Whats the difference between Chinese and Cantonese food?

Usually my family has Chinese food but we decided for a change we would try Cantonese.


Both foods are deliciously similar however the difference we noticed was Chinese food is more


sweet and sour but Cantonese is more hot and spicy. i think both have same menus.|||Your idea about Cantonese food is wrong because it is not famous for hot and spicy food, the hot and spicy one should be Szechuan Cuisine.



China is a big country, people in the north, west and areas around Yellow River mainly consume wheat products, eg. noodles, steamed buns or different kinds of pan fried pancakes in their daily diets, while people in the southern part of China or area near to the Yangtze river mainly consume rice (in different ways such as steamed rice, congee, dumplings made of rice flour) in their daily diets.



Chinese food contains roughly 8 different cuisines, Cantonese is just one of them.



Cantonese cuisine tastes quite mild and emphasizes using fresh ingredients or seasonal ingredients to prepare, the cooking methods are boiling, stir frying, steaming, charcoal grilling (roasting), deep frying, long boiling, double boiling (steaming in a steamer for long hours), braising and finely sliced raw ingredients (eg. raw fresh water fish's skin with ginger and green onion salad or thinly sliced raw fresh water fish fillet or raw fresh water shrimps with dipping sauce), Cantonese chefs prefer to keep the natural flavours of the ingredients and using mild seasonings or marinades so that the finished dish should be well balanced and not greasy. Even the Cantonese chefs using quite a lot of different seasonings, sauces, spices or herbs, they usually use modest amounts of seasonings to avoid overwhelming the flavours of the ingredients.



Cantonese cuisine is from Guangdong province of China, it includes Hakka cuisine, Chaochau cuisine, Shunde cuisine, Guangzhou / Hong Kong cuisine and each cuisine has its significant dishes, for example, Yum Cha Dim sum, Sweet and Sour pork or steamed spare-ribs with pickled plum %26amp; soy bean paste, are from Guangzhou %26amp; Hong Kong cuisines, while baked salty chicken, steamed minced pork topped on tofu cubes are from Hakka cuisine, cuttle fish balls noodles, double boiled chicken %26amp; shark fin's soup, stir fried marinated chicken dices serve with deep fried basil leaves are from Chaochau cuisine.



As Canton (now known as Guangzhou) Guangzhou is very near to the Peal River Delta therefore in the 18th century a lot of Cantonese immagrated to South East Asia %26amp; North America, they opened restaurants, laundary shops, etc., they brought their home cooking styles to foreign countries and nowadays most Chinese restaurants in western countries mainly provide Cantonese cuisine and most of the Head chefs of these restaurants are trained in Hong Kong or Singapore.



In my opinion, the best bet is to ask the wait staff for recommendations because different restaurants have different significant dishes.|||me94- Here's the deal. Cantonese food IS Chinese food. "Canton" now known as Guangdong is a regional type of Chinese cuisine. It is lighter and incorporates lots of seafood as it is located along the coast of China. Most "Cantonese" food served here in America is Americanized Chinese food. It has elements associated with Chinese food but it's not entirely authentic. Here's a link to help you better understand the bigger picture of what real Chinese food is about. It's alot to take in but then we are talking about a culture that is more than 4,000 years old. Yes, seriously. This link helps you examine Chinese cuisines by region:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_foo鈥?/a>|||One thing is there is more seafood in the Canotnese diet, and they eat more pork and chicken, were Mandarian is more beef and less seafood, they eat more wheat products like noodle and steam flour based products.





The noodle in the south are more the gg variety and there diet id more based on rice, the north like in mandarin cuisine tend to be more spicy and not as heavy.





Frying is more used and in the north uses more steaming and braising, flavours are similar but more garlic and certain sauces in the south and more hoisin, chili paste and sweet based sauce for the mandarin palate.





I am a former chef and like the 2 cuisines, in fact I am quite fond of the wheat based mandarin style of food over the southern cantonese style.|||Typically, in the USA, Chinese food is Cantonese food since the first immigrants were from Canton, China.



Actually, Cantonese food is NOT hot and spicy. Common flavors are fermented black beans, oyster sauce, bean paste... etc.



The spicier Chinese cuisines are Sichuan, Hunan, Beijing... etc.|||Cantonese is one part of Chinese food. Chinese food can be devided into 4 main types.|||Similar to the difference between American food and Southern food.|||One type is from China, and the other is from Ohio.