The course that starts everything
In a Chinese banquet kitchen, the cold dishes are made first. Not because they are simple, but because they need time: the chicken for the white-cut plate is boiled and cooled hours ahead, the beef is braised and pressed overnight, and the fish for the drunken crab has to sit in its wine for at least a day before it earns a place on the table. The hot courses cook in minutes. The cold ones are where the kitchen actually thinks.
Westerners tend to treat cold dishes as an afterthought, the salad that arrives while the kitchen catches up. In China, liangcai are the opening argument of the meal, the part that sets the tone and the pace, and in the drinking houses they are half the reason anyone came. This guide covers what they are, the families they fall into, and the ones worth ordering when you see the glass case at the front of a restaurant.
How cold dishes work in a Chinese meal
A formal Chinese dinner runs in a fixed order: cold dishes first, then the hot and main courses, then soup, then rice or noodles, then dessert. The cold plate is there to open the palate and fill the gap while the stir-frying starts. At a wedding banquet you will see eight cold dishes arranged around the table before a single hot plate lands, and at a home dinner the cold dishes are usually whatever was pickled or braised earlier that week.
The drinking function matters just as much. Cold dishes are the classic accompaniment to beer in summer and to baijiu in winter, which is why the good ones are salty, sour, garlicky, or all three. Fried peanuts, boiled edamame, and smashed cucumber exist because people drink, and they are on the table at every night market and hot pot restaurant for exactly that reason. Our guide to Chinese baijiu covers what to drink alongside them.
The five families
Cold dishes divide by technique, and the technique tells you what to expect on the plate.
Dressed salads (凉拌菜) are vegetables or blanched greens tossed with garlic, vinegar, soy, sesame oil, and sometimes chili oil. Smashed cucumber with garlic, wood ear with cilantro, kelp shreds with vinegar, and tomato with sugar all live here. They are made to order in summer kitchens and they are the cheapest way to eat well in China.
Braised and sauced dishes (酱卤菜) are meats or tofu cooked in a master stock of soy, spices, and wine, then cooled and sliced. Beef shank, duck wings, eggs, and tofu all come out of the same pot, sold by weight at market stalls where you point at what you want and it gets chopped in front of you. A portion runs 20 to 50 RMB.
Pickles and preserves (腌菜) are the long-keeping branch: Sichuan paocai in its jars, Hunan’s chopped chili, the sweet radish of the north, and the pressed mustard greens that every region calls by a different name. They are eaten as side dishes with congee, as accents in fried rice, and as the sour note inside a bowl of noodles. The wider world of fermented and preserved food is covered in our guide to Chinese fermented foods.
Alcohol-steeped dishes (糟醉) are the Jiangnan specialty: chicken, fish, or goose steeped in fermented rice wine lees or yellow wine until the meat carries a faintly sweet alcoholic perfume. Drunken crab and drunken shrimp are the famous and slightly alarming versions; the pork and chicken versions are the ones locals eat at home in July.
Cold noodles and starch dishes are their own category: Sichuan liangpi, cold noodles dressed with sesame paste and chili, the Northeast’s big starch noodles with cucumber and carrot, and the Yanji-style cold noodles in a cold beef broth with pear and egg. The Chinese street food guide maps the regional versions.
Eight dishes to order
| Dish | What it is | Region | Price (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pai huanggua | Smashed cucumber with garlic and vinegar | North, everywhere | 8-18 RMB |
| Koushui ji | Chicken in chili oil and Sichuan pepper | Sichuan | 28-48 RMB |
| Bai qie ji | White-cut chicken, ginger scallion dip | Guangdong | 38-68 RMB |
| Yanshui ya | Salted duck, served cold, sliced | Nanjing | 40-80 RMB |
| Jiang niu rou | Spiced beef shank, sliced cold | North, everywhere | 35-70 RMB |
| Pidan doufu | Century egg with silken tofu | South, everywhere | 12-25 RMB |
| Lao cu huasheng | Peanuts in aged vinegar | North, everywhere | 8-15 RMB |
| Liangpi | Cold starch noodles in chili vinegar sauce | Shaanxi | 8-15 RMB |
Quick facts
- Cold dishes arrive before the hot ones at any proper Chinese meal, and at banquets they come in a set of eight
- The display case at the front of a restaurant is the cold-dish counter; point, and it is weighed or plated for you
- Garlic, vinegar, and sesame oil are the default dressing, and adding chili oil is normal almost everywhere
- Sichuan cold chicken and Nanjing salted duck are the two famous regional plates worth seeking out
- Cold dishes keep well, which is why they dominate the market stalls and the beer-table snack list
- Vegetarian diners can build a whole meal from the dressed salads and the braised tofu and egg stalls
Making them at home
Most cold dishes are within reach of a traveler with a kitchen, and the technique is mostly about timing rather than heat.
Smashed cucumber is the one to learn first. Lay the cucumber flat, give it two or three firm whacks with the side of a cleaver until it splits into ragged pieces, then cut those into chunks. The bruising is the point: the cracks soak up the dressing, which a clean slice never does. Dress with garlic, vinegar, soy, a pinch of sugar, and sesame oil, and let it sit ten minutes. It should taste sharp and a little aggressive, because the job of a cold dish is to wake you up.
Century egg with tofu is even simpler: open a can or pack of silken tofu, drain it, top with chopped century egg, soy, vinegar, and scallion, and eat it with a spoon. No cooking at all, and the contrast between the cold creamy tofu and the ammoniac, jelly-yolked egg is the whole dish. If the egg’s flavor is new to you, start with a light hand; the stuff is genuinely strong. Our Chinese vegetarian food guide has more cold-dish ideas for meat-free meals, and the Cantonese cuisine overview explains the white-cut chicken tradition behind the famous plate.
What to skip, and what to trust
Not every cold dish deserves a traveler’s time. The sweet preserved fruit and the lurid jelly salads at the far end of a market case are aimed at local tastes that take years to acquire, and the pre-packaged duck necks from the chains, while genuinely popular, taste mostly of numbing pepper and sugar. I would spend the appetite on the classics instead: the cucumber, the chicken, the duck.
The good news about this category is that it is hard to get wrong. A cold dish is cooked ahead, cooled slowly, and dressed at the last moment, which is the most forgiving process in the Chinese kitchen. Order two at the start of your next meal, one vegetable and one meat, and watch how the rest of the dinner reorganizes itself around them. That is how the meal was designed to begin.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous Chinese cold dish?
Depends who you ask. Sichuan will say mouthwatering chicken, Guangdong will say white-cut chicken, and Nanjing will say salted duck. For a traveler, the cucumber is the more useful answer, because you can order it anywhere and it tells you whether the kitchen bothers.
Are cold dishes served cold or at room temperature?
Room temperature, mostly. Dishes straight from the refrigerator are rare in Chinese cooking; the meat dishes are cooked ahead and cooled to room temperature, which lets the flavors open up and keeps the fat from setting hard. The dressed vegetable salads are the exception and taste best genuinely cold.
Can I eat cold dishes as a vegetarian meal?
Yes, and it is one of the easier ways to eat vegetarian in China. The dressed salads, the braised tofu and eggs, the pickles, and the cold noodle dishes all work without meat. Check that the braising stock is meat-free at market stalls, since it often is not.
Why do restaurants display the food in a case at the entrance?
That case is the cold-dish counter, a legacy of the old open-kitchen tradition. You choose from the case, the portions are weighed or plated, and the dishes arrive at the table within minutes. Pointing at what looks good is the correct and expected behavior.
What drinks pair with cold dishes?
Beer in summer, baijiu in winter, and tea with anything oily. The salty and vinegary dishes are built to sit alongside a drink, which is why the beer-restaurant menus are almost entirely cold plates.
Are cold dishes safe to order in summer?
Generally yes, because they are cooked ahead and the good ones are turned over quickly. At market stalls, pick the ones with the fastest turnover and avoid anything that has been sitting in its case since morning. In high heat, a busy stall is the safe stall.
Written by the ChinaTravelFood editorial team.
