What is Shaoxing Wine, and why’s it in almost every Chinese recipe?

“Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine.” I know I say that quite a bit in these recipes, so here, I wanted to explain myself a bit. We’ll go over the varieties of Shaoxing wine (plus, the Shaoxing wine-like objects labeled such in English), a bit about the historical background, and why/how it’s used when cooking.

Now note that neither of us are brewers or anything, so our knowledge of how to make this rice wine’s rather… elementary. We’d be happy to answer any questions, but we probably won’t make rice wine on this channel anytime soon. Maybe one day though?

The discussion’ll be over on Reddit at the standard time, ~8am EST. In hindsight, I’m not sure how much more ground I’d be able to reasonably cover there, but I know that I was pretty fast and loose with Chinese-language terms here so I know that something written can often be helpful on that front.

As for the Instagram, it’s over here if you’re curious… lots of pictures from Shaoxing/Yangzhou/Gaoyou, and more should be on the way:

https://www.instagram.com/chinesecookingdemystified/

And check out our Patreon if you’d like to support the project!

http://www.patreon.com/ChineseCookingDemystified

Outro Music: “Add And” by Broke For Free

ABOUT US
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Learn how to cook real deal, authentic Chinese food! We post recipes every Tuesday (unless we happen to be travelling) 🙂

We’re Steph and Chris – a food-obsessed couple that lives in Shenzhen, China. Steph is from Guangzhou and loves cooking food from throughout China – you’ll usually be watching her behind the wok. Chris is a long-term expat from America that’s been living in China and loving it for the last nine years – you’ll be listening to his explanations and recipe details, and doing some cooking at times as well.

This channel is all about learning how to cook the same taste that you’d get in China. Our goal for each video is to give you a recipe that would at least get you close to what’s made by some of our favorite restaurants here. Because of that, our recipes are no-holds-barred Chinese when it comes to style and ingredients – but feel free to ask for tips about adaptations and sourcing too!