Towards a Theory of Chinese Marinades: Part 4, Ginger and Garlic

Garlic is a frequent ingredient in the West for marinades. Not so much in China. And the same is true for ginger.

There are a few different reasons for this but mostly scorching of the garlic and ginger, and food philosophy.

In the west, we tend to marinate large cuts of meat, a whole chicken breast or pork chop and so on. It's easy to remove any bits of garlic before cooking. In Asian cuisine, especially the stir fry, where the meat is often thinly sliced, it would be difficult to remove all the bits and they'd scorch and burn creating terrible flavors.

In recipes by western cooks creating an Asian style dish, marinade or sauce, the ginger, garlic and soy sauce abound in ways unnatural to the cuisine. One dish my son cooked for his foods class in high school had him simmering a stir fry in a 1/4 cup of soy sauce for a few minutes toward the end to finish cooking the vegetables and reduce the liquid. Or they shoot for a teriyaki sort of result which is a sauce highlighting soy, sugar, garlic and ginger.

The west sees a marinade as an opportunity to build bold punchy flavors. And this can work. I'm a big fan of Cochinita Pibil or Pernil, roasts of pork usually flavored with a strong marinade of citrus or vinegar, achiote, garlic and so on.

For the Chinese, marination is more about balancing the flavor to bring out the best natural qualities of the item being marinated to best exemplify itself in the dish with the other ingredients. So each ingredient has it's good points and bad points. The marination, along with the cooking technique, accenting/contrasting ingredients and sauce if any are to bring out the best features while minimizing or removing the worst aspects.

Ginger and garlic are often used in cooking then to remove the off flavors of ingredients.

Again, looking at many Chinese recipes originating in the west, the ginger and garlic go in at the start of stir frying with the meat. And they stay there. Or as Cook's Illustrated has done, they add these seasonings later in the cooking so they have more presence and punch in the final dish. Its more likely in a traditional recipe that the ginger and garlic will go in at the start to season the oil, and then are removed. They're not always there to be a noticeable part of the dish, just to correct the other flavors to be at their best.

It's why the Japanese serve pickled ginger with the sushi. Not to be eaten on the sushi, but to refresh your palate for the next taste of sushi. The ginger clears your palate of fish. You'll usually see ginger cooked with fish and other seafood to remove the fishy flavors and let the best qualities of the fish shine through.

Yan Kit So hints at another aspect of ginger, it's acidity, that can be inappropriate in a marinade or even the whole dish. In the recipe for Stir-Fried Prawns in Tomato Sauce from her book Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cookbook she says:

"The Cantonese like to bite into prawns that are 'crisply firm' and to achieve this texture Cantonese chefs leave out ginger and wine when preparing them as we have here." 

Or again in her Homestyle Chinese Cooking when she makes Shrimp in Black Bean Sauce,

 "In making this dish, the goal is to make the texture of the shrimp crisp. Thus both alcohol and ginger are to be avoided." 

She often marinades for hours as well which would exacerbate the issue. Ginger can be as acidic as lemons and can be used to curdle the milk in a ginger custard.  So to avoid the acidic cooking effect as in ceviche, omitting the ginger can be important both in the marinade and in the dish itself.

Garlic, onion, green onion, shallot have the same purpose in many recipes, to correct off flavors. Of course, there are some times when these are the main point of the dish and so the flavors of the alliums themselves might be corrected to be less sulfurous or to bring out the sweetness.

In other techniques of cooking, say a baked or a steamed dish as fish often are, there is little or no opportunity to add flavors during cooking. So marinades for steamed dishes usually build the complete flavor profile for the dish or most of the flavors. And with steaming there is no worry of scorching the ginger or garlic. Indeed such dishes often feature a hot oil finish to bring out the best aspects of the aromatics since steaming doesn't get quite hot enough to do so.

Braising, the garlic and ginger are usually in the liquid of the braise, even though some parts are often stir fried first, much as we in the west would brown off the meat prior to braising.

Hsiang Ju Lin writes in Chinese Gastronomy (one of the greatest Chinese Cookbooks), "The cuisine of Szechuan is a brilliant freak which breaks all the rules and gets away with it."  Hsiang doesn't recognize Hunan as a noteworthy culinary region of China, but it also often goes for the big bold flavors which is probably why those two regions have come to dominate Chinese Restaurants in the West over the Cantonese style restaurants that lead the way originally. And why Cook's Illustrated feels it necessary to punch up aromatics as well.

If you see garlic and ginger in the marinade step of a stir fry recipe, read the rest of the recipe closely. It's quite possible you'll want to change how the garlic and ginger are used in the dish to get the best results.

Other Posts in the series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3