When Kitty first started cooking, these are the first things he bought for his pantry. Without these, it’s hard to get the taste right. Kitty decided to dedicate a full page on these because he noticed many online recipes for Chinese dishes don’t take the time to explain the differences in some of the basic ingredients like oil, sugar, wine, etc. And if you just walk into an Asian market blindly, you can easily get overwhelmed.

Kitty’s pick of the top 8 pantry items should really be characterized as “Cantonese” cooking as different style of Chinese cuisines will call for different items. Any Asian market near you should carry all of these and they should all be quite inexpensive.

Here’s the list again for easy copy and pasting:

• Dark and Light Soya Sauce
• Shaohsing Rice Wine for Cooking
• Canola Oil (or Grapeseed, Sunflower Oil)
• Corn Starch
• Sesame Oil
• White pepper powder
• Rice
• Noodle