It is almost impossible to count the number of Chinese dishes and divide them into cuisines without dispute. Cooking, frying, frying, steaming, heat, ingredients, seasoning... Sometimes, these seem simple, and sometimes they are extremely complicated. What kind of secrets are hidden in Chinese kitchens? Is it the ratio of ingredients, condiments, and seasonings? Is it a clever use of time? Is it the ever-changing cooking techniques of chefs? This is not a simple math problem.

This lunch was meant to treat the neighbors. Every November, people in Nixi Township fertilize the highland barley fields. In order not to miss the best opportunity, each family helps each other. Today, their farming methods and living habits still remain the same.

Tashi is a black pottery craftsman. People here stubbornly believe that dishes cooked with black pottery have a special and good taste. The cooking method that black pottery can afford is to boil. The cooking method of "boiling" is closely related to the birth of pottery cookware. Before the birth of pottery, people might not have imagined that their descendants would eat so many tricks. To be able to find another way to cook food other than grilling and roasting was already a surprise and a leap forward at the time.

People here have their own philosophy of life and do not pursue too refined living habits. As an intermediary between water and fire, it transmits temperature to the ingredients and releases the deliciousness. Seemingly simple boiling, but contains the secret of the Nixi people's kitchen. After thousands of years of this secret, the original "surprise" has become a daily cooking method.

The Chinese were the first to bring "steaming" into the kitchen, and also created a large number of steamed dishes. The Double Ninth Festival is Ouyang Guangye's 40th birthday. Before the evening, he had to prepare a large-scale village banquet, and the pressure can be imagined. The venue of the village banquet is not fixed, and the stove has to be set up temporarily. Such a stove is perfect for a village banquet. Guangdong is the hometown of gourmet food, and this kitchen, which seems to have no secrets at all, has to satisfy the discerning diners here.

In Chinese village banquets, steamed vegetables are often the protagonists. Steaming is one of the basic methods of Chinese cooking. Steaming was thought to heat faster than boiling and to keep ingredients intact until people discovered the quick-heating properties of fat. Historically, the word "steam" used to be synonymous with the word "sacrifice". Sacrifice and offerings should be kept intact. The operation of water vapor makes the heat more evenly dispersed in the container, and also makes it possible to steam a whole pig.

In Guangdong, almost everyone is a gourmet, and they have almost strict requirements for dishes. Steamed pig is the finale of today's banquet. As a successful village banquet, family reunion and old friends reunion are important, and the satisfaction conveyed by delicious food is also essential.

Twenty-five years after leaving his hometown, 72-year-old Ju Changlong returned to Yangzhou from Japan. He finally had the opportunity to come to the familiar Yechun Tea House and taste the familiar taste again.

The biggest feature of Huaiyang cuisine itself is that ordinary ingredients are carefully crafted and presented in a gorgeous manner. Among them, another big secret of the Chinese kitchen - the role of the knife bears the brunt. A chef of Western food has a corresponding knife for every action; a knife in the hand of a Chinese food chef can perform countless knife techniques. The reason why the knife skills of Chinese cuisine are so rich is that it has never been simply "divided into parts". Since the age of 19, Ju Changlong has used three years of hard work to master the use of a knife. However, knife skills have strict age requirements. At the age of 72, he rarely shows his knife skills.

Every day, Zhou Saiqun will be with a group of children, teaching and preaching, trying to teach them all the experience of more than 30 years. Regardless of aptitude, first-year students must master more recipes as soon as possible while practicing basic skills.

In today's China, every city looks very similar. Only eating habits can become a label that distinguishes it from other places. Hunan cuisine is spicy and spicy, and the "fragrance" mainly comes from oil. All kinds of fats are indispensable in Chinese kitchens. The ancients used fats to heat ingredients quickly, which is undoubtedly a good way to save fuel. Today, no matter how many theories affirm the dangers of excessive oil, Chinese people still cannot do without the unique crispy taste. Whether this is contradictory or not, the use of fat is the great contribution of the Chinese to cooking methods.

This is the Chinese kitchen of a high-end hotel, with all the kitchen utensils. Liang Zigeng, an internationally renowned chef, intends to use these kitchen utensils to cook an unremarkable delicacy-salted duck eggs.

Although he has worked as a chef in high-end hotels in many countries around the world, Liang Zigeng has completed a chemical understanding of Chinese and Western cooking. But in his bones, he still likes the original way of cooking food. Today, he and his old friend are going to cook Hangzhou cuisine, West Lake Vinegar Fish, which is a dish that requires very high heat. They cut a fish in half, boiled one half in water and oiled the other half. Both methods require the fish to be put into the pot and out of the pot at the right time, otherwise it will directly affect the special fresh and tender taste of the West Lake kun fish. After being out of the pan, the two ways of fish are combined in the same plate, and the fried sweet and sour is poured on it, and the deliciousness looks ready to come out.

Unfortunately, salted duck eggs that have been marinated for a month are not considered a success. For chefs, there will always be unknown delicacies waiting to be decrypted. A small salted duck egg can still stump an international celebrity chef.

For professional chefs, the secret of the kitchen is their lifetime wealth. For ordinary people, the secrets of the kitchen are more connected with their youth, emotion and memory.

Li Xianyou is such a Hong Kong native, and she plans to create a new dish today. This dish uses egg liquid to seal the meat stuffing in the pomelo peel, fry it first, and then pour the finished broth into it to simmer. Like most housewives, Granny Li has never received professional culinary training. The soups and dishes she cooks every day have neither beautiful appearance nor supernatural skills. However, this does not prevent most Chinese people from being nostalgic for "mother's food".

The secret of the kitchen, ostensibly the art of water and fire. To put it bluntly, it is nothing more than the harmonious relationship between man and the universe. Because of the selfless giving of the land to human beings and the common love of food for human beings, the ultimate secret of the kitchen is - there is no secret.