Stir-Fried Green Soy Beans with Snow Vegetable

When looking for a new vegetable dish to try in Every Grain of Rice, I wanted to work with vegetables that weren't the ones we usually bought. Immediately the stir-fried green soy beans with snow vegetable (xue cai mao dou / 雪菜毛豆) stood out to me, because I wasn't sure if I had ever had snow vegetables. (A, on the other hand, grew up eating them.) The recipe also looked fairly easy, and quick simple recipes are always a good thing to add to one's repertoire.

Ingredients

Since I had never bought snow vegetables before, I had no idea what I was looking for or where in the store it would be. Eventually we found a preserved vegetable section but nothing was labeled "snow vegetables." Luckily I had a photo of the recipe page from the cookbook on my phone and we matched up the characters for "xue cai" (snow vegetable) in order to find this package. For future reference, you can also look for "potherb mustard."

Snow vegetable!

The ingredients for the recipe totaled less than $1.50:

- Green soy beans (fresh or frozen) ($0.98)

- Snow vegetables, finely chopped ($0.25)

- Sesame oil ($0)

- Salt ($0)

- Cooking oil ($0)

Dried chillies and whole Sichuan pepper are optional, but I didn't include those since we haven't really purchased chili peppers before. Instead I just added a little bit of ground chili pepper ($0.10) in their place. Not a perfect substitute in appearance or flavor, but it worked fine.

Process

This was another easy recipe, and the bonus is that it had very, very little prep, so it was also quick.

Step 1:  Defrost the green soy beans if you're using frozen beans. (If you use fresh, you need to cook them at this point instead.)

Step 2:  Finely chop the snow vegetables. (I've chopped them less and less finely as we keep making this, since they shrink so much anyway when cooking.)

Step 3:  In a wok over high flame, add cooking oil and spices (this is where I added the ground chili pepper) and sizzle them until fragrant. Add snow vegetables and stir fry briefly.

Step 4:  Add soy beans and stir fry briefly until hot. Season with salt to taste.

Step 5:  Remove from heat, stir in sesame oil.

Review

This dish was really easy to make and I absolutely loved it. I didn't know what I would think of the snow vegetables, but I really loved their unique sour/pickled flavor.

The only "issue" (not really an issue) with the dish was that all it contained was snow vegetables and soy beans. While tasty, it's not a whole lot of variety. The next time I made it I added lotus root slices since we had purchased more lotus root and I thought maybe it would be a good addition. It tasted fine, but the shapes didn't really match up so well. I think next time maybe I'll add red bell peppers chopped up in small squares. I think that would texturally be a better match.

I really enjoy the soy bean and snow vegetable combination, and will continue to make this. It's quick to prepare and cook, and it's also easy to keep the ingredients on hand since I used the frozen soy beans and the xue cai just sits in a package in the fridge. Even when it's just soy beans and snow vegetables, it's still tasty. Can't wait to make this again!