This page explains how ChopZen creates, reviews, and maintains its recipes — and how advertising works on the site. We wrote it so you know exactly what you are reading and where it comes from.
Who We Are
ChopZen is an independent recipe publication focused on everyday Chinese home cooking for cooks outside China. The site is maintained by the ChopZen Editorial Team. We are not part of a restaurant group, a food brand, or a content mill, and we do not republish other people’s recipes as our own.
Original Content
Every recipe on ChopZen is written and edited by our team. We do not copy recipes from other websites, and we do not publish machine-generated filler. When a dish is rooted in a classic technique or a regional tradition, we name that origin in plain language and add our own testing notes, ingredient substitutions, and explanations that come from actually cooking the dish in a home kitchen.
If you believe any content on ChopZen infringes on your work, please contact us and we will review it and respond promptly.
How We Choose and Adapt Recipes
- Authentic first, accessible second. We start from a genuine Chinese home-cooking tradition, then adapt quantities and steps so a cook with a standard Western kitchen can succeed.
- Honest ingredient notes. We label what can be substituted and what cannot. If a substitute changes the flavor meaningfully, we say so rather than pretend it is identical.
- Consistent structure. Every recipe lists ingredients with amounts, clear numbered steps, timing, servings, and difficulty, so you can plan the dish before you start cooking.
Advertising and Sponsorship
ChopZen is supported by advertising. We may display ads on the site, including programmatic advertising served by third-party networks such as Google AdSense. These networks choose which specific ads appear on a given page, and we do not write our recipes to favor any advertised product.
We do not accept payment to recommend a specific ingredient, brand, or product within our recipe steps. The ingredients we mention reflect what we actually use and test with. If we ever publish sponsored content or affiliate links, we will label them clearly and visibly at the top of the page.
Accuracy and Corrections
Recipes are tested before publication (see our Recipe Testing Note). Even so, cooking is variable — stoves differ, ingredients differ, and we sometimes find a clearer method after a recipe goes live. When we correct a recipe, we update the ingredient amounts, steps, or timing and revise the last-modified date. We do not silently change tested quantities without recording it.
If you spot an error or a step that did not work for you, please tell us so we can verify and fix it.
Privacy and Your Data
How we collect and handle data is described in our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use.
Editorial Standards
ChopZen recipes are edited for accuracy, usefulness, and cultural context. A publishable recipe should explain what the dish is, why each major step matters, and what a home cook should look for while cooking.
We avoid publishing pages that are only ingredient lists or thin summaries. When a recipe is imported from older notes, we review it for unclear idioms, missing amounts, missing timing, and untranslated local references before it is promoted in public navigation.
Images are selected to show the actual dish, ingredient state, or cooking process whenever possible. Decorative images are kept secondary because readers need to inspect texture, doneness, and serving style.
Substantial updates are reflected in the page modification date where the site platform supports it, and minor wording fixes are made when they improve clarity without changing the recipe outcome.
Sources, Adaptations, and Copyright
We publish recipes that the ChopZen team can explain and edit for home cooking. Pages that cite an external publisher, link to a recipe aggregator, or combine many dishes into a collection remain out of the advertising and sitemap keep-list until the source, permission, and original editorial contribution have been reviewed. We do not present copied source text or a compilation as an independently developed ChopZen recipe.
If you believe a page uses your text, image, or recipe without permission, please use the Contact page and identify the page, the material in question, and your rights or source information so we can investigate and correct it.