The Chinese year 4692, The Year of the Dog, begins next Thursday, and with it comes a new awareness by Americans of the health aspects of Chinese food.
“It’s fitting that one of the characteristics of The Year of the Dog is health and nutrition,” says Perry Moy, owner of The Plum Garden restaurant in McHenry.
The new year comes at a time when Chinese restaurateurs are trying to reverse the damage done by a report last fall on the high fat content of Chinese foods. Their response has been to emphasize the flexibility of their cuisine.
“Chinese food is perfect for customizing,” agrees Charles Hsu, manager of the Szechwan House, 600 N. Michigan Ave.
Customers trying to avoid fat, cholesterol and salt definitely want foods that conform to their regimens, the restaurateurs say.
One way to do that is to know what to order in a Chinese restaurant and what and how to cook when you make Chinese-style dishes at home, experts say.
The ability to design dishes to fit individual needs has become more important to Hsu, Moy and other Chinese restaurateurs after the September report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington said that governor’s chicken, kung pao chicken, moo shu pork and some other Chinese favorites were loaded with calories, fat, cholesterol and especially sodium.
The CSPI report received extensive media coverage and even a few jokes from late-night talk show hosts because Americans tend to regard Chinese food as good for them.
“That’s because it is,” argues Charles Tang, manager of Austin Koo Mandarin restaurant, 318 W. Adams St., and three Orient Express buffets in Chicago.
“Chinese food is healthful, not only because there is not that much fat, but also because in general it has a good balance of ingredients: a little meat, a little rice and all kinds of vegetables.”
Austin Koo restaurant features 18 fat-, cholesterol- and sodium-controlled dishes that, by and large, conform to government nutrition guidelines. Even the Oriental Express buffets, which handle a large lunch business, have a calorie-watcher’s special each day, Tang says.
“We use only olive, corn or soybean oil, no tropical oils,” Tang says. “If customers request lower fat, the cooks will make it with virtually no oil.”
Although restaurateurs hesitate to criticize their customers, they do say that many of the dishes in their establishments have been adapted to satisfy American demands for more meat, fewer carbohydrates and more things fried.
“When Chinese eat, they order a little bit of everything-a beef dish, a chicken dish, a fish dish, vegetables-and they share them between many diners,” Hsu says. “Many Chinese eat 80 percent rice, only 20 percent vegetables and meat. In China many people cannot afford much meat.”
“When I started with the House of Hunan (another Michigan Avenue restaurant) 16 or 17 years ago, we used only 4 ounces of meat with a lot of vegetables in our Mandarin dishes. You could pick the pieces of meat out and put them in a little corner of the plate. But the customers complained and wanted more, so now there are 8 to 10 ounces of meat.”
Hsu acknowledges that governor’s chicken, a high-fat dish of listed in the CSPI report, still is the most popular dish on the restaurant’s menu. Kung pao chicken, another criticized dish that contains hot peppers and peanuts, is one of the few Chinese recipes that doesn’t call for vegetables. It, too, remains popular, he says.
The center, whose analysis showed that a typical dish of kung pao chicken had as much fat as two McDonald’s Big Macs and a large order of fries, last month took on popular Italian restaurant food and listed several dishes that were equally high in fat.
“(The) Chinese actually eat more calories than Americans but weigh less because they eat more carbohydrates,” Tang says. “I am 67 years old. I eat whatever I want, but at each meal-breakfast, lunch and dinner-I eat a bowl of rice. It’s a habit I have established from my childhood. And rice is all carbohydrate.”
But Tang’s American customers aren’t as watchful of what and how they eat. Mounds of uneaten rice are cleared with the dirty dishes. Fewer than 1 percent of Tang’s customers specifically order from his list of lower-fat selections, he says, even though there are dishes such as Hunan scallops, shrimp with pea pods and spicy orange beef.
Some Chinese restaurateurs thought the publicity blasted all Chinese food and said business slipped by as much as 25 percent in the weeks afterward. They have tried to regroup to provide healthful tips and dishes.
Vivian Kuo Macht, who teaches courses in Asian cooking at the College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn and Kendall College in Evanston, says it’s not difficult to adapt Chinese dishes made at home.
“During the last couple of years I’ve been teaching students how to reduce the amount of fat and oil in the traditional Chinese recipes,” Macht says.
“You can get the same kind of dish and the same taste without so much oil. For example, you sometimes use oil to marinate and flavor meat or vegetables before they go into a stir-fry, but a good chicken broth serves the same purpose.”
Hsu describes this technique as “passing through,” which seals in the meat juices, he says. Chicken and pork often are dipped briefly in boiling broth.
“If you put raw meat in a hot wok, it will stick (without a lot of fat). So it is best to cook the onions, garlic and vegetables first, then put in the meat and cook,” he says.
“Our chefs are trained that after a dish is complete to spread 1 teaspoon of oil over it to give it a glaze and make it look bright and gleaming. If you look at the dishes that come back after the dinner, there is a lot of oil and fat that is left behind and not eaten,” Hsu says. “That’s as it should be. That’s why we have separate plates.”
He says that Chinese traditionally eat the rice from a separate bowl and do not use it to soak up the sauce, as some other diners do.
“Mix it all up with the rice? That is what you give to your pets-leftovers,” Hsu says.
But most Chinese restaurants are able and willing to customize, restaurateurs say.
“Everything can be made to order,” says Moy, who is the Asian cuisine spokesman for the National Restaurant Association and a member of the Midwest Chinese Restaurant Association, which includes 75 Chinese restaurants in northern Illinois.
“That includes lowering fat. You can have more garlic or black beans or ginger.”
These are all ways to increase and vary the flavor either at a restaurant or at home, he says.
“Many customers ask for a dark soy sauce, or to omit soy sauce and have it separately. And customers don’t have to eat all the sauce, or all the meat.
Customizing is especially easy at Hsu’s restaurant, where the menu and recipe systems are computerized. With one or two keystrokes a waiter can change a recipe to ask the kitchen for more or less of certain ingredients such as oil, meat and vegetables, or he can add other ingredients or eliminate or reduce things such as MSG, salt or hot spices.
“We have a steamed vegetable dish for those who want absolutely no fat in their food,” Hsu says. “It comes with a garlicky soy sauce for dipping.”
At Austin Koo, the cooks will eliminate all added fat if you request it or will make a dish without MSG or soy sauce, Tang says. But those ingredients add flavor, he says, as does some fat, so they should not be eliminated completely.
“You don’t have to order health food,” Tang says. “Just eat wisely.”
Nutritionists say that the best advice is to balance the foods you eat. Don’t do away with dishes you enjoy, even if they are egg rolls or chicken with peanuts.
Instead, share them with other diners so you don’t eat a whole order, and balance the meal with low-fat vegetables and plenty of rice, the way many Chinese do, says Jayne Hurley, a registered dietitian who wrote the CSPI report on Chinese food. A cup of long-grain rice cooked without salt or butter has 264 calories, 57 grams of carbohydrate and 0.6 grams of fat. A bowl in a Chinese restaurant usually contains about 1 1/2 cups.
Hurley says that although many Chinese restaurateurs said they were disappointed in the CSPI report, many reacted quickly by promoting the positive aspects of their cuisine. A few restaurants attached to their menus instructive cards from CSPI with hints on how to order and eat.
Rather than having an egg roll, Moy and others recommend beginning a Chinese-style meal with a steamed dumpling or a garlic shrimp stir-fry, both low in fat and sodium, then perhaps moving on to a clear broth soup with won tons or noodles. Hot-and-sour soup also is fairly low in fat, but it has more calories, he says.
“If you like a certain flavor, ask for it to be added to a dish,” says Moy. “For instance, you could get a chicken and vegetable stir-fry, but add pineapple. Some do. Soy sauce can always be served separately. I recommend using black beans and garlic, and the rage now is spicy hot, which doesn’t use much fat.”
Rice does not always have to be the carbohydrate. Lo mein noodles, which are similar to spaghetti, are more popular than rice in northern Chinese provinces, Hsu says.
Cooking instructor Macht stresses that home cooks should start with just 1 tablespoon of cooking oil when making stir-fry dishes. The secret is getting the wok and oil very hot, she says, so the food cooks rapidly without soaking up much of the fat.
To cut down on fat, calories and cholesterol, use less meat and more vegetables, Macht and others say. Lean steak, such as round or flank, sliced thinly, cooks faster and goes further than large chunks. The same applies to lean center loin or lean shoulder pork.
Skinless chicken breast will cook as fast as vegetables. Meats submerged for a few seconds in boiling broth cook quickly in a stir-fry without much fat, Macht says.
Shrimp and squid are popular in Chinese mixes because they stand up to the motion of a stir-fry without disintegrating. Both have significant cholesterol, but that is made up for by the lack of fat, especially saturated fat.
Other fish, such as snapper, pike, whitefish and cod, work well in gentler cooking methods, as in a Chinese steamer or in a rack above lightly boiling water in a wok. Ginger, green onions, soy sauce and fermented black beans are traditional seasonings.
As popular and tasty as egg rolls, egg foo young and fried rice are, they are high in calories, fat and cholesterol, and they are best avoided by those watching their diets.
Peanut oil, a tasty and traditional fat used in Chinese cooking, has a little more saturated fat than soybean and corn oils and has fallen out of favor in some restaurants. Sesame oil, strongly flavored and similar in saturated fat content to soybean and olive oils, makes a tasty addition when appropriate.
“I’ve also been teaching stew-type cooking-slow cooking in sand pots (clay casserole dishes),” Macht says. These long-cooking stews are very flavorful, they can use less-expensive types of meat and you need to use no oil at all. For chicken it takes about 1 hour, for beef 1 1/2 to 2 hours. And with fatty meats like short ribs, you cook them first in boiling water to take out a lot of the fat, then put them into the clay pot with other ingredients. No oil (is) added at all.
“At home I hardly ever use stir-frying at all, except for vegetables. I stew and steam a lot.”
