Steam

You can use any white-fleshed fish for this flexible recipe, although pomfret, sea bass, and snapper are the best.

While the pork braises away in the slow cooker, use the oven to make creamy scalloped potatoes and the microwave to make lightening-fast steamed broccoli.

Serving whole fish during Chinese New Year symbolizes the wish for prosperity throughout the year and many happy returns. When you serve whole fish, it's traditional to point the head toward the most distinguished guest.

One great thing about dumplings is that you can use practically anything in the filling—and you can pan-fry them, or boil them, or deep-fry them.

I love to cook with ingredients that might otherwise be discarded, like fish collars. If you’re tempted to treat them as scraps, please don’t throw them away or use them merely for a stock. They’re delicious as the main focus of a dish—think of them as the spareribs of the sea. Here, croaker collars are marinated in citrus, chipotle, ginger, and fish sauce, and served with a mango salad full of funk, spice, and crunch.

These pan-fried dumplings are among the best selling items at Nom Wah Tea Parlor in New York City. The chicken gives the dumplings body, while the cabbage gives them volume.

The slightly sweet but mostly textural wrapper of the rice roll is the canvas for the sweetness of the shrimp.

This method is endlessly adaptable: Swap the black bass for salmon; use spinach instead of cabbage. Don’t like mushrooms? Skip ’em!

Frozen fava beans make easy work of this fragrant rice dish, and you could also replace them with shelled lima beans or edamame instead.

The magic of steam cooks the squash both quickly and evenly, and steaming the dressing with the squash opens up the flavor of the ginger, garlic, and scallions.

Everything in this dinner (including the eggs!) cooks together in one steamer insert.

The flavor of the soy paste really shines here, so use the best-quality one you can find. We like Yu Ding Xing’s glutinous rice soy paste.