China South of the Clouds

A lot of Yunnan cooking can be done with standard Chinese cooking tools—and some can even be done without them—but some of the most classic and delicious dishes are best made with specialized tools. Looking to dive into Yunnan cooking (or just Chinese cooking)? Here are a few tools to get you started.

Chinese Cooking Tools

A good wok is the basis for most Chinese cooking. There are lots of options available, in many materials (Amazon has some good ones on Prime, like this one); I use a flat-bottom wok with a side handle from the Wok Shop, available here. Just don’t get a non-stick wok! There are lots of good tutorials available on how to season a wok to give it a non-stick cooking surface, like this one from stir-frying guru Grace Young, and this one from Andrea Nguyen.

To go with your wok, you’ll need a wok cover and a wok shovel. A perforated scoop or spider is also useful.

You’ll also need some good Chinese cleavers. An all-purpose cleaver is the most useful (for cutting vegetables), but a meat cleaver, heavy enough to cut through bones, is also useful.

For some dishes, you’ll want a bamboo steamer, like this one, and a dumpling rolling pin.

Yunnan Specific Tools

One of my favorite cooking tools is my clear glass pickling jar, which has a lip at the top to create a water seal to make perfect Kunming-style pickles. Another of my favorite Chinese cooking implements is the gorgeous Yunnan Steam Pot. And I also make frequent use of claypot for making rice noodles.

If you’re making southern or western-style Yunnan dishes, you’ll want to make sticky rice to go with it. It can be made in a traditional steamer, or in a Thai sticky rice steamer.