It is the hardest to categorize, emphasizes light cooking with seemingly limitless range of ingredients. Cantonese cuisine took shape in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the process of its development, it has borrowed the culinary essence of northern China and of the Western-style food, while maintaining its traditional local flavor.

The most characteristic cooking methods are cooking in salt or wine, baking in a pan, and soft frying. Guangdong cuisine emphasizes unique mixed flavorings. For example, one flavoring liquid is a mixture prepared from onion, garlic, sugar, salt, and spices. The gravy is prepared from a mixture of peanut oil, ginger, onion, Shaoxing rice wine, crystallized sugar, anise, cassia bark, licorice root, clove, ginger powder, dried tangerine peel, and Momordica grosuvenori. Spiced salt is prepared from refined salt, sugar, powdered spices, and anise. These flavorings, along with other favorite condiments such as oyster sauce, fish sauce, clam oil, and curry, give Guangdong cuisine a unique taste.

For many people of Guangdong , everything that walks, crawls, flies, or swims is edible. Although many strange foods no longer appeal to today's refined tastes, and some have been eliminated out of respect for the eating habits of people in other areas, some strange foods remain on the menu.