Are dimsum traditionally eaten for lunch, snacks or as apetisers?

Question

Are dimsum traditionally eaten for lunch, snacks or as apetisers?

Answer 1

Dim sum is a meal generally a early morning breakfast start to a mid afternoon finish around 3, but there are places that will serve it all day, depending on the restaurant or city, here in Toronto Canada, I eat at a very popular place once a month and have all my favorites. Some come for a snack, but it is a meal time experience.

Shrimp dumplings (Har Gao), Pork Diumplings (Shui mi), Squid, Turnip cake, Tripe, Spare ribs in Black Bean sauce (steamed), braised chicken feet, steamed BBQ pork buns and steamed chicken rolls with black mushrooms.

Try one in your area, it is fun as they bring the food to you on little carts, and do not forget to finish with there famous egg custard tarts, to die for.

Answer 2

Dim sum are origin from Hong Kong. It is traditionally eaten as morning breakfast

Travellers on the ancient Silk Road needed a place to take a nap, so teahouses were established along the roadside. Rural farmers, exhausted after working hard in the fields, would also go to teahouses for a relaxing afternoon of tea. At first, it was considered inappropriate to combine tea with food, because people believed it would lead to excessive weight gain. People later discovered that tea can aid in digestion, so teahouse owners began adding various snacks and the tradition of dim sum evolved.[citation needed]

In Hong Kong, and most cities and towns in Guangdong province, many Chinese restaurants start serving as early as five in the morning. It is a tradition for the elderly to gather to eat dim sum after morning exercises, often enjoying the morning newspapers. For many southerners in China, yum cha is treated as a weekend family day. Consistent with this tradition, dim sum restaurants typically only serve dim sum until the afternoon (right around the time of a traditional Western 3 o'clock coffee break); other kinds of Cantonese cuisine are served in the evening. Nowadays, various dim sum items are sold as takeaway for students and office workers on the go.

While dim sum remains a staple of Chinese culinary culture, especially in Hong Kong, health officials have recently criticized the high amount of saturated fat and sodium in some dim sum dishes, warning that steamed dim sum should not automatically be assumed to be healthy.[1] Health officials recommend balancing fatty dishes with boiled vegetables, minus sauce.

Hope it help

Answer 3

Most restaurants serve dim sum exclusively for lunch, but certain items, such as the buns, are also eaten as snacks.

Answer 4

In response to your answer:  YES!

DIM SUM (interpreted as "touch the heart") is a type of Chinese cuisine customarily served during breakfast; brunch and/or lunch (In traditional Chinese Dim Sum restaurants, Dim Sum is usually not available during dinner time)....however in answer to your question, Dim Sum can be eaten as a snack or appetizers too (similar to gyoza in Japanese restaurants and spring or summer rolls in Vietnamese restaurant)

Dim Sum is similar to these cuisines of ethnicity such as:

Sushi to Japanese Cuisine

Tapas to Spanish Cuisine

horduerves to American Cuisine

Answer 5

Dim = point (in Cantonese)

Sum = heart (in Cantonese), roughly it means prepare what you like to eat at anytime you prefer!

Dim sum = refreshment, in our food culture (Chinese food culture) it includes many items - eg. noodles, steam buns, different kinds of dumplings, deep fried snacks ..., therefore, dim sum can be eaten at anytime of the day, in the morning as breakfast, in the afternoon as tea, in the night as late night supper.  Or some of them may be served as desserts or appetizers.

When we have guests visited our home, we serve tea and dim sum to them (if it is not during lunch or dinner time). Mostly, like 11:00 a.m. or 2:00 to 5:30 p.m.

P.S.  

Dim Sum was not originate from Hong Kong - Hong Kong has been well known as food paradise after WW2.  It should be Guangzhou (Canton) as the famous place for tea houses, dim sum in those days (1920s - there was a saying "eat at Canton"! The two characters "dim sum" were commonly used in China for very long time.  In Qing Dynasty, the Imperial kitchen kept detail records of which kind of food the emperors ate daily including various dim sum.

Check "the history paragraph" in below link and you will get more information about "eat at Canton"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_...

Answer 6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sum