1 What is Tin Sing Foods?

Tin Sing Foods was formed after the closing of Tin Sing Restaurant in the fall of 2005. Located in the City of Gardena, Tin Sing Restaurant opened its doors in 1965 and was a local favorite for Cantonese Chinese cuisine for more than 40 years. Tin Sing was a gathering place for four generations of families who dined or took food to go for everyday faire, family celebrations, holidays, and events that marked life’s special passages.

Tin Sing is remembered for food that satisfied and nourished. It was a place known for “Chinese Soul Food” as its menu and flavors brought people back for more.

The children of its founders, Poy and Linda Jung, have now re-created some of the restaurant’s tastiest and most memorable sauces for the home chef: Classic Sweet & Sour Sauce, Classic Chinese BBQ Sauce, and Lemon Chicken Sauce.

2 What is Cantonese Quisine?

In Chinese cooking, there are 5 major cooking styles which represent the major regions of China:

1. Cantonese Style (Southern China)
2. Mandarin or Peking Style (Northern China)
3. Shanghai,Hangzhou, or Yangzhou Style (Eastern China)
4. Szechuan or Hunan Style (from Central China)
5. Fukien Style (Southern Coastal China)

Cantonese cuisine is the most versatile, inventive, and popular of the regional Chinese cooking styles. The Cantonese were the first to emigrate to Europe and America. They took their highly adaptable cooking methods of stir-frying, roasting, steaming, and simmering to create delicious meals from whatever natural resources were available in their new home countries. These early immigrants were the first to establish Chinese restaurants outside of China, making Chinese cooking known to the West. Cantonese Chinese food thus became the dominant Chinese cuisine in the United States prior to the 1970’s.

3 What is “Chop Suey”?

Tin Sing Foods proudly celebrates its heritage as a former chop suey restaurant. From the late 1800’s through the end of the 1960’s, Chinese in America were primarily from the rural villages of one county, Toisan, in the province of Canton (now known as Guangdong). It was from these early country Cantonese immigrants and their descendents that Americans learned to savor Chinese food. With culinary ingenuity Toisan Cantonese chefs introduced Americans to the delights of Chinese dining by creating chop suey, which literally means “little pieces” or “odds and ends”. By stir-frying fresh local vegetables with small slices of meat and finishing it with a soy sauce based sauce or gravy, tasty new dishes were introduced to the American public. Americans discovered new textures and flavors that were exotic yet familiar. Throughout the early 1900’s until the introduction of other Chinese regional cuisines in the early 1970’s, Chinese restaurants all across the United States offered chop suey along with other popular menu staples such as chow mein, egg rolls, egg foo yong, fried rice, sweet & sour pork, and egg flower soup.

Nearly a century later, the term chop suey is less familiar to more recent Chinese immigrants and Americans who are now familiar with a broad range of Chinese regional cuisine. However, chop suey is perhaps best understood as a genre of Cantonese cuisine, steeped in early Chinese American history and symbolic of the challenges these early immigrants faced in establishing themselves in American society.

Yesterday’s chop suey is now today’s stir-fry. As country Cantonese food, chop suey paved the way for Americans’ appreciation of “stir fry” in all its variations. Stir fried meats and vegetables remain standard fare in every Chinese restaurant, but its standing as a method of cooking is now embraced by almost every American household. It is considered one of the best ways to create healthy, satisfying family meals–an unexpected triumph and legacy for the early village Cantonese chop suey chefs!

4 Are Tin Sing sauces original recipes from Tin Sing Restaurant?

Yes, they are. The recipes for Classic Sweet & Sour Sauce, Lemon Chicken Sauce, and Classic BBQ Sauce were re-created for home use as well as institutional use by restaurants, caterers and other dining facilities.

In the tradition of Cantonese versatility, these sauces can be used in a variety of ways with any number of family favorite recipes and cooking methods, including dipping, grilling, pan-frying, roasting, baking, and coating as a finishing sauce.

5 How are Tin Sing sauces different from other sauces?

These sauces from Tin Sing Foods were taste tested for over 40 years at Tin Sing Restaurant. They pack a savory flavor that is full-bodied, brothy, and meaty, even though they do not have any broth or meat ingredients (This quality is known as “unami”). They have just the right blend of ingredients to taste delicious with a variety of meats, seafood, and vegetables.

Unlike other sweet & sour and lemon sauces, Tin Sing’s Classic Sweet & Sour and Lemon Chicken Sauces are rich in color and smooth and silky in texture. They have just the right balance of ingredients (viscosity) to coat your favorite tempera fried foods the way it should and works well as a dipping sauce without being too thin, watery, or gloppy.

Tin Sing’s Classic Chinese BBQ Sauce is also rich in texture and is not pungent or vinegary, but deliciously blended to create a BBQ sauce that is accessible to a broad range of palates.

6 Where are the sauces made?

Proudly manufactured in the U.S.A., Tin Sing’s products meet the highest possible food quality and safety standards.

7 Where can I buy Tin Sing products?

Tin Sing Foods will be marketing its sauces to local specialty markets, stores, and institutional settings. Look for future announcements on this web site as the company enters the marketplace in the next few months or click on Where to Find Us for more information.

8 What kind of dishes can I make with Tin Sing Sauces?

Check out our Cookbook for ideas and inspiration.

9 Does Tin Sing plan to create other sauces or foods?

Yes, more sauces are on the way, including Tin Sing’s Orange Chicken Sauce and Classic Stir-Fry. At a later time, Tin Sing Foods hopes to develop some of its restaurant’s favorite menu items. Stay posted.