Foods from around the world have different flavors largely due to seasonings.

If the raw materials for cooking belong more to the natural category, then the seasonings for cooking belong more to the cultural category.

Many of the flavors of our hometown that each of us prefers come from local special condiments. Behind them are the different cultural customs and even religious beliefs of various regions and ethnic groups.

Condiments are a huge category. In this class, Master Fu will talk about oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar. These four are essential condiments for Chinese people. You may be very familiar with them, but there are many things here.

Be particular about it.

Oils Edible oils have many uses for processing and preserving food, and as condiments to add flavor to food.

There is no need for the chef to go to the stove, just by looking at what ingredients he chooses and what oil he uses, you can know his level.

There are two major categories of edible oils, meat oils come from animals and vegetable oils come from plants.

Master Fu’s secret to cooking oil is: “use meat oil for vegetarian dishes and vegetarian oil for meat dishes.”

Chinese food makes good use of lard to make various vegetables, tofu, rice noodles, and even desserts.

Even the soup of noodles and wontons relies on lard for flavor.

The glutinous rice dumplings made with fresh lard, black sesame powder and soft white sugar are, I think, a masterpiece that shows the Chinese people’s deep understanding of lard.

Lard is the finest cooking oil.

You should always have it in your home, unless you are a vegan or have religious beliefs.

Of all the meat oils, I like goose oil the best because geese eat green grass, so the oil is pure and has an elegant smell.

High-end vegetables with delicate textures, such as yams, asparagus, and matsutake mushrooms, have first-class flavor when cooked in goose fat.

Speaking of vegetarian oil, my favorite is rapeseed oil. It has stable quality, fresh aroma and moist taste, and is suitable for cooking all kinds of river fresh food and seafood.

It should be reminded that peanuts are easy to spoil. In addition to being consumed, they can also produce carcinogenic aflatoxin.

It’s hard to sort out a batch of good peanuts with a few bad peanuts mixed in, so I always use peanut oil with caution.

The combination of sesame oil + soy sauce is mellow and delicious.

It is delicious steamed or boiled with various vegetables, tofu, and pork, and used as a dipping sauce.

This is the basic dipping sauce for Chinese food, equivalent to olive oil + black vinegar in Western food.

Italy, Spain, France, and Greece around the Mediterranean are rich in olive oil. The top product is Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and only one pound of olives can be produced in ten pounds.

Its aroma is rich and subtle, slightly bitter, with a sweet finish and a long lasting finish.

Foreigners use it to mix salads, which is delicious; I recommend using it as an oil dish when eating spicy hot pot, it tastes amazing.

Salt Salt is the first of all tastes, but it is better to have less than too much.

Once too much, all flavors will be blocked by it, and no matter how good the ingredients are, they will be useless.

When cooking at home, don't use a spoon when adding salt, and don't use a jar to pour it in. It's best to twist it with your fingers to ensure you don't make mistakes.

Live fish and chickens should be slaughtered and washed before being soaked in light salt water and then refrigerated. They are tasty, antibacterial and keep fresh.

Sichuan people soak fresh vegetables in light salt water and the kimchi they make is so delicious and refreshing that you can never get tired of eating it every day.

There are special salt shops in Tokyo, Japan, with hundreds of different choices. It is Master Fu’s favorite shop.

Generally speaking, sea salt has its own umami flavor and is suitable for vegetables and soy products; lake salt is pure and soft, suitable for seafood and poultry; mineral salt has strong permeability and is suitable for beef and mutton.

In fact, most restaurants or families just buy a pack of salt to keep it constant in the face of changes.

Only masters who regularly cook high-quality ingredients will know how to use different salts to bring out the good taste.

Sauce refers specifically to Chinese soy sauce and Western sauce, excluding bean paste and hot sauce.

Regardless of east, west, north or south, soy sauce is the most widely accepted taste among people all over China. It has spawned many huge soy sauce companies, but their products are far from the best.

The main function of soy sauce is to enhance freshness and color, but now too many artificial chemicals are added.

When choosing soy sauce, look at the ingredient list, the simpler the better.

I recommend two good soy sauces: Taiyou from Huzhou Laohenghe, and Imperial Soy Sauce from Hong Kong Summer Palace.

Their ingredient list only contains water, soybeans, wheat, salt and sugar, and nothing else.

Once you've tried the good ones, you'll know what's bad.

The raw materials of Western food are simpler than that of Chinese food, but their sauce is the soul of cooking. Almost every dish is equipped with a special sauce.

The sauces in high-end restaurants are based on soup stock. The principle and raw materials of making soup stock are basically the same as those in Chinese food.

The essence of Western sauces is in France, and French sauces are almost the standard for Western sauces, which is one of the core competitiveness of the French nation.

By the way, Western food sauces use a lot of butter, eggs, starch and vegetable puree, which are high-quality media for bacterial growth. Therefore, Western food kitchens must pay attention to hygiene and keep them clean to prevent the sauce from deteriorating.

On the issue of cleanliness, Chef Fu strongly agrees with Western food.

The flavors of haute cuisine, delicate, elegant and balanced, can only be perfectly presented in very clean conditions.

I feel that chefs and kitchens are not the cleanest, they can only be cleaner.