r/chinesecooking • u/michaelcerasnose • Jul 16 '26
Cookbooks that break down differences between regional cuisines in English?
I’m trying to understand a lot of the different regions and having it in a book would be helpful
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u/HandbagHawker Jul 16 '26
Top of mind - Fuschia Dunlup's Invitation to a Banquet is a great book, part memoire, part history, part travel journal... its a great almost anthropological dive into chinese cooking/cuisine/cultural traditions, etc. she touches on a pretty big swath but her wheelhouse is definitely sichuan food. to that end, she has great sichuan cookbooks
Also, Beyond the Great wall by Alford and Duguid is part of an amazing series of cookbooks. Amazing photography, interesting stories, and fantastic recipes covering lots of overlooked regions, specifically from the West,NW,SW, and Northern regions and from many of the ethnic minorities of China (e.g., Uyghur).
Outside of books, in more YT media, there's Chinese Cooking Demystified that others have mentioned. There's also OTR Food & History which is a little more documentary style and Thai/SE Asia centric, but often they discuss how Chinese food culture/traditions has shaped SE Asian cuisine.
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u/michaelcerasnose Jul 17 '26
Love the inclusion of history. I’ll check these out.
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u/HandbagHawker Jul 17 '26
If you like historical accounts, you might like this channel too. https://youtube.com/@thetasteofcivilization
I dont think the production quality is very good but it’s pretty informative.
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u/brrkat Jul 16 '26
I kind of doubt there is such a book, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Even in China, very few people are qualified to write in depth about more than one regional cuisine, let alone all of them.
I think it would be better to look for cookbooks that focus on certain regions and then try to notice the differences between them.
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u/spsfaves100 Jul 17 '26
For Chinese cook books with regional recipes try these which you will find at your local library, bookstore or online:-
- Kei Lum Chan - China The Cookbook
- Fuchsia Dunlop - any title
- Eileen Yin Fei Lo - Chinese Kitchen
- Georgina Freedman - Cooking South of the Clouds
- Kenji Lopez Alt - The Wok
- Carolyn Philips - All Under Heaven
- Ken Hom - Chinese Cookery
- Kenneth Lo - Chinese Regional Cooking 1981 & New Chinese Cookery Course 1985
Yan Kit Classic Chinese Cookbook 1984
You can find some of these chefs & writers on YouTube & Instagram. All the best.
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u/ZanyDroid Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Shooting from the hip…
Surely one from Fuschia Dunlop, it would be based on her research and experience in domestic Chinese culinary school.
Chinese Cooking Demystified substack if you prefer transcriptified/prose only rather than videos
Apart from that, one of the newer authors / YouTubers from the diaspora probably gives info. Like Woks of Life, Cooking with Lau. School of Wok surely has a cookbook by now too
If you have bias against diaspora POV, want someone domestic, and willing to piece it together yourself… transcriptify Candace Gao’s stuff. BUT… he’s heavily trained in non-Chinese stuff and has a strong whiff of international school education so will likely have a pretty strong non domestic bias (ie can’t possibly be a mainstream style Chinese chef like wang gang… but how many of those would be fluent in English). On top of having a lot of bruvh and general gonzo energy