I noticed that there's an Asian supermarket not far from my apartment. Is there anything found in these stores that's worth getting? Like obscure spices or herbs or sauces etc
The "ethnic" section at my local grocery chains are pretty empty and just carry Sriracha sauce and soy sauce and a few canned goods.
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Thai chilies, pork belly, curry paste...lots of stuff really.
What this user said. If it's a decent place you'll be able to find sauces and ingredients for a bunch of Asian dishes. It's more up to you to narrow down what cuisines you're interested in and buy some pantry essentials for them.
What do you want to cook? Thai curries, Chinese stir fries, ramen?
Pretty mu h everything i go to one for duck and cheap fresh seafood best place to get duck fat as well
It's probably a waste of time to go there unless you know Asian themed dishes and now to cook them.
Most of the ingredients on sale won't even be in English. I only know what to buy there because I lived with an Asian girl in college and watched her cook often
Veggies, seafood, pastes, things for stocks, snacks.
Agree with user who said pork belly, and really pork/chicken in general is cheaper. The exception is beef, for some reason that tends to be more expensive. But I did manage to grab two decently thick ribeyes recently for $14, whereas if I attempted to buy at whitey grocery it would've been $20+ easy for the same thing and weight. It's just timing and luck.
Also don't underestimate their frozen section. You can find really yummy buns and dumplings. As well as desserts.
Asians get a bad wrap, they're really helpful if you ask a question. If you walk in with a recipe or list of ingredients just have the balls to ask and they'll help you find it, assuming they know your native language.
A whole supermarket full
Buy all your instant noodles from them, there's always a better and cheaper selection than in normal supermarkets
And maybe get some frozen dumplings/buns or other wacky snacks.
*rep
specialty snacks, wonton/dumpling wraps, tapioca bubbles, tea/drink powders, exotic vegetable like Lotus roots, yu/bokchoy, & peppers, various mushrooms, marinated meats, and import drinks. Dumb rare stuff like Oreo O's cereal, too, if you're into things like that as they will import stuff if you ask them.
>exotic vegetable
>bokchoy
Fish sauce
Exotic ramen
Asian mortar and pestle
Prepacked spices and masala
Canned asian fruits (try lychee)
Vegetables tend to be cheap at Asian supermarkets, especially leafy greens.
they have nice bakeries too
My local Asian shop has a bakery and it smells so good, but then they say that they're less pastries/cakes, and more savoury.
Anyone have any thoughts? Is it worth giving them a try because it's like £1.50 each and I wonder whether it's worth it.
Everything they sell you can get in Walmart much cheaper.
Don't encourage immigrants, they're not welcome.
agreed
This is untrue.
BUILD WALL.
Fuck off ya cunt.
Regardless of position on immigration you're going to get much better quality at prices not too much more expensive than supermarkets like WalMart.
And then you also have a greater range of products available as Asian stores are highly specialised.
Good luck walking in to WalMart and looking for fresh Lemongrass or something similar. That's not to say shit like bok choy isn't garbage and a waste of money, but there is definitely merit in looking for speciality ingredients outside of a supermarket.
So sure, go to WalMart if you're ok with bland as hell barely seasoned dishes since you have a stick up yer bum that means you feel a hard working individual doesn't belong in your country since you were born there and they or their parents weren't.
Bok choy is no more a waste of money than celery, because water content. I tempura fried bok choy once and it came out amazing.
Not that bok choy is anything to be revered, I'm not suggesting that.
I never really understood the appeal of it. If you're looking for a filler vegetable, onions/shallots are much better IMO and more readily available.
I'd consider it if it wasn't so expensive and such a delicate ingredient. I can buy a kilo of onions for about the price that I could get a meal's worth of bok choy, and the onions will also stay fresh and usable much longer.
>immigrants not welcom
You're about 400 years too late, son.
Interesting snacks. Dried Squid is pretty awesome. Premium Ramans and Udons. Foreign markets in general have awesome prices on spices. If it's a bigger store with a butcher, they usually have awesome prices on fish. If it's got produce, the prices are usually good too. Curry mixes, cheap cooking supplies. I have a great single burner hot plate, wok, and cleaver I got from one. Oh, yeah. the cutting board. It was like 5 bucks for what I assume is a cross section of a telephone pole or something. I use it with the cleaver because it's sturdy and I don't want to hack up my good boards when hacking through bone.
Sake.
>A whole supermarket worth of fresh vegtables and meats
>don't know what to buy
christ you're fucking pathetic
This desu famalam.
eat it. then you'll know if it's good or not.
or use google and find out what pastries people from country X eat
anyway OP, go to rasamalaysia.com, find a recipe you want to try, then buy the ingredients.
Essentials:
>dark soy sauce
>kecap manis
>sesame oil
>kaffir lime leaf
>lemongrass
>tamarind paste
>coconut milk
>rice noodles (pho and beehon/mifen)
>Chinese noodles
>Chinese vinegar or Japanese rice vinegar
>fish sauce
>galangal
>fermented shrimp paste (belacan)
>shrimp/crab chili paste
>gochujang
>doenjang
>any kind of rice wine
>shaoxing wine
>Chinese five-spice and/or tea spice mix
>maggi or gold mountain seasoning sauce
>gochugalo (thin chili flakes)
Also recommended:
>all kinds of instant food mixes from Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand
>drums of all kinds of curry pastes
>tom yum paste
>kalamansi and lime juice
>dried mango
>any kind of vegetable you can't find in another supermarket
>shrimp chips
>frozen dumplings
>wanton, spring roll, and dumpling wrappers
>rice paper for spring rolls
>banh mi bread
>sweet chili sauce
>fried shallot
Almost like cancer on a stick.
>fried shallot
Sneaking in the most retarded thing on your list right at the end there buddy?
Piss off, Shallots are amazing.
fried shallots are an essential ingredient in sambal and the basis of numerous Malaysian and Indonesian dishes. It also makes a fantastic seasoning and goes well in several Thai dishes. You can make it on your own if you want, but I get a huge bag for 2 bucks from my local supermarket.
>Yes gwai low, all Walmart products are 100% Amelican, at super low prices!
>Sneaking in the most retarded thing on your list right at the end there buddy?
Huh?
I'm not that guy, but fried shallots in a canister is a common asian grocery item. It's like French's fried onions, but razor thin fried tastier shallots instead. You can eat them like candy as a snack or combined with some mixed nuts, sprinkle on top of stir frys, on soup. I like them on casseroles, potatoes, on top of burgers, steaks, etc, not just asian food. They sell them in a huge gallon canister for a reason. People buy it and use it at home (Vietnamese and Thai cuisine). It's a really common garnish and bring both texture and flavor. They're also more expensive for Americans to make at home, since shallots are more a luxury priced produce item, costing 10x that amount of garlic or onions, most of the time. A canister for $5 is probably equivalent to $50 dollars in costs.
You can get rice extremely cheap if you buy large bags from them. Their pastries are also usually interesting (not necessarily good).
I personally think Chinese and Vietnamese pastries taste excellent, especially HK ones. However, their Western pastries are garbage. This is easy to deal with in an Asian grocery store in a Western country, since the closest thing to a Western fresh baked good they'll sell is banh mi bread, which is great.
>banh mi bread
>bread bread
They have pretty damn good prices on vegtables.
Also getting a giant tub of peeled garlic for like $4 is fucking awesome.
What kind of desserts do you recommend?
>banh mi bread
It's literally a fucking baguette you goddamn hipster retard, the sandwich is leftover from french colonization of the area. Vietnamese food is shit and your kind are shit for liking it.
>fuck pho
>fuck bhan mi
>fuck vietnam
>>banh mi bread
>>bread bread
Yeah, and the best banh mi is T-Bell's 7-layer burrito.
>Fish sauce
what do you use this for
>Everything they sell you can get in Walmart much cheaper.
Walmart just has top ramen and soy sauce
How long will that tub last if kept refrigerated?
>Vietnamese baguette = French style baguette
whew lad
I'm fucking a Vietnam, shit's pretty nice.
why would you buy vegetables?
Asians literally did nothing wrong
a lot of the produce and meat they sell is cheap as fuck compared to ytpipo supermarkets because they don't waste money on advertising and shit
Roof Koreans even did us some favors.
And they don't report cash sales to the IRS, same reason gooks will polish your nails cheaper for cash.
a dash of fish sauce is actually good in almost everything because it's not super fishy and gives a lot of savory undertones
When I was a poorfag I did almost all my shopping at that exact store. Shits cheap af
Using small amounts of fish sauce is common in a lot of curries and soups from south east asia.
t. Frog who is still severely butthurt that they got their ass wiped by the Vietcong at Dien Bien Phu and had to have the US attempt to cleanup their failed colonial mess.
neat, never heard of it. Is it like soy sauce?
If you learn some of the basic moves of a couple Asian cuisines hitting the Asian market allows you to feed yourself a healthy diet for pocket change compared to a western supermarket. It's really easy to make delicious things that have a food cost of under $1 per meal. Chinese in particular like to eat well but hate spending money. Learn their secrets and you can easily feed yourself for ungodly cheap.
No, nothing like soy sauce. It's clear, crisp and fresh. Good stuff, love it on cucumber.
It's got s stronger flavor and aroma than soy.
A good fish sauce has a very strong smell on its own but you only use a tablespoon or so in a curry.
I can't really describe its taste but its really salty and a little bit fishy.
It's similar to oyster sauce if you have ever used that?
It's made from salted fermented anchovies. Smells like death, but tastes amazing.
what's the difference between oyster, squid and fish sauce in terms of taste? Do they actually taste like their respective sources?
I've never had squid sauce but fish and oyster do have a slightly different flavor, you could probably get away with switching them out in most dishes.
Oyster is sweet and thick, nothing like fish sauce which is watery and light. I don't know about squid
lol what? Walmart doesn't have everything and any asian stuff they have there is marked up way higher than what I can get in an asian grocery store. I do all my shopping at asian grocery stores since everything is just cheaper there, like vegetables and meat.
it's literally not
I've never had a banh mi that was anything like a baguette beyond appearance
I never trust them. I think everything will be full of bugs.
Melona is fucking outstanding. By far my favorite frozen treat. Great taste user.
What the fuck is fish sauce for? I have a giant bottle of it
>Chinese supermarket nearby
>Dad has a bad encounter with a security guard
>Vows to never go there again
>Can't even shop there anymore without getting shit from everyone
...
in SE Asia it's pretty much used as a substitute for salt. it's especially used as a salty agent in foods that would call for seafood. it's also great for grill recipes, J Kenji Lopez recommends it in his carne asada marinade
>The Life and Times of Tyrone Jamal
What's that even mean?
It was supposed to be a joke :(
Depends on what you like. It's mostly going to be ice cream and fruity things. Samanco snacks are basically ice cream sandwiches, and then of course there's mochi ice cream. Definitely worth the look.
Wal Mart has objectively shit produce. I'd say even worse than Aldi. With less variety. Shit rots after the second day because they pack with gas, or takes forever to ripen because they harvest too quickly to stock demand.
>beans and ice cream
>semen-co
>don't shop at stores which use non-American labor and sell non-American products
>shop at Wal-Mart
kekkkk
>Aldi
>Shit produce
Woah is that true? I only ever buy snacks and frozen shit
Maybe it varies from store to store, but every single one I went to in the UK had produce that smelt like manure, and it was generally low quality. Always had good luck with their pears though.
I can't even get udon noodles at my wal-mart lad, the asian market is useful.
Asian vegetables, spices, fireworks and banned imports.
If you cannot find all of the ingredients without needing to ask for help cooking might be out of your depth.
not everyone can read Chinese dude
t. a dude who can read Chinese
You can use google's translate app to live translate things with your phone's camera, probably want to download the language pack beforehand.
As the guy he was responding to I wanted to say this but I wasn't sure on it's moon rune language support.
I use it to translate the Spanish flyers posted in cheap hole in the wall burrito places.
Good question, I hate peeling garlic but always thing these things will go off pretty quickly.
>great, thanks for helping me find dark soy sauce, guys
My argument is you should be able to find dark soy sauce by look. I own some dark soy sauce I didn't ask the clerk where it was.
Any good chink beer out there?
For what purpose?
Dunno about good, but Tiger Beer? It's originally Singaporean/Malayan.
OP, make sure you buy this.
Tsingdao is just about my favorite macro beer.
get a char siu bao, those are mad good
I like bok choy with soups and stir fries. Onions will impart flavor and no matter how much you like onions your dishes can get too oniony. Bok choy has a very subtle flavor that doesn't leech as easily. Heck a semi-healthy meal is to just throw a handful of bok choy into instant noodles to instantly upgrade the meal.
there's no way to discern dark soy sauce unless
1. the bottle is in English
2. you can read Chinese
or 3. you've bought a certain brand before and know what that brand looks like, and the store you go to stocks it
if you're trying to buy it for the first time you're out of luck
I can't read chinese. But I can certainly draw or print out the characters (or just look at them on a smartphone) and then match that to the stuff on the shelf.
Also, once you've bought and used dark soy sauce before you can easily tell it apart from the normal kind by looking at the viscosity and the color that it leaves behind on the empty part at the top of the bottle.
I fucking love those things.
Do they have better tea at places like this or am I better going to a specific tea place?
There's a H mart nearby and I'm hoping they are cheaper than the Teavana near me
It's a lot of new things and he's overwhelmed. I get it! I've been going to my Asian market for years and I still find little treats and surprises that I hadn't known about before.
Teavana has garbage tea.
Or, you know, you could ask somebody paid to help customers where a product in their store is. Like someone capable of social interaction.