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What’s actually cooking in China?
Cooking oil and fat statistics (production, imports, exports) are an important segment in Chinese food industry statistics. These products have become even hotter items recently due to the price hikes. As cooking oil is a very basic ingredient in the cooking of households, such price increases are a potential source of social unrest. It would be interesting to gain more insight in the actual oil consumption habits in China, to supplement the impersonal facts & figures type of information. One of the more informal sources we are screening for China News are discussion forums that are frequented by foreigners expatriates in China with a keen interest in cooking. Chinese with a sufficient grasp of English also participate. This sometimes leads to highly interesting discussions. In this report, we are quoting a section of such a discussion about cooking oil and fat. The quoted section starts with comments from a Chinese participant. A foreigner living in Liuzhou (Guangxi), with an apparent long term interest in the use of cooking oils and fats in restaurants all over China then adds a list of what he has actually observed. We have added a few comments between square brackets, otherwise the text has not been edited to preserve its original ‘flavor’. ‘Stack8 Jun 25, 2007 10:32AM I am Chinese. Peanut oil has the richest flavor in vegetable oil, so Cantonese cuisine choose it as main used oil. Rapeseed oil is the local produced oil in south China. In the past it is the most used oil in Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and other south provinces. It has a vapor that north Chinese do not like. Soy oil and peanut oil are the main cooking oil in the north. As for prices, peanut oil is the highest, soy is less, rapeseed is the cheapest. High end restaurants choose brand peanut oil, vendor [people cooking on the street] use non-brand, mixed oil, usually no peanut oil, because of its price. longhairuo Nov 13, 2007 10:25PM I'm astonished by some of the answers here. Peanut oil is by far the most common cooking oil. I was in my local supermarket earlier today and the oil section was 99% peanut oil. Liuzhou Laowai [literally: foreigner of Liuzhou] Dec 27, 2007 12:36AM I remembered this post [the question what oils are frequently used in China] and went (finally) to check at my local Hualian (like a kind of mini-supermarket). Peanut oil takes up at most 30% of the shelf space and is about 1/3 more expensive than the other soy/canola what-have-you oils/blends. The same sort of proportion holds for the Carrefour shelves.
Oil type Rapeseed oil (unrefined) Rapeseed oil (refined) Palm oil Tea oil (made from the dried fruit--not the leaves--but from the same plant) Lard Duck fat Yak fat Yak butter Whole cows butter Clarified cows butter Lamb fat Peanut oil Soybean oil and blends
regions Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, and very surprisingly Xinjiang Yunnan Yunnan (Jinghong and Mengla) Hunan (Changde)
Yunnan, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hubei, etc Jiangsu, Guizhou, Fujian (Fuzhou) Tibet (Lhasa) Tibet (yes for cooking not just for flavoring the tea) Xinjiang Xinjiang (Kashgar) Gansu, Xinjiang, Qinghai Shandong, Heilongjiang, Guangdong, Liaoning, Jilin and a few others that I forget now almost everywhere
(www.chowhound.com/topics/319845 accessed 21/4/2008) Comments This is indeed a valuable addition to the information we usually provide in our bulletin, including this issue. To begin with, this geographic information shows the cultural diversity of a large country like China and also maps the influence by the cultures of peripheral nations. Bovine (cow, yak) fats are used in the Muslim regions of West China (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu) and Tibet. Lard has been found in the slightly poorer inland provinces. Duck fat is reported for coastal (Jiangsu and Fujian) and inland (Guizhou) regions. Palm oil is imported in China mainly for industrial use. However, in the Jinghong and Mengla regions of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar, it has been seen used for cooking in restaurants as well. Rapeseed, soy bean oil and peanut oil are confirmed as the main cooking oils in China, with rapeseed oil being preferred in the South and soy bean oil in the North. Peanut oil is used all over China. This discussion also provides some insight in the criteria for different types of consumers to select cooking oil. These include price, cooking qualities (vapor) and flavor. The ‘mixes’ or ‘blends’ mentioned here refer to blends of various oils (blends of up to 5 different oils have been reported in other sources). They are widely available on the shelves of Chinese supermarkets and offer ways to produce oils with different qualities. However, it is also used as a trick by Chinese manufacturers to get around cumbersome registration procedures. Once you have registered yourself as a manufacturer of ‘blended vegetable oil,’ you can produce any blend, without the need to register each different product.
The single observation of tea oil in Hunan is interesting. Tea oil (or camellia oil) is being advertised in China as a more healthy cooking oil, but is considerably more expensive that the more current oils. It would have helped, if the observer would have added information about the type of restaurant using this oil
Map of China with the main administrative regions
Eurasia Consult can conduct a tailor made market survey for this industry.