Chinese take away

scruffian

Not sure if this is the right place to post this...

I think that most of the food in chinese take aways is not made on site, but just stuck in a microwave. Can anyone confirm or deny this? If this is the case it might be possible to buy the same meals preprepared by the supplier, and save a lot of money on chinese take aways...

Ben

matt1987

Depends on the chinese takeaway really, as most are privatley owned. I would imagine a lot of the chains are microwaved, but in the case of my local one.. no the meals are definatly not microwaved.

You can tell if certain dishes have been microwaved like anything battered, as it would be horribly chewy if it was microwaved, although i dont think for one second that they make the battered products on site. Lets say sweet and sour battered chicken, I would of thought that the battered chicken would come pre packed, and they just chuck it in a deep fryer to cook, and bang it in a pan with the pre packaged sauce!

I would imagine the egg fried rice is already packaged, and is just heated up and same goes for noodles.

All the starters would come pre packaged too, and then just deep fried.

aaangelica

Hi, i think its all delivered to the takeaway in frozen form and they simply defrost it, it always tastes better from a restaurant and thats why i never get it from a takeaway, most restaurants offer takeaway and you can then be sure its been prepared on site

Dra90n

Hi. My parents run a chinese takeaway and 90% is made fresh, the remaining 10% are made fresh and then frozen and defrosted for when they're needed. Things like Sesame prawn on toast are frozen. Rice, noodle dishes and pancake rolls are fresh. Hope that helps. But as Matt1987 says, it very much depends on the place. I'd imagine it's no different to most food places.

One thing to bear in mind is the quality of the ingredients they use. I know my parents are very selective.

fiscalfreckles

There may be prepackaged composite ingredients, eg frozen meat, spring rolls, veg mix, ready made sauces etc. but they are usually all assembled at the take away.

You can buy a lot of the above in everyday supermarkets and the rest in chinese supermarkets; cheaper especially if you want to buy in bulk.

thirdparty

I think that you will find that all local takeaways would prepare the majority of their dishes from raw ingredients.

As with all chinese cooking the key is preparation.

A lot of time is spent preparing the ingredients and cooking in advance as their is not much time to do this once the takeaway is open. A local takeaway may have three to four people working the back.

As group of dishes use a lot of common ingredients and the only difference is the flavour and sauces it would not make sense to buy them pre-made. This would increase cost.

penrhyn

At my excellent local Chinese takeaway you can watch the food being cooked while you wait.
So you can see what you are getting is freshly prepared.

flumpster67

penrhyn wrote: »

At my excellent local Chinese takeaway you can watch the food being cooked while you wait.
So you can see what you are getting is freshly prepared.

Mine too!
Its a great takeaway - always top quality and loads of it - lasts two meals!

Tiggergirl

Just like cooking at home, the food costs are far cheaper when bought fresh and prepared from scratch.
With any sort of commercial catering though, you do get the added element of labour costs. However you still need some labour to assemble ready made ingredients, so you don't save all that much.
In general freshly prepared food is cheaper to produce and is of better quality than factory made food, but anything fiddly or labour intensive would probably still be bought in.

BOBS

My loca l chinese is fab .... it is an open kitchen and you can watch them cook all the food ... it is fasinating to watch!! The guy that does all the cooking is unbelievable!

Antispam

I use to deliver Chinese takeaways and most of the stuff, meat, vegetables were sources at Tesco's and local meat market. The frozen stuff was delivered by cash n carry van. All cooked when customer ordered