Asian food glossary

The Chinese dumpling this whole family descends from — wheat wrapper, pleated, boiled, steamed or pan-fried.

One dough, three cooking methods, and the method is what changes the name: boiled is shuǐjiǎo, steamed is zhēngjiǎo, pan-fried is guōtiē. The wrapper is thicker than a gyoza's because it has to survive boiling, which is also why jiaozi hold up to freezing better than almost any other dumpling — the reason a frozen dumpling is a genuine product rather than a compromise.

The Japanese adaptation of jiaozi: thinner wrapper, finer filling, almost always pan-fried on one side.

Japanese cooks took the jiaozi and made it thinner-skinned and more finely chopped inside, then standardised the cooking: fry the base until it is glassy and brown, add water, cover, and let the steam finish the top. The result is one crisp face and one soft one in the same bite — the whole point, and the reason gyoza are served base-up.

A dumpling deliberately allowed to stick and brown on one side, then steamed loose in the same pan.

The English name is a literal translation of guōtiē, "pot stick", and it describes the technique rather than the filling. The browned base is where the flavour is: the Maillard crust cannot be produced by steaming or boiling at all. Home cooks usually fail it by using too little oil or too cool a pan, at which point the dumpling sticks without browning, which is the one outcome the name promises but nobody wants.

A dumpling with a very thin square wrapper, usually served in soup rather than eaten dry.

The distinction from jiaozi is structural, not decorative: the wrapper is thin enough to go translucent in broth and the filling is small, so a wonton is mostly there to carry soup. That is also why wontons do not fry well and jiaozi do — there is not enough dough to crisp.

The translucent shrimp dumpling of dim sum, wrapped in wheat starch rather than wheat flour.

The see-through wrapper is wheat *starch* with tapioca starch, scalded with boiling water — a dough with no gluten, which is why it is translucent and also why it tears if you look at it wrong. A properly made har gow is judged on pleat count: the tradition is at least seven, and thirteen is showing off.

An open-topped steamed dumpling, usually pork and shrimp, wrapped in a thin yellow wheat skin.

Left open on purpose, so the filling steams directly and the top can be garnished — a single pea, a dot of roe, grated carrot. Because nothing is sealed in, the filling has to hold itself together, which is why siu mai are made with a paste rather than a chop.

The soup dumpling: broth is set to jelly, wrapped cold, and melts back to liquid as it steams.

There is no trick to getting soup inside — the soup goes in solid. Stock rich enough in collagen sets to a jelly when chilled; the jelly is diced into the filling and liquefies in the steamer. Eat it by biting a small hole first: a whole one in the mouth is 90°C of broth, and that is the most common way people meet this dumpling badly.

A steamed bun of leavened dough — soft and bread-like, not a dumpling wrapper.

The difference from every other entry here is yeast: bao dough rises, so the result is bread that happens to be steamed rather than baked. That is why it is white rather than browned, and why it goes stale rather than tough. Steam, never boil.

The seared, faintly smoky flavour a screaming-hot wok gives food — literally "wok energy".

It comes from oil and food vapour combusting above the pan at temperatures a domestic burner cannot reach, so it is the one restaurant flavour that genuinely does not transfer to a home kitchen. Chasing it by overloading a home wok produces the opposite: the pan temperature collapses, the food releases water, and you get steamed vegetables in oil. Cook in smaller batches instead.

Coating meat in starch, and often egg white or a little baking soda, before a quick fry.

This is the answer to "why is restaurant chicken so tender and mine is not". The starch layer holds moisture in and shields the surface from direct heat; a pinch of baking soda raises the pH and keeps the proteins from tightening. Thirty minutes of marinating does most of the work, and it matters more than the cut you bought.

The browning reaction between amino acids and sugars that creates roasted, savoury flavour.

It runs meaningfully above roughly 140°C, which is why anything wet cannot brown: water boiling off holds the surface near 100°C until it is gone. Every practical browning rule follows from that one fact — dry the surface, do not crowd the pan, and be patient before you turn anything.

A brief boil followed by an immediate plunge into ice water.

The cold shock is the part people skip, and it is the part that matters: it stops the cooking at the moment you chose instead of the moment the food cools. It fixes the colour of green vegetables, loosens skins, and takes the raw edge off aromatics without cooking them through.

Cooking in vapour above simmering water, without the food touching it.

Gentler than boiling for two reasons: nothing agitates the food, and nothing leaches out into water you throw away. For frozen dumplings it is the most forgiving method — a minute long is dry, not ruined. Line the basket, or the wrapper glues itself to it and tears when you lift.

The fifth basic taste — savoury depth, from glutamates and certain nucleotides.

Identified in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda, working from kombu broth, and confirmed as its own receptor pathway rather than a blend of the other four. It is why anchovy, parmesan, soy sauce, mushroom and tomato all make food taste *more like itself*, and why two umami sources together taste stronger than either alone — the synergy between glutamate and inosinate is genuinely multiplicative, which is the whole design of dashi.

Monosodium glutamate — the isolated salt of the same glutamate found in tomatoes, cheese and soy sauce.

The health scare traces to a single 1968 letter to a medical journal, and decades of controlled trials since have failed to reproduce any effect at dietary doses; the FDA and EFSA both classify it as safe. Chemically the glutamate in MSG is identical to the glutamate in parmesan. It also contains about a third the sodium of table salt for the same savoury impact, which is the more interesting fact and the one nobody repeats.

Sichuan's signature pairing: numbing (má) from Sichuan pepper plus hot (là) from chilli.

Two different sensations, not one strong one. The numbness is hydroxy-alpha-sanshool from Sichuan peppercorn, which fires touch receptors at about 50 Hz — a measurable vibration, not a taste. The heat is capsaicin. The numbing is what lets the dish carry far more chilli than would otherwise be bearable, which is why removing the peppercorn from a málà recipe makes it feel hotter, not milder.

Not a pepper and not hot: the dried husk of a citrus relative, producing a tingling numbness.

Botanically closer to a lime than to black pepper, and it contributes citrus aroma along with the tingle. The husk is the ingredient; the black seed inside is gritty and bitter and should be sieved out. Toast briefly before grinding — thirty seconds in a dry pan is the difference between fragrant and dusty.

Oil infused with chilli, and usually aromatics, poured hot over the flakes rather than simmered with them.

Temperature is the entire craft. Oil at about 120°C blooms the aroma; much hotter and the flakes scorch bitter, much cooler and the colour never releases. A good chilli oil is layered rather than simply hot — star anise, cassia, sesame, sometimes fermented bean — which is why the sediment at the bottom of the jar is the best part and should be stirred in, not poured off.

Korean salted and fermented vegetables, most often napa cabbage with chilli, garlic, ginger and salted seafood.

A live lacto-ferment, so it keeps changing in the jar: mild and crunchy in week one, sour and soft by month two. Neither state is spoilage — the sour stage is what Koreans cook with, in stews and fried rice, while fresh kimchi is eaten as a side. It should smell sharp and clean; slimy or mouldy is the actual failure. Keep it submerged and cold.

Salt-tolerant bacteria converting sugars to lactic acid, preserving the food while souring it.

The salt does not do the preserving; it selects who does. At roughly 2% salt by weight the lactobacilli outcompete everything that would rot the vegetable, and the acid they produce takes over as the preservative. This is why a kimchi or a sauerkraut needs to stay submerged: anything above the brine is in the air, where the wrong organisms win.

Korean fermented chilli paste — sweet, savoury and moderately hot, thick as tomato paste.

Fermented from chilli powder, glutinous rice, soybeans and salt, so the heat arrives with sweetness and depth rather than alone. Not interchangeable with sriracha or harissa: gochujang is a paste with sugar and fermented soy in it, and swapping it for a vinegar-based chilli sauce changes the dish rather than adjusting it.

Korean fermented soybean paste — earthier and coarser than Japanese miso.

The same family as miso, aged longer and usually left chunkier, which gives it a stronger, funkier profile. It is the base of jjigae stews. Like miso, it should go in near the end of cooking and not be boiled hard: prolonged high heat flattens the aroma the fermentation spent months producing.

Japanese fermented soybean paste, graded roughly by colour: pale and sweet through dark and pungent.

White (shiro) is short-fermented and mild, red (aka) is long-fermented and assertive, awase is a blend. All of them are alive, so the same rule applies: whisk into hot liquid off the boil. Miso soup that has been boiled tastes noticeably flatter, and that is the single most common mistake made with it.

Brewed from fermented soybeans and wheat — a salt, an acid and an umami source at once.

Brewed and chemical soy sauces are different products: brewing takes months and yields hundreds of aroma compounds, while acid-hydrolysed versions arrive in days and taste flat and harsh. Japanese shoyu contains wheat and is rounder; Chinese light soy is saltier and thinner; dark soy is thicker, barely salty, and used for colour. Tamari is the wheat-free one.

Wheat noodles made with alkaline water, served in broth — the alkalinity is the definition.

Kansui, an alkaline solution, is what makes a ramen noodle yellow, springy and slippery; without it you have a wheat noodle in soup, not ramen. That chemistry also explains why ramen noodles hold their bite in hot broth far longer than pasta would, and why they are cooked separately and added at the end.

Thick, soft, chewy wheat noodles — no alkaline water, no egg.

Just flour, water and salt, worked hard for elasticity. The texture, not the flavour, is the point: udon is deliberately bland so the broth carries the dish, which is why it is paired with dashi rather than with anything rich.

Buckwheat noodles, nutty and firm, served hot in broth or cold with dipping sauce.

Buckwheat has no gluten, so most soba blends in wheat flour to hold together; the ratio is quality shorthand — jūwari is 100% buckwheat and falls apart if you mishandle it. Rinse cooked soba under cold water: the surface starch that would be fine on pasta makes soba gummy.

Stir-fried noodles in a sweet-savoury Worcestershire-style sauce — made with ramen noodles, not soba.

The name means "fried buckwheat" and the dish contains no buckwheat at all: it uses the same alkaline wheat noodle as ramen. The sauce is the identity — fruity, tangy, faintly sweet, closer to a Japanese take on Worcestershire than to soy. Dry the noodles well before they hit the pan or the dish steams instead of frying.

The Japanese foundation stock — usually kombu and katsuobushi — extracted in minutes, not hours.

The clearest example of umami synergy there is: glutamate from the kelp and inosinate from the dried bonito together taste several times as savoury as either alone. It is also the fastest stock in any cuisine — kombu steeped below a simmer, bonito added off the heat and strained within a minute. Boiling the kelp turns it bitter and slimy, which is the one rule to remember.

Dried kelp — the vegetarian umami backbone of Japanese cooking.

The white powder on the surface is glutamate, not mould, and wiping it off with a damp cloth removes the flavour you paid for. Steep, do not boil. Spent kombu can be simmered in soy and mirin rather than binned.

Sweet rice wine used for cooking — adds gloss and rounds off salt.

True hon-mirin is brewed and about 14% alcohol; the cheap "mirin-style seasoning" is glucose syrup with additives and behaves differently, especially in a glaze. Its sugars are what give teriyaki its shine, and the alcohol carries aroma, so add it early enough to cook off if you do not want the sharpness.

A cooking method, not a bottled sauce: grilling while glazing with soy, mirin, sake and sugar.

Teri is the shine, yaki is the grilling — the name describes the technique. The glaze is brushed on in layers during cooking so each one reduces and sets; pouring a bottled sauce over finished chicken gives you sweet chicken, not teriyaki. Four ingredients, equal parts, reduced.

Thin dried sheets of rice flour and tapioca, softened in water for fresh rolls.

Do not soak them soft. A two-second dip while still slightly stiff is right: they keep hydrating on the board and a fully softened sheet tears and glues to itself. Fresh rolls are wrapped in these; fried spring rolls use a wheat wrapper, which is why the two behave nothing alike.

A filled roll in a wheat or rice wrapper, eaten fresh or deep-fried depending on which.

The wrapper decides the dish. Wheat wrappers fry to a blistered shell and go soggy cold; rice paper is for fresh rolls and turns gluey in oil. Frozen fried rolls should go into hot oil straight from the freezer — thawing first releases water into the wrapper, which is what makes them split and spit.

A Cantonese meal of many small steamed and fried dishes, eaten with tea — a format, not a dish.

Literally "touch the heart". The tea is not incidental: yum cha, "drink tea", is what the meal is actually called, and the pot is refilled throughout. Ordering is by the basket and meant to be shared, which is why a dim sum order of one thing per person misses the point of it.

Permitted under Islamic dietary law — for meat, covering the source, the slaughter and the handling.

For a kitchen it is not only the certificate on the meat: pork and alcohol must be absent from the whole process, and cross-contact matters as much as ingredients. It is worth naming on a menu in Amman precisely because much of the East Asian pantry — mirin, cooking sake, some soy sauces, a great deal of dumpling filling — is not halal by default, so an Asian kitchen that is halal throughout is a deliberate choice rather than an assumption.