that can help to expel hotness in the body. Following is our selected dishes for summer.
Cold Dishes
1.Wood Ear Mushroom Salad | wood ear is an extremely healthy ingredients. In winter, we love to include it in soups or stir frying dishes. But the most delicious way of wood ear is to make a salad. When slightly blanched, it becomes crunchy and full of flavors with the seasonings.
2. Smashed cucumber salad |Chinese smashed cucumber salad with garlic, vinegar and sesame oil. This is one of the most popular homemade cold dishes in China, which only requires 5 minutes from preparation to table. After smashing, the cucumber can absorb the flavors and seasonings better and in the same time, create different textures.
3. Pickled Cucumber |Chinese Pickled vegetables (酱黄瓜)are always one of my favorite dishes in hot summer days. Usually they are easy to prepare and have a strong unique aroma after fermentation. Another reason we may fall in love with pickled vegetables is that they can boost our appetite. Other similar pickles includes pickled ginger and pickled Daikon and carrot .
4. Cold tofu salad |Sesame and soy sauce cold tofu salad with a small amount of fresh Thai peppers. This is super easy to prepare but only recommend to tofu lovers. Since tofu is not steamed or blanched, it may have some raw flavors. But the hot dressing can overcome in common cases. Or you can steam the tofu for a while to make a steamed tofu.
5. Amazing Chinese Spicy Potato Salad |Amazing Sichuan style spicy potato salad with a dreaming hot sauce and sour sauce.Potato has been one of the most favorite food during the childhood. And it has been the most popular ingredient on Chinese table now. When I was still a little girl and we relied on potatoes, white radish and Chinese cabbage along the winter.Our favorite way is to shred it and make a quick shredded potato stir fry
6. Szechuan cold noodles |Szechuan style cold noodle is our favorite staple food in summer, usually matches with cold porridge and other salads. You can make a milder version of Szechuan cold noodle, using sesame paste as the main ingredient. I call this version cold sesame noodle.
7. Cold sesame wonton |If you are wonton lovers, this will be a great choice for summer. Wonton can be extremely delicious with the right seasonings.
8. Lotus root salad | Lotus root is the magic vegetable I love the most. It is harvested in autumn traditionally but can be bought all the year. Traditional Chinese Medicine believe that lotus root is beneficial to stomach and lung, helpful for cooling down the body and controlling weight. The young girls love to drink lotus leaf tea or eat lotus root paste with the purpose of keeping fit. Other similar salad recipe: kelp salad , wood ear salad , century egg salad.
9. Okra Salad with Black vinegar |Okra is a vegetable with slimy and gooey texture. It has been widely cultivated in China. In Chinese, we call it “秋葵” literally means “autumn okra”. It used to be harvest in late summer and early autumn. But now it is available around the year.
10.Liangfen-Chinese Jelly Noodles | Liangfen (凉粉) is one type of Jelly noodles which are quite popular in western part of China. Generally, Liangfen is made with starch, pea starch, sweet potato starch or mung bean starch. In today’s recipe, I amusing mung bean starch to make mung bean jelly noodles. They are crystal, smooth and cool.
Light Stir Fry
In summer days, cutting and washing becomes quite comfortable, comparing with standing in front of the fire. So all types of light and easy stir fry dishes are popular in China too. Followings are some easy and light stir fry dishes which can be finished within 5 minutes.
11.Pork and Mushroom Stir fry | This is one of the easy meat series. In Chinese cuisine, we love to stir fry all types of meat (pork, beef, chicken) with seasonal vegetables. You can find we have fresh peppers, wood ear mushrooms, onion, snow peas. This mushroom pork stir frying is also a national dish loved by many children. Although no extra spices and herbs are added, the dish is rich in flavor. And most importantly, a classic Chinese style meat stir fry dish only need 5 minutes frying in front of the fire.
Other similar light stir fry:
Pork and Fresh Pepper Stir Fry
Pork stir fried with black bean sauce
beef and snow pea stir fry
12. Easy Chinese Broccoli with garlic | crunchy Chinese broccoli with garlic can be quite comforting for summer days. The crunchy and sweet stem of Chinese broccoli can be a good side dish.
Other similar green vegetable recipe:
Oyster broccoli
Buddha’s Delight – Chinese Vegetable Stew
Bok Choy and Mushroom Stir Fry
13. Shrimp and vegetable stir fry | this is a very dedicated seafood stir fry with seasonal vegetables. I use fish sauce as the main ingredients with only a few other seasonings like white pepper, sugar and sesame oil. This is extremely yummy and can be finished within minutes.
Desserting and Pudding
14. Tofu Pudding | Chilled tofu pudding can be quite comforting in Summer with taro balls, sweetened red beans or fruits. Or it can be simple served with sugar or a syrup.
15. Coconut Milk Pudding | Creamy and yummy coconut milk pudding, served chilled.
16. Snow Fungus Soup | In summer, we usually serve chilled snow fungus soup as a dessert. This is beneficial to lung based on Chinese Traditional Medicine.
17. Grass Jelly (仙草烧) | Grassy jelly is a great dessert for summer like most of other jelly. They are melt in mouth and quite comforting in summer, just like chilled boba milk tea.
18. Mango sago (芒果西米露) | Mango sago with ice cubes is extremely popular in Southern China, and now also a national choice across the country. Sago (西米) is made from sago palm tree stem starch. Although not native to China, we love to cook this as a dessert. Raw sago has a pure and lovely white color and cooked sago presents a lovely transparent color. Unlike the chewy boba balls made from tapioca starch, sago is much softer. When matched with sweet mango, this dessert has multiple textures and flavors.
19. Taro balls | Taro balls in summer, is commonly served with tofu pudding or chilled red bean soup. They perform well as a staple food comparing with other popular ingredients.
20 Dessert Chilled before serving. We love to have chilled dessert for example snow skin mooncake or Nuomici. In order to keep the best flavor, they are chilled commonly before serving.
21. Mung bean soup| Mung bean is considered to be the best ingredient for summer in China due to it’s cold attribution. It can be cooked directly with sugar or adding mature pumpkin as natural sweetness.
Hi Elaine,
thank you for this summer dishes anthology . Even though the fire in my kitchen is an electrical one I also don’t like to stand in front of it on hot summer days for too log. It’s nice to have a roundup like this one when searching for a quick and light summer meal.
Sure. I get both electrical and gas stove in my kitchen and I am always finding out ways to make the dishes in summer simpler and require less working time. Happy cooking. Autumn is just on the way now.