Baby it’s Cold Outside – Five Chinese Dishes to Warm You Up

Baby, it’s cold outside!!  Today was the first unofficial day of winter… the temperatures dropped in to the single digits, and the strong winds last night made it feel like it was 15 degrees below zero.  Winter is here.  And when it’s frigid like this, I don’t think about Christmas… or, perhaps I do, for I can only think of one thing.  GETTING WARM!  And what better way to warm up than with some Chinese dishes that are sure to make you warm and comfortable all over.

Five Chinese Dishes to Warm You Up

Wonton Soup – Though Hot and Sour Soup may be the more logical choice to some, it’s my list, and I like Wonton soup!  Soup is often the first thing that one thinks of when one comes in from the cold.  It’s hot, it’s steamy, and it tastes mmm mmm good!  I highly recommend the House Special Wonton Soup from The Orient in Bethpage.  Of all the Wonton Soups that we have tried, this one stands above the rest.  It’s practically an entire meal in one bowl.  There was more than enough in the serving to feed a table of five with plenty left over.  There was so much wontons, pork, shrimp, scallops, chicken, and so much more that there was barely any room in our bowls for the broth.

Soup Dumplings – Want your soup “to go”?  What better way than packaging your soup IN your dumplings.  And no one has done it better than “Joe’s Shanghai” in Flushing.  Be careful though.  These may look like your ordinary dumplings, but they’re packed with EXTREMELY hot soup!   Not spicy hot.  TEMPERATURE hot!  There is a proper technique to eating soup dumplings as demonstrated in the video in this article lest you end up burning your tongue, your throat, and your intestines.  That’s one way to warm up quickly.  It’s just not the recommended method.

Kung Pao Chicken – The Chinese invented fireworks.  We think that some of those same ingredients that are used to create fireworks may indeed be the secret ingredients in the recipe for Kung Pao Chicken.  Like fireworks, Kung Pao Chicken packs quite a wallop.  It might seem all nice and tasty to start off… but, as soon as that chicken hits your esophagus, KUNG POW!!  This is one Chinese dish sure to warm you right up!

Chicken Bo-Bo – Do you want even more fireworks and sparklers?  Then you have to go to “Spicy & Tasty” in Flushing.   Chicken Bo-Bo is a dish that you might not have heard of before, but it’s only one of the many great spicy AND tasty dishes to be found at Spicy & Tasty.  And that was just an appetizer.  So you’ll be sure to heat up in a hurry here.  Make sure you balance this meal with some other dishes that might be on the cooler side, lest you might be tempted to run back outside and jump in to a snow pile.

Chicken in Spicy Hot Pot With Mixed Vegetables – We had this incredible concoction at Yao’s Diner in Centereach, NY.  As Mee Tsu Yan described it, “There were more flavors in that pot than cars on the Long Island Expressway.  Absolutely delicious, but ultimately too spicy for this quinquagenarian +“.  But that was the point of this article.  I say, if you can’t take the heat, stop complaining about the cold!

We hope you are staying warm and safe, and if  you take one of our recommendations we would love to hear about it.  And, if you have some other suggestions, we would like to hear about those even more!

Humbly submitted for your consumption,

—Mee Magnum  (“Chop!  Chop!”)