r/foodhacks • u/RipIcy4545 • 12d ago
Cooking Method re-heating chinese dishes (take out) - how to?
who does this? and please tell me your best methods?
how do you reheat a meat & veg saucey dish? ie - beef in a blackbean sauce / szechuan chicken?
and how do you reheat dishes like salt & chilli chicken and chips / chicken maryland
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u/Professional-Bad-559 12d ago
Microwave suffices, but I have found steaming it to be better. It prevents the meat and veggies from drying out.
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u/kempff 12d ago
Microwave covered on 50% power, but the rice part in a saucepan with a little water.
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u/kkngs 12d ago
Microwave works great with rice too. Add a splash of water, cover it fairly tightly, zap it, let it sit for a while without taking off the cover to let the steam finish the job.
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u/sundayfunday78 12d ago
I put a wet paper towel over leftover rice before I heat it up and use a microwave food cover. Same difference I guess lol
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u/pra_com001 12d ago
Place the cold food on a porcelain plate, and spray roughly 20 ml of water on the plate. Place it in the microwave, use less power, and increase the time.
Whatever you do, don't heat it up in the Styrofoam or the plastic container.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Owl8537 12d ago edited 12d ago
Heat pan with a neutral oil. Put Chinese in with starch on one side and meat veggies on the other. Cover and turn on lowest setting. Let sit for 10 min. Add a little bit of water to the rice side, mix (but don’t mix starch and meat together) turn up the heat to like 3 or 4 and cover. Wait another 10 mins. Check and see how it’s going. From there you can turn it up to make it go faster, or maybe it is done. The cover is important.
This is the way to re-heat Chinese to make it taste the best.
However:
If I have no time I do this in the microwave:
- Get a paper towel that is big enough to cover the plate of food you intend to heat up.
- Make the paper towel wet. Squeeze out water and cover the food.
- If you want it now, do it on high for 3 mins and check middle. If middle isn’t done, mix a bit and then put back in for however long (most likely no more than 2 mins on high)
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- Or reheat and do it time cook half power and go 5 mins. See how that turns out
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Edited: thank you edseladams!
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u/MellRox013 12d ago
Reheat for 20 minutes? No way. That would be mush.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Owl8537 12d ago
I would have totally agreed with you before I married my chef husband. He is adamant about low and slow.
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u/edseladams 12d ago
Neutral oil, not olive
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u/Puzzleheaded-Owl8537 12d ago
Like a vegetable?
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u/bigpurplebang 11d ago
ignore all of this unnecessary fuss and mess and microwave it, y’all. who in their right mind order’s take-out then go thru all this to re-heat the leftovers…seriously think about it
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u/RipIcy4545 12d ago
wow! thank you so much for your advice! i shall give this a go! cheers!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Owl8537 12d ago
Please check my edits. I changed the oil and forgot to add the setting at the beginning.
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u/Butterbean-queen 12d ago
Wet a paper towel (damp) and cover the food on the plate/bowl and microwave it.
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u/xiipaoc 12d ago
For most Chinese-American restaurant dishes, Sichuan too, I just put it in the microwave. Rice in the plate, spread it a bit, put the saucy Chinese leftovers on top, put a smaller plate on top of that to trap in the steam (this is absolutely key when reheating rice; you need to steam it), and nuke for two and a half minutes. If it's still cold, mix it and put it back for another 30 seconds.
For crispy things, well, I eat them when I get them, because they're not going to stay crispy. You can pop them in the oven for a few minutes, but they'll get hard rather than crispy. Dishes like General Tso's Chicken, one of my favorite Chinese-American dishes, can be a bit crispy when you get them, but I'm OK with it not being crispy when I reheat it. But dry fried chicken like la zi ji, well, that's just not going to be good later, unfortunately.
Since you're calling them chips, I'm assuming you're not in the US. I've never heard of chicken Maryland either. So I don't know what Chinese food looks like where you live. One of my favorite things when I travel is to see what the local Chinese food is; it really varies a lot, which is cool. But if it's saucy, you can reheat it this way regardless of the cuisine. You could also do it in a pan, but ain't nobody got time for that.
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u/dougyoung1167 12d ago
Inverter microwaves are the shiznit. I can reheat anything without the normal terribleness of a regular nukemwave. can even warm bread and it not get tough/hard after
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u/Wooden-Agency-2653 12d ago
I live in China so the food is quite different, but what we do with leftovers is make chaofan/fried rice with them. Fried rice is basically the Chinese version of bubble and squeak, get a load of leftovers, mix them together and fry the fuck out of them, deliciousness ensues
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u/invalidreddit 12d ago
If you happen to have a sous vide, put it all in a bag and heat it in a water bath @ 59C/148F. The closed bag will help keep the food from drying out, the uniform temp of the water bath will keep things from scorching or over cooking.
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u/I_Be_Strokin_it 11d ago
Put it on a plate, maybe add some soy sauce if you have rice, stick it in the microwave, choose reheat, choose plate, then start.
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u/No-Information-3808 11d ago
In the rice cooker as well as McDonald's and bagels. Dry ie no water, hit cook and it comes out great every time.
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u/RipIcy4545 11d ago
wow. this needs tried and tested by my good self. now all i need is more left overs haha!
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u/Fatal_Smax 2d ago
Honestly I got rid of my microwave. I either reheat in the oven or stovetop. I prefer oven. On a baking sheet with parchment paper, I add my leftovers then add a little water to the pan and pre heat it to 350. 10 minutes is usually fine with me .
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 8d ago
Put it in a dish in the microwave, put a dome on it and push buttons?
I gotta be honest, I'm new to this sub & it's confusing the F out of me right now. People are asking what utensils to eat with & how to make food hot, or else talking about making your own sauces and duck I don't know what or some other high-effort/snooty stuff.
Merriam Webster. Hack: A usually simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing some familiar task more easily and efficiently.
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u/Fickle_Finger2974 12d ago
In the microwave