Lunar New Year: hands down one of my favorite holidays. The red envelopes, the feasts, and the 15 days of celebration all intertwine to create what I would consider a very fun time. It can be hard to celebrate while in college but I was not about to let my location stop me from having a feast. If you’re looking for Lunar New Year inspiration look no further – you’ve come to the right place.
The Planning:
After hosting Lunar New Year last year, my friend and I learned from our mistakes and planned accordingly to have the best Lunar New Year celebration yet. I never mess around when it comes to food and Lunar New Year was the perfect time to put my cooking skills to the test. First things first, in true college fashion, I made a google doc to begin the planning of our upcoming celebration.
Once the google doc was finalized, it was time for the invitations and menu to be sent out. While it may sound silly, what’s a Lunar New Year celebration without an official invite?
In honor of the number 8 being a lucky number in China, we had to have 8 items on the menu as well. It may look like a lot of food but when you’re feeding 7 stressed college kids, there can never be enough.
The Big Day:
After weeks of planning, the day finally came to celebrate Lunar New Year. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my apron but that did not stop me from cooking up a feast. We started by making the gyoza and the spring rolls. The real struggle is putting them together but this is a great opportunity to get everyone in the kitchen bonding over how ugly their gyoza are.
Although they aren’t perfect, I’d say our gyoza turned out pretty cute. At the same time we also prepped all of our spring rolls. After watching a quick youtube video we felt adequately prepared to begin making the spring rolls. We even made a few baby ones to taste test.
The rest of the dishes required less preparation so we went ahead and began cooking the noodles and vegetables before frying the gyoza and spring rolls. I tried my hand at making pork belly for the first time and it was an interesting experience to say the least. The entire slab of pork belly is covered with coarse sea salt and put in the oven to bake for roughly an hour and a half. Considering the small amount of preparation that needed to be done for the pork belly, I’d definitely recommend making it for your next dinner.
Bring on the Food:
After a whole day of cooking, we were all starting to get a little hangry so it was time to dig into our feast. Although it may look like a lot of food, college students eat much more than you’d expect. The pork belly turned out really well and we dipped it in sugar to balance out the salty flavor.
The rest of our feast was equally delicious but I’d say that the pork belly was definitely the star of the show. If there’s one thing college students love more than good food it’s good food on a budget. We bought the 5 pound slab of pork belly for only $16. That’s a steal if you ask me. To finish off our dinner we had 汤圆 (tang yuan), also known as sweet rice balls.
The meal was absolutely delicious and I’ll definitely use some of these recipes again next year. Whether you celebrate Lunar New Year or not, these dishes must be on your dinner table this year. Check below for the recipes.
Recipes:
Spring Rolls, Gyoza, Din Tai Fung Dumplings, Crispy Pork Belly, Ru Yi Cai (vegetables), Long Life Noodles, Tang Yuan (sweet rice balls)