Cook up a storm with homemade Chinese takeaway dishes

Ditch the takeaway this weekend and experience the true joy of cooking up Chinese takeaway dishes at home.

We humans are, in fact, the only species that deliberately chooses to do things that are bad for it. Does knowing that we’re ingesting huge quantities of fat, salt, and unpronounceable additives when we get stuck into a dirty takeaway stop us? Not often. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Most of our favourite takeaway dishes, be they aromatic curries or Chinese-inspired recipes, are far from complex. Not only is recreating all the great flavours of a takeaway at home totally achievable, you can also stay on top of all the ingredients you use, meaning you’ll cut down on additives and can keep track of the calories, fat and sugar you’re taking in.

Here, we take a bunch of Friday-night favourites and bring them firmly into the realm of the midweek – try out a full-flavoured sweet and sour chicken, a tangy sweet potato and coconut laksa, or delicious spring rolls recipe. If you want the flavour hit of takeaway food without the nutritional baggage that can come along with it, these recipes are exactly what you need.

As it turns out, we weren't entirely correct in saying that humans are the only devil-may-care species on the block. Elephants, for instance, have been known to travel for miles to gorge on the fruit of the marula tree, whose fermented windfalls leave them giddy and skittish. Whether or not they like to go for a curry afterwards is less certain.