If you're in the mood for Chinese food, don't go out — try cooking it yourself! Cooking Chinese food at home can be quick, easy, and fun. To get started, you need to know the basic ingredients, tools, and techniques to make your Chinese cooking the best it can be.Basic Tools for Chinese CookingIn Chinese cooking (or any other cuisine), you can usually use the kitchen tools you already have.

Knowing some basic Chinese questions, expressions, and emergency phrases will help you interact with people and travel more confidently in a Chinese-speaking country. Learning the days and months of the Chinese calendar, along with Chinese numbers, will make it easier to make plans and keep tabs on your money.

This drunken chicken recipe doesn’t call for chickens who’ve had one too many martinis. It actually gets its name from the step of marinating moist, cooked chicken pieces overnight in Chinese rice wine mixed with sugar, ginger, and other flavorings. Credit: PhotoDisc, Inc. Preparation time: 25 minutesCooking time: 50 minutesYield: 4 servings 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 2 1/4 pounds) 3/4 cup chicken broth 1 cup Chinese rice wine 3 tablespoons brandy 3 tablespoons soy sauce 6 pieces ginger 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar 1/8 teaspoon white pepper Discard any lumps of fat from the chicken.

Removing shells from shrimp is pretty easy, whether they’re cooked or raw. To shell shrimp, you need just your hands. If you want, put on a pair of vinyl gloves to prevent shrimp-scented hands. If you have a fresh lemon, though, you can use some of the juice to wash away the “fragrance.”Hold the shrimp by the tail with one hand, and then use the thumb and forefinger of the other hand to grasp the shrimp’s legs and edge of the shell.

The Chinese have a long tradition of using herbs and spices to boost a dish’s flavor (and provide nutritional benefits). You can now find many Chinese herbs and spices at supermarkets and specialty food stores. For Chinese culinary creations, you can’t go wrong with these Chinese herbs and spices: Chinese five-spice powder: The Chinese have long believed that the number five has special curative and healing powers, which is why this light cocoa-colored powder originally contained five specific spices.

Potstickers are Chinese dumplings that are steamed and then fried. The combination of steaming and pan-frying the potstickers gives the dumpling wrappers an irresistible balance between smooth and noodlelike on top, and crispy and caramelized on the bottom. Potstickers, despite the name, shouldn’t actually stick to your wok, though.

Chinese cooking encompasses thousands of sauces and condiments, and thanks to your supermarket’s Asian food aisle, many classic Chinese sauces and condiments are readily available. Some of these flavors are strong, some are subtle. Either way, it’s fun to experiment with these intriguing ingredients. Black bean sauce: Made of salted black beans and rice wine; has a savory, slightly salty flavor that sometimes gets a little kick from garlic and hot chiles.

Sometimes called egg drop soup, this version of egg flower soup is surprisingly quick and easy to make. Egg flower soup is a great dish when your cupboards are almost bare and you just can’t summon the energy to fix anything more complicated. The name “egg flower soup” often confounds Western diners: For one thing, the soup contains no flowers.