Savor Asia — 35 Must-Try Dishes Covering the Culinary Treasures of Asia

Asia is the most culinarily diverse continent on earth. The cooking traditions of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and beyond share almost nothing in terms of ingredient profiles or techniques — except one thing. Every major Asian cuisine cooked with ancestral fats before industrial seed oils arrived.

What Makes This Edition Different

The standard Savor Asia covers 20 dishes. This expanded edition covers 35 — going deeper into regional Chinese cooking, adding Korean and Filipino dishes that are rarely covered in English-language seed oil free cookbooks, and including more street food adaptations that can be made at home without specialist equipment.

The Asian Fat Traditions

• China — lard was the dominant cooking fat in Chinese restaurant kitchens until the 1980s. It produces true wok hei at the high temperatures Chinese cooking requires. Canola oil and soybean oil are post-industrial substitutions.
• Japan — sesame oil and rendered pork fat have been used in Japanese cooking for centuries. Modern Japanese cooking uses these alongside neutral fats, not instead of them.
• Thailand and Southeast Asia — coconut oil and coconut cream are the ancestral fats of Southeast Asian cuisine. The arrival of cheap palm oil and soybean oil displaced them from commercial kitchens but not from traditional home cooking.
• India — ghee. As discussed at length throughout the Savor Series, there is no Indian cooking tradition that does not use ghee as its foundation fat.
• Korea — sesame oil is used extensively as a finishing fat, with pork lard used for high-heat cooking. Sesame oil should not be confused with the seed oils discussed elsewhere in the series — it is cold-pressed from whole sesame seeds and has been used in Korean cooking for over 2,000 years.

Key New Recipes in the Expanded Edition

• Korean dakgalbi — spicy stir-fried chicken in sesame oil and gochujang
• Filipino adobo — braised pork in lard with vinegar, garlic and bay
• Japanese gyoza — pan-fried in lard for the crispy base traditional gyoza requires
• Vietnamese pho bo — beef bone broth with tallow-rendered fat on the surface
• Malaysian rendang — slow-cooked beef in coconut cream until the fat separates and the meat fries in its own rendered fat
• Indonesian nasi goreng — fried rice in lard the way it was cooked before vegetable oil arrived

See also the standard <a href='https://www.thefoodiekitchen.net/savor-asia-cookbook/' style='color:#1a2e1a;font-weight:700;'>Savor Asia cookbook</a> covering 20 seed oil free Asian recipes.

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What Is Inside Savor Asian — 35 Dishes

The 35-dish expanded edition adds 5 recipes to the original 30 — including a full Korean home cooking section (doenjang jjigae, japchae in sesame oil, galbi in beef tallow) and expanded Filipino and Vietnamese cuisine. Filipino additions: adobo in coconut oil, kare-kare (oxtail peanut stew in lard), and sinigang (tamarind soup). Vietnamese additions: second pho recipe with tallow-rendered broth and Vietnamese egg coffee (cà phê trứng).

The fat framework remains the same: lard for Chinese and Filipino, coconut cream for Thai/Indonesian/Malay, butter for Japanese teppanyaki, tallow for Korean BBQ, sesame oil as finishing fat only across East Asian cuisines.

Who This Book Is For

The complete Savor Asian collection — the version to buy for the full range of East and Southeast Asian seed oil free cooking in one book.

What cuisines are added in the expanded edition?

Korean home cooking (3 new recipes), expanded Filipino (2 new), expanded Vietnamese (2 new). Total: 35 dishes across 9 cuisines.

Is the original Savor Asian still available?

Both editions are available on Amazon. The 35-dish edition supersedes the original.