What do they put in the food they serve?

By the way, I am a good cook. The food I make do turn out good and do taste good. It just don’t taste the same as what they serve at Chinese restaurant.

Do you ever cook with fish sauce? It’s more important for southeast Asian cooking, but still adds something to Chinese food and is sometimes used. Better than MSG, and without the creepiness.

It’s small and furry….

I second @incendiary_dan‘s recommendation for fish sauce. One of my favorite eats is grilled shrimp with a dipping sauce made of fish sauce, lime juice, salt and pepper. Dried mushrooms will give you way more flavor than fresh mushrooms, and I just discovered these reconstituted mushroom… bits? powder? that turn into a delicious broth. Try more flavorful types of mushroom like Wood Ear in a stir-fry.

Try fresh herbs like cilantro, lemongrass, and thai basil, they give dishes this great zesty freshness. Also ground pork, sesame oil, and scallions- I learned a great recipe for dumplings that used all those ingredients. If you’re cooking meat, leave the bone in, or even better, get it cut through the bone so the marrow seeps out into the broth and flavors it.

But the missing ingredient you’re probably looking for is MSG. It’s short for Monosodium Glutamate and sometimes sold as “flavor enhancer.” Lots of Chinese restaurants use this.

I can’t tell you the missing ingredient. But I can tell you the source of the cabbage in the egg rolls. Right here in Western NY. One of the farms I work with ships 20 ton loads every day or so to a processing plant in NJ that makes egg rolls for most of the Chinese restaurants this side of the Mississippi. They have a cold storage facility large enough to hold 6 full size tractor trailers. It is quite an operation. Who knew?
Coleslaw anyone?

A lot of taste and flavor comes not from what you cook but how you cook it. Temperature, type of heat, type of pot/pan/wok and so on all play just as large a part as the ingredients you put into your meal.

Perhaps you could buy your ingredients from an Asian Market.

@coffeenut :(

Sesame oil? My chinese food never tastes right until I use this.

Even if you are trying to make a particular recipe (let’s say fried rice or broccoli beef) unless you have the exact recipe, and use the same ingredients and you cook the dish in the same manner, it will taste different. You might have to experiment with trying several different recipes before you find one that tastes right. When you go to a restaurant, ask lots of questions. They may not give you their “secret recipe” but you may be able to get enough information to then try to match it up with an online recipe. Ask, “What kind of cut of beef/chicken/tofu/fish was that? Did you sear/boil/fry/bake it first? Was the meat/tofu/vegetables marinated in something? How did you prepare this dish? What kind of mushrooms did you use? Were the mushrooms fresh or dried? What other kinds of vegetables were in this dish? What was that pungent/salty/hot/savory/sweet/tangy flavor that I recall? What’s in this sauce? Does this have a fish/beef/chicken/vegetable broth base? What do you use as a thickener?” etc.

Here’s a site that has a good list for stocking a Chinese pantry.

Check out the websites (and individual online recipes) of the several of the Chinese chefs on TV like Ming Tsai and Martin Yan You can get good recipes and lists for Chinese pantry staples from their sites.

And here’s a site with copy cat recipes from the restaurant P.F. Chang’s.

Thank you all!