Pickled and fermented vegetables are a signature ingredient in Chinese cooking. With our garden bursting with early spring kale this year, we decided to make these Chinese Preserved Greens.
You can use any leafy, robust vegetable, like tender kale, mustard greens, or radish greens, which are ideal candidates for this recipe!
Preserving An Abundance of Summer Greens
This time of year, your garden or local farmer’s markets are exploding with the best fresh summer produce.
This year, we got an early start on the garden. We’ve already enjoyed a couple of rounds of leafy green harvests, and we’re also starting to see a steady stream of peppers, eggplant, okra, and squash. Next up will be summer tomatoes. (Stay tuned for a tour of our garden soon!)
That said, my early spring kale did extremely well, to the point that everyone was making “This again?” faces when it showed up on the dinner table. The kale we grow in our garden is a super tender heritage variety (though I’m unsure of its name). The stems aren’t woody and tough like store-bought kale, and the leaves are very tender as well.
I love planting kale, because you can harvest individual leaves, and let the plant continue producing new leaves. The yield is tremendous. Even better, for many leafy greens, you can plant them twice a year—once in the spring and once in the late summer like now, as they do best in slightly cooler weather.
That said, I had a lot of extra kale this year! I washed, chopped, and froze plenty for the upcoming winter months, and decided to preserve some, since getting store-bought salted mustard greens has been a bit challenging, as we’re trying to minimize trips to the store.
The batch of preserved Chinese greens I made a month and a half ago is still holding up great in the refrigerator in a glass container.
How To Use Preserved Greens
Let me address WHY you would preserve your greens this way and what you could potentially do with them!
We have already posted a few pickled and preserved vegetable recipes, like my easy pickled cucumbers and preserved radish and pickled cabbage.
Those are other great options for storing away your summer produce, but this one is a great addition to my collection, as it has so many uses in some of our favorite dishes:
- Noodle Soup with Pork and Pickled Greens
- Taiwanese Pork Chop Plate
- Yunnan Rice Noodle Soup
- Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup in an Instant Pot
Or you can just do something as simple as sauté the preserved greens some with edamame and dried chilies for a great vegan meal or side dish to round out a Chinese dinner!
These days, I’m all for recipes that prolong the shelf life of my ingredients! The best part is that salt is the only ingredient you need for this recipe. The natural flavor of the greens, time, and fermentation does the rest.
Important Considerations
All that said, some important notes on making preserved and pickled vegetables at home:
- Make sure anything that comes in contact with the vegetables is clean and without dirt, oil or grease. For example: your hands, knife, storage containers, utensils, the rack used to let them dry, etc.
- In the event these greens turn moldy, stinky or generally yucky after being preserved and stored in the refrigerator, you’ll know that grease or other contaminants got into it somehow. You will have to throw everything out if that happens. So be VERY mindful when handling!
- Be sure your storage container is clean, sanitized, and non-reactive (glass works best).
- When eating your preserved vegetables, remove what you need from the container and put it back in the refrigerator. It will help your preserved vegetables last longer if they’re not kept at room temperature for prolonged periods.
Chinese Preserved Greens: Recipe Instructions
- 6 pounds fresh kale, mustard greens, or radish greens
- 100 grams sea salt (about ⅓ cup)
Make sure all containers, work surfaces, your knife, and your hands are thoroughly cleaned and free of any dirt, grease, or grime.
Wash the greens thoroughly. This requires a few rounds of soaking and rinsing off of any debris.
Let them air dry completely for 12 hours. If you have loose stalks and leaves like I did, you can bundle them together with kitchen string or rubber bands, and hang them on a line of clean twine to dry.
Because it was a sunny, dry day, I hung my kale outside. Once all the leaves are dried (free of surface water, not dehydrated) and slightly wilted…
Chop them to your desired size—I did small slivers. You can also cut them into larger chunks or leave them whole.
In a large bowl, sprinkle salt onto every layer of greens. Knead the vegetables with clean hands to work the salt in, until they are well coated.
Transfer everything to a clean container with a cover.
Marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3 days. After three days, they are ready to be used!
Here are some additional tips for using your Chinese preserved greens:
- Use clean utensils to take what you need each time you use them. Return to the refrigerator quickly.
- Be attentive to any signs of spoilage like weird smells or mold.
- These preserved greens are mild, but also relatively salty. I used them here stir-fried with soy beans and chilies, and no additional salt was required. Taste as you go when cooking with them.
- If you find they are still too salty for your chosen application, you can rinse them off before cooking. If you do this, be sure to squeeze out all of the excess water before using.
Chinese Preserved Greens
Ingredients
- 2.7 kg fresh kale, mustard greens, or radish greens (6 pounds)
- 100 g sea salt (about 1/3 cup)
Instructions
- Make sure all containers, work surfaces, your knife, and your hands are thoroughly cleaned and free of any dirt, grease, or grime.
- Let them air dry completely for 12 hours. If you have loose stalks and leaves like I did, you can bundle them together with kitchen string or rubber bands, and hang them on a line of clean twine to dry.
- Once all the leaves are dried (free of surface water, not dehydrated) and slightly wilted, chop them to your desired size—I did small slivers. You can also cut them into larger chunks or leave them whole.
- In a large bowl, sprinkle salt onto every layer of greens. Knead the vegetables with clean hands to work the salt in, until they are well coated. Transfer everything to a clean container with a cover. Marinate in the refrigerator for at least 3 days. After three days, they are ready to be used!
Tips & Notes:
- Use clean utensils to take what you need each time you use these preserved greens, and return quickly to the refrigerator.
- Be attentive to any signs of spoilage like weird smells or mold.
- These preserved greens are mild, but also relatively salty. Generally, when I cook with them, no additional salt is needed in the dish. Taste as you go when cooking with them.
- If you find they are still too salty for your chosen application, you can rinse them before cooking. If you do this, be sure to squeeze out all of the excess water before using.
- If handled properly, these greens can last in the refrigerator for several months.
Ho long will fermented leafy greens keep in the refrigerator?
It can keep for a couple of months if you use a clean utensil every time :-)
Thank you so much for the wonderful recipe. I have been trying to preserve and pickle different kinds of chinese vegetables, as I live in Portugal and it is not easy to find many of these delicious veggies. I am wondering if you would also have a recipe on how to make mui choi (梅菜). I miss the taste of this sweet and salty preserved vegetable a lot.
Hi Judy. In NYC Chinatown they are selling a vegetable they call “snow vegetable” or “snow cabbage” i forget which. It looks like turnip greens. Can you use that vegetable for this recipe?
Can you just stir fry it?
For sure, Jack, you can use the turnip greens for stir-frying () as well as this recipe.
Judy, thanks to you and the rest of the Woks of Life gang for sharing modern versions of traditional recipes!
I grew up going to school with two Chinese boys and was “adopted” by their first generation grandmother who cooked for the family. I knew no Mandarin and the most engilsh she knew was “you try” and “you like?”, which she used regularly as she handed me bits of what ever she was preparing. She passed many years ago and, now in my fifties, have found resources to begin reproducing some of those cherished childhood flavors, living in a military town with a strong Thai and Korean popularion and lots of service people who spent time in Japan.
You are very welcome, Bear. Hope you try some of our recipes soon! :-)
Thank you for bringing these traditional recipes to the internet! I was raised by my Hakka grandma here in Canada and while I learned a lot about food from her I sadly missed the lesson on preserving veggies, or I was too young to remember. Is this the same method used for what we called “Ham Choi” which I think were larger salted mustard greens? Also, if the jars are sterilized as you would for jams or pickles could you keep them for longer? I don’t remember her storing it in the fridge but in a massive jar with a weighted plate on top on the floor of the pantry. Thanks again for all you do!
This is “ham choi” as I know it. I decided to keep them in the refrigerator because I think it’s safer.
Your kale looks amazing! It makes me want to try growing some. I took a look at a heritage seed site and I think your kale is called Thousandhead kale or at least it looks similar to it.
https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/new-items-2019/thousandhead-kale
Hi Cyndi, the one in this link has a huge leaf with short stem; mine is different :-)
Hi! Thank you so much for posting this recipe! I have been looking for ways to preserve my kale and love salted Chinese greens. I have perhaps a silly question…I see that you’re putting these in the refrigerator immediately after salting. Does this mean that this preservation is more of a salting than a fermentation, and…therefore, can I use a vessel that closes tight (lid with a jar) rather than a fermentation crock? Your picture looks like a fermentation crock.
Hi Lam, this recipe mostly involves salting. I think there are too many variables to let it ferment at room temperature without proper tools. And yes, you can use a jar with a lid.
Thank you so much for answering my question. They are very delicious!
I am glad, Lam :-)
These are closer to a salted Choi than a Fermented Choi, Lam, however fermentation still occurs in the refrigerator at a much slower rate. I prefer the homemade version of the yellow/green preserved mustard often found in Asian groceries and ferment mine at room temperature for 1-3 weeks before transferring to the refrigerator. The bright color in the commercial packages is from food coloring, however the homemade forms a mild yellow to the brine during fermenting, the Choi stays a dark green and it develops a little sour flavor that I really like. A little sugar, Szechuan Peppercorn and/or hot chili pepper can be added before or after the ferment to achieve and balance the flavor you want. I use small scale fermenting equipment that helps keep the Choi submerged and keep the oxygen out, which reduces the chances of molds or yeasts from growing in the ferment and makes the process easier and safer.
I just bought a glass kimchi jar with a top collar where the water stops air from going in. I’m excited to experiment with fermentation!
Seeing you with that big bunch of kale inspires me to grow some. Gophers and other critters prevent me from growing a vegetable garden. I am considering putting in hardware cloth underneath my planting beds.
Good luck, Sandy!
Could I use Yam leaves instead of kale?
Jill Evison
No, Jill, yam leaves are too tender. Here is a recipe for your yam leaves: Yam Leaves, Stir-Fried Sweet Potato Leaves.
I’ve not reviewed your entire site yet, but happy to see Chinese traditions snd cultures being passed on to English speaking commuities. Thank you from a Chinese mom with English speaking children.
Keep it up!
Take care and stay safe!
We are in the same boat, J. That’s one of the main reasons why we are pressing on with this blog :-)