All Posts
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Below, view all our posts in chronological order, starting with the most recent. To browse recipes by category, course, or collection, visit our Recipe Index. Also be sure to check out our How-To section and Chinese Ingredients Glossary.
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Dongzhi Festival Traditions & foods (The Winter Solstice)
Updated:View Post: Dongzhi Festival Traditions & foods (The Winter Solstice)The Winter Solstice in Chinese is 冬至 (dōng zhì in Mandarin Chinese), which translates to “winter arrival.” As you may already know, it’s the shortest day of the year and the longest night. The Dongzhi Festival is an important Chinese holiday,…
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Chinese Whole Chicken Recipes & Full Guide
Updated:View Post: Chinese Whole Chicken Recipes & Full GuideWith Lunar New Year coming up, many a Chinese table will soon be graced by a whole chicken. Whether it’s poached, braised, or salt-baked, a whole chicken is a deeply symbolic food in Chinese culture. Today, we have a complete…
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Sweet and Sour Sauce
Updated:View Post: Sweet and Sour SauceSweet and sour sauce dishes are some of the most iconic out there. Even in China, dishes like sweet and sour pork (咕噜肉 – gū lū ròu) and Sweet and Sour Squirrel Fish, (松鼠魚 – songshǔ yú), a famous recipe…
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Perfect Prime Rib Roast
Updated:View Post: Perfect Prime Rib RoastA Prime Rib Roast is almost always our choice for a crowd-pleasing holiday dinner. Turkey is for Thanksgiving, and we’ve never been a big ham family, so prime rib is often our choice! Now we’re bringing you into our home…
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Chop Suey
Updated:View Post: Chop SueyToday we’ve got a recipe for you that harkens back to the early days of Chinese immigration to the United States: Chop Suey. Chinese food in America has evolved much since then, to the point where chop suey itself sounds…
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Introducing A New Member of the Woks Family!
Updated:View Post: Introducing A New Member of the Woks Family!Today we have some very exciting news to share—a new addition to The Woks of Life family: Baby Ethan! Sarah and Justin recently welcomed this bundle of joy into the world, and despite the fact that he’s been cocooned at…
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How to Grow Watercress
Updated:View Post: How to Grow WatercressWelcome to our How to Grow Chinese Vegetables series. It’s the last post of the 2023 growing season, and we’re talking about how to grow watercress, or xīyáng cài (Mandarin)/sai yeung choy (Cantonese) – 西洋菜. My dad used to pick…
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Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Congee
Updated:View Post: Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey CongeeOk, people! I am pretty certain that you’ve never seen this take on Thanksgiving leftovers before, and I am super excited to let you in on our family tradition. For as long as I’ve known Bill and his family, which…
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Farm Update: Fall 2023
Updated:View Post: Farm Update: Fall 2023Welcome to our latest farm update! Somehow, we’re again at the end of another growing season at our farm (well—our “working mini-farm,” if we’re being technical about it). In between writing about food and showing how to cook it, we…
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Black Pepper Chicken
Updated:View Post: Black Pepper ChickenBlack pepper chicken is a Chinese American dish that combines a comforting Chinese takeout-style brown sauce with a good amount of black pepper. While you mostly see Chinese cooks using white pepper, this dish highlights the floral aroma and heat…
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The Perfect Turkey Gravy Recipe: 3 Ways
Updated:View Post: The Perfect Turkey Gravy Recipe: 3 WaysUp until now, I’ve never thought about sharing a turkey gravy recipe. At our house, making the gravy for Thanksgiving dinner has always just been the assumed final step of cooking a turkey. You marinate and roast the turkey using…
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Wife Cake (Lao Po Bing, 老婆饼)
Posted:View Post: Wife Cake (Lao Po Bing, 老婆饼)A Wife Cake, or lao po bing (lǎopó bìng in Mandarin or lou po beng—pronounced more like “baeng“—in Cantonese – 老婆饼), is a Chinese dessert with a flaky pastry crust and a sweet winter melon filling. It is a Cantonese…
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The 2023 Holiday Gift Guide
Updated:View Post: The 2023 Holiday Gift GuideIf your mind is turning to holiday gifting, we’ve got a gift guide for every kind of person in your life, whether they be unfailingly practical, a constant traveler, a little artsy, a homebody, or fashion-forward. Check out our other…
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Kitchen and Garden Go-to’s Gift Guide
Updated:View Post: Kitchen and Garden Go-to’s Gift GuideIt’s our Kitchen and Garden gift guide, full of the select items we reach for again and again—for that cooking and/or gardening enthusiast in your life. The Kitchen and Garden Gift Guide Around the holidays, we often get questions from…
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The Host or Hostess’s Gift Guide
Updated:View Post: The Host or Hostess’s Gift GuideHost or Hostess gifts can be so much more than a bottle of wine or other alcohol! A gift for the host of your evening (whatever gender they may be) is a lovely opportunity to preemptively thank them for the…
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Gluten-free Dumplings
Updated:View Post: Gluten-free DumplingsWe finally have a wrapper recipe to make gluten-free dumplings! The dough can be thrown together with a few ingredients from your gluten-free baking arsenal. Rolling them out is easy, and you can pleat the dumplings just as you would…
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Chinese Lemon Chicken
Updated:View Post: Chinese Lemon ChickenChinese lemon chicken is a delicious, refreshing alternative to the usual sweet and sour chicken. Fresh lemons really make this chicken dish, and although our sweet and sour chicken recipe nails it every time, this lemon chicken may just become…
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Siu Mai with Pork & Shrimp
Updated:View Post: Siu Mai with Pork & ShrimpThis siu mai recipe, made with pork and shrimp, can stand up to any siu mai from a Chinese dim sum restaurant! They’ll transport you to those big dim sum halls of old, filled with push carts, the smell of…
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We’re Sarah, Kaitlin, Judy, and Bill– a family of four cooks sharing our home-cooked and restaurant-style recipes.
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