Chinese Salads: Do they exist?

[Toliver]

There's the ubiquitous Chinese Chicken Salad. Unfortunately, it's not authentic even though it is made with "chinese" ingredients (pea pods, napa cabbage, water chesnuts, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, etc).

[shelora]

Does a salad have to be vegetable based? Our butcher in chinatown makes wonderful soy braised pigs ears and they are served cold and sliced very small. His wife actually called it a salad. It is super tasty.

Kimchee is more of a condiment than a salad. Although, I eat it like it is a salad.

s

[jo-mel]

I have a couple that I usually use.

One is thin diagonal slices of celery. carrots, broccolli stems and snow peas. They are blanched to barely take the raw out and change the color to brilliant green -- then tossed in ice water to retain the color.

Arrange in a pretty pattern on a plate - (spiral) and dress with a soy/vinegar/sherry/sugar/sesame oil dressing. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

The other comes from the Hush/Wong 'Chinese Menu Cookbook' -------Watercress and Waterchestnut Salad.

In this one a couple bunches watercress is trimmed and blanched in boiling water. Rinse in cold iced water, then squeeze the water out and chop. -----Finely chop 12 waterchestnuts -- fresh is best, but canned will do. About an hour before serving, mix the two and dress with 1 Tbsp. rice viinegar, a couple tsp. sugar and 1 tsp. sesame oil. Don't add the dressing too early as the green will turn.

Do pickled vegetables qualify as salad? Lots of recipes for those.

In a dormitory situation in Beijing, they had "Sala" --- peeled fresh tomatoes.

If China goes to chemical fertilizer and away from human fertilizer, is salad next?

How do they wash the lettuce on MacDonald burgers? Import the lettuce, or wash it with cold boiled water?

[origamicrane]

What about the bean curd skin, seaweed and edamame salads you find at northern Chinese style restaurants?

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hmmm... this is close i think they have they shanghai starter dish of roast peanuts, marinated tofu and cucumber and some kinda pickled vegs and beans.

actually quite tasty hmmm... think that might actually count

nice one gastro

[origamicrane]

Does a salad have to be vegetable based? Our butcher in chinatown makes wonderful soy braised pigs ears and they are served cold and sliced very small. His wife actually called it a salad.  It is super tasty.

Kimchee is more of a condiment than a salad. Although, I eat it like it is a salad.

s

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hmm well a dictionary salad really should have some veggies in it. Although you can have fruit salad seafood salads etc. but i think it has to have something veggy in it.

[Gastro888]

What about the bean curd skin, seaweed and edamame salads you find at northern Chinese style restaurants?

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hmmm... this is close i think they have they shanghai starter dish of roast peanuts, marinated tofu and cucumber and some kinda pickled vegs and beans.

actually quite tasty hmmm... think that might actually count

nice one gastro

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There is this one place that serves cucumbers and green bean jelly sheets in a chile oil/vingear dressing. Quite tasty. Or you can try bean sprouts with seaweed in a chile/sesame oil/vingear dressing.

This is a hard one for me as I'm Toisanese - I didn't encounter these cold plate dishes until I went to China. I do think they're neat and makes me wonder if the Korean panchan is a variation of the dishes made in northern China.

[Ben Hong]

There's maybe a deep undiscovered reason for the paucity of raw vegetable based salads in Chinese cuisine, but I have not uncovered any good explanations other than the "fertilizer' question/problem. There are all kinds of dishes using lettuce and other leafy greens as a wrap etc.. It could also be because of the yin-yang factor, ie; the extreme "cooling" effect of some salad veggies. As for the fertilizer problem, Thailand and Vietnam both have a strong presence of salads in their cuisines and both use the same traditional type of fertilizer.

[Gastro888]

Maybe it's considered inelegant to eat raw veggies? I've never heard of raw veggies being too "leung" for the system. That would be interesting. But there are salads in the Western diet and in Europe back in the day, I'm sure they used the same traditional fertilizer. Perhaps that's why they developed such tasty vingerettes? *grin*

[shelora]

"If China goes to chemical fertilizer and away from human fertilizer, is salad next?"

Hold on. Whaddya mean?! We get wonderful produce from China here. How could they possibly export it if it indeed has been grown with the aid of human fertilizer? Is this what is referrred to as deadly nightsoil?

Are we just talking about salad greens or all vegetables?

[Pan]

Shelora, if you're not eating raw leaves, it's not an issue, anyway. Anything that's peeled or cooked is fine to eat in China.

Pickles were definitely the first answer I thought of. And they don't have to be nearly as pickled as kimchi. I had mixed pickles in Beijing that were only lightly pickled (and I suppose there's at least an even chance they were unsafe for me to eat, but they sure were delicious).

Gastro888, I wonder if whether Korean panchan is a version of Northern Chinese food is really a pertinent question. Who knows which came first? Unless we can find out, we would probably do best assuming that these are related cuisines of neighboring peoples.

[origamicrane]

well initially i thought Chinese don't eat salad because our staple diet is rice and veggies are just dishes served with it. But that didn't make sense, as a lot of China's neighbour also mainly eat rice

but yet still have salad dishes although they usually served as starters.

Anyhoo how we make a chinese salad?

any suggestions for what to go in a chinese salad?

The idea is to have a base of chinese ingredients and for it to be distinguishable from other salads.

I think it should have lotus root, sesame seeds, and tofu to begin with

[Yuki]

I know of a Shanghai cold dish that has some really finely diced bean curd and boiled green leaf vegetable(it has to be that type of vegetable which I can not find in Calgary). Actually, there are lots of vegetarian cold dish in Shanghai. Another common one is edamame bean and green bean skin(or is it made out of rice?).

The reason I think there is not much of a salad type dish is that most of the vegetables we normally eat is not really suitable for raw consumption. Imagine eating raw bak choy, gai lan and shui choy....

[ludja]

A vinagrette is perhaps not traditional, but I've made Tropp's ginger vinagrette (from China Moon). It is nice on greens and should also be good on other cold/RT vegetables...

[jacko]

Salad is a pretty hard term to define when you think about it. The dictionary is not much help. Raw veggies? What about potato salad? Cold? What about a Warm Thai Chicken salad?

For a long time I didn't think Chinese ate salad. On stinking hot days in Taiwan I would be sweating into the same bowl of boiling noodles soup as in winter time. Where were the salads when you needed them?

Chinese proably don't have a salad in the same sense that I think of salad. They even cook the lettuce!

There is the cold plate served at the beginning of a banquet. It is usually mostly meat but there can be raw veggies too, even western-style salad dressing these days.

[jacko]

The Chinese version of the salad is pickled. Like this very lighty pickled one:

<a href="http://www.eatingchina.com/recipes.html">Pickled Cucumber Salad </a>

[Yuki]

Salad is a pretty hard term to define when you think about it. The dictionary is not much help. Raw veggies? What about potato salad? Cold? What about a Warm Thai Chicken salad?

For a long time I didn't think Chinese ate salad. On stinking hot days in Taiwan I would be sweating into the same bowl of boiling noodles soup as in winter time. Where were the salads when you needed them?

Chinese proably don't have a salad in the same sense that I think of salad. They even cook the lettuce!

There is the cold plate served at the beginning of a banquet. It is usually mostly meat but there can be raw veggies too, even western-style salad dressing these days.

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Heh, I have no clue about what makes a dish a salad. I don't understand why do people have to look for a dish to label it as "salad". Usually, I consume the most vegetables at Shanghai style restaurant where a lot of the hot and cold dishes are already vegetarian or can be made into one.

[hzrt8w]

.....so why doesn't China have a salad type thing?

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It depends on what your concept of a "salad" is.

I don't have access to the Oxford Dictionary. But I searched Encarta on "salad" and it said:

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sal·ad [ sálləd ] (plural sal·ads)

noun

1. mixture of raw vegetables: a cold savory dish consisting mainly of a mixture of raw vegetables, whole, sliced, chopped, or in pieces, usually served with a dressing for moisture and flavor. Many other ingredients may be incorporated into a salad, which can be served as a separate course or as an accompaniment to other food.

2. dish of cold ingredients: a cold dish consisting of a particular type of food, for example, a single vegetable or a selection of fruit, cut into pieces or slices, and served usually with a dressing potato salad

3. leafy vegetables: any of the leafy vegetables commonly used to make a green salad, typically the many types of lettuce, watercress, chicory, and endive

4. confused mixture: a confused or varied mixture

a salad of ideas

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So it seems "raw vegetables" is the key in consider something as a "salad". If that's the case, then there aren't too many Chinese dishes contain raw vegetables. Like Ben Hong said earlier, you may see raw lettuce used for meat wrappings, and raw cucumber slices mixed with cold noodles and sesame sauce, etc.. Very far and between.

As for the reasons, perhaps it was passed down from generations of beliefs related to the fertilization methods. I think more importantly, as pointed out earlier, is most vegetables grown in China (such as gai lan, bok choy, daikon) simply don't taste good when eaten raw. Chinese name this "cai qing" [Mandarin], means the green grass taste. And how would you like to eat grass?

Yes we cook the lettuce too. And bean sprouts, carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms, green peppers for that matter.

I really don't think the cold appertizer dishes can be considered "salad". That's things like jelly fish, pig ear, pressed tofu etc. mixed with soy sauce and sesame oil. We have plenty of those. They are more snack food. (No raw vegetables except green onions.)

Can you create a "Chinese salad"? Sure. You can use whatever ingredients to create whatever dish and call it whatever you want. If I mix some flour and yeast together, make a dough. I don't use any cheese or tomato sauce or garlic. Instead I use fermented bean curds as a spread, some "Chinese" ingredients such as lap cheung and salted fish as a topping and bake it. Can I call it a Chinese Pizza? Absolutely! (But just why forcing the culture?)

[origamicrane]

well my confusion is because a lot of China's neighbouring countries

do have dishes that could be called salad.

But part of the fun is to make new dishes

also if you look at the dishes avaiable in hong kong, sngapore, new york

east and west cuisines are converging

It be nice if we could create something new.

[Shalmanese]

At home, we make a traditional northern style salad which, IIRC, contains the following ingredients:

cucumber strips

kelp strips

dried bean curd sheets

bean sprouts

dressing:

raw garlic, minced fine

chinese rice vinegar

sesame seed oil

and possible several secret ingredients that I'm not privy to. Tastes fantastic though.

[TurtleMeng]

like mentioned above, in Shanghai you can find a lot of cold dishes, some of them definitiely look like salads and are not meat dishes.

One common one is lotus root. OK, not raw (do you really want to eat that stuff raw?), a little sweet but I would not call it a dessert. It's the usual dish where it's stuffed with glutinous rice and steamed and served with a very light, scanty syrup on it.

Shredded cucumber and daikon together is very common.(with a dressing on it) Of course you can add jelly fish to it, but you don't have to.

"Tiger veggi" is lots of raw cilatro and shredded bean curd and scallion. It is quite strong and tasty.

In summer we always eat quick pickled cucumber (it takes like 1/2 hr) and chill it in the fridge. After all, this is Los Angeles.

[ecr]

Liangban huangua -- the cucumber is neither pickled nor boiled (at least in Sichuan). Simply cucumber cut into rough chunks, salted drained and squeezed, and tossed with roughly chopped garlic and sesame oil ... sometimes fresh cilantro is added.

Sliced tomato sprinkled with sugar .. this is pretty common.

In Dalian several summers ago I repeatedly encountered, in homes and restaurants, the following delicious salad (the veggies varied): thin-shredded cucumber, blanched bean sprouts, shredded carrot, shredded green pepper, shredded daikon, shredded scallion, sometimes minced garlic --- dressed with sesame oil/soy/vinegar/wasabi (the latter presumably a remnant of Japanese occupation). All veggies were raw except the sprouts.

[origamicrane]

Liangban huangua -- the cucumber is neither pickled nor boiled (at least in Sichuan). Simply cucumber cut into rough chunks, salted drained and squeezed, and tossed with roughly chopped garlic and sesame oil ... sometimes fresh cilantro is added.

Sliced tomato sprinkled with sugar .. this is pretty common.

In Dalian several summers ago I repeatedly encountered, in homes and restaurants, the following delicious salad (the veggies varied): thin-shredded cucumber, blanched bean sprouts, shredded carrot, shredded green pepper, shredded daikon, shredded scallion, sometimes minced garlic --- dressed with sesame oil/soy/vinegar/wasabi (the latter presumably a remnant of Japanese occupation). All veggies were raw except the sprouts.

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sounds like a winner to me

[chefzadi]

Does a salad have to be vegetable based? Our butcher in chinatown makes wonderful soy braised pigs ears and they are served cold and sliced very small. His wife actually called it a salad.  It is super tasty.

Kimchee is more of a condiment than a salad. Although, I eat it like it is a salad.

s

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There are some kimchi preparations that aren't fermented, they are eaten right away. So I call them kimchi salads.

[yimay]

my mom always made Bon Bon Chicken Salad or Bon Bon Gi which is a noodle salad with chicken, cucumber, bean sprouts, green onions and a spicy peanut sauce made from peanut butter, sesame oil, vinegar, sugar, chile, garlic, ginger

she also made a seaweed salad and a kind of pickled cucumber salad that was kind of spicy.

i guess they are not "typical" salads.

Edited February 3, 2005 by yimay (log)

[sassybat]

in the past, my mom has made a salad with some lettuce, lots of cucumber, and cold jellyfish. the dressing tasted vinegary, so i'm assuming it's some kind of vinaigrette.