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Eating Pak Choi Raw: You Should Know That

You can also eat the Chinese type of cabbage Pak Choi raw: its digestibility and mild spiciness make it a delicious addition to salads and the like. Here you can find out what you should look out for when eating raw Pak Choi.

Pak Choi, also Pak Choy or Pok Choi, is a vegetable closely related to Chinese cabbage. In German it is known as Chinese mustard cabbage or Chinese leaf cabbage. Originally from China, pak choi has long been one of the most popular ingredients in Asian cuisine. But we can also find it more and more often on domestic markets.

The bok choy forms green leaves with crisp white stems surrounding a white head. As the name “mustard cabbage” already suggests, its stems have a mild spiciness. The green leaves bring a tart aroma. Pak Choi can be prepared in many different ways. You can roast, steam and grill it. It is particularly popular in wok dishes or as an ingredient in ramen, a Japanese noodle soup. But it is also possible to eat Pak Choi raw without any problems.

Eating Pak Choi raw: why it is healthy and what you should pay attention to

Pak choi not only tastes good in hot stir-fries: the crunchy cabbage is also good as a raw vegetable.

When you eat pak choi raw, its healthy ingredient content remains highest. These include

a number of vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin C, and folic acid.
Cabbage also contains potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, flavonoids and carotene.
The relatively high amounts of folic acid in particular make pak choi a vegetable that should not be missing in nutrient-rich cuisine. 100 grams contain about 66 micrograms of folic acid. A good portion of pak choi can make a significant contribution to covering the daily folic acid requirement of 300 micrograms.

Some people do not tolerate raw collards well due to the high fiber content and suffer from stomach and intestinal problems after eating them. However, pak choi has slightly less fiber (1.7 grams per 100 grams) than other varieties such as broccoli (3 grams per 100 grams). Eating pak choi raw is therefore more digestible than other types of cabbage.

Attention: For people with a thyroid disease and iodine deficiency, the following generally applies to the consumption of daisy family: only in small quantities and preferably in cooked form. Cruciferous vegetables contain an enzyme that affects the production and secretion of thyroid hormones. If you suffer from any of these conditions, you should rarely eat pak choi raw.

Eat pak choi raw: This is how you can prepare cabbage as raw food

Preparing raw Pak Choi is very easy. First you should clean and prepare the cabbage well:

Remove the woody part of the stalk so that the individual leaves separate. If necessary, remove wilted leaves.
Then wash the leaves thoroughly with water.
You can chop the green leaves into fine strips like lettuce.
You can cut the stalks into bite-sized pieces.
Then you have different ways to eat the raw Pak Choi. For example, process it

with a Mediterranean salad with olives, pickled tomatoes and artichokes or
to an Asian-inspired salad with rice noodles, cucumber, tofu and roasted peanuts.
Use the stalks to dip into tasty dips.
Give your smoothie an extra helping of veggies with pak choi.
Top your ramen soup with fresh pak choi.
Add raw pak choi to your Buddha bowl.

Pak Choi: tips for purchasing and storage

Raw bok choy tastes best when it’s young and fresh. Young pak choi is no larger than 15 centimeters and tastes the most tender. You can recognize pak choi that is no longer quite as fresh by the fact that the green leaves are somewhat leathery and tough. However, you can still eat them. Simply chop them very finely and mix them with other vegetables.

It is advisable to buy Pak Choi from regional and organic farms if possible. In the meantime, cabbage is no longer only grown in Asia, but also in the Netherlands (though in greenhouses) and outdoors in Spain in summer. Thanks to the relatively short transport routes from the European growing areas, the Pak Choi arrives fresher here than from far away regions. Organic bok choy is advisable because conventionally grown bok choy is often heavily contaminated with pesticides.

Store bok choy in the crisper of the refrigerator. There it stays fresh for between seven and ten days and you can eat your Pak Choi raw.

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Food

Pak Choi Salad with Apple: Recipe with lots of vegetables

You can process pak choi into a crunchy salad. Here you get the right recipe for the wholesome variety of cabbage, which has a light mustard aroma.

Crisp, a mild spiciness reminiscent of mustard and easily digestible: These characteristics make Pak Choi an ideal basis for salads.

Pak Choi, also known as Chinese cabbage, is a cabbage vegetable that is widespread in Asian cuisine. But you can also find Pak Choi more and more often in local vegetable displays. It not only tastes great fried, steamed or blanched, but also as a pak choi salad.

Due to the high fiber content, most people often do not tolerate raw brassicas well and suffer from stomach and intestinal problems after eating them. However, since pak choi has a little less fiber and is therefore more digestible than other cabbage, you can also eat it raw.

Pak Choi Salad: A recipe with lots of vegetables

Ingredients:

250 g pak choi
1 large carrot
1cucumber
6radishes
1big apple
2spring onions
0.5 bunch of chives
1 tsp sweet mustard
4 tbsp walnut oil
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper

Directions:

Clean and cut the pak choi into small pieces. You can find tips on how to do this under Preparing Pak Choi: How to make Chinese cabbage.
Wash the vegetables and the apple. Cut the carrot, cucumber and radishes into sticks and the apple into small pieces. Cut the spring onions and chives into fine rings. Toss the pak choi salad in a large bowl.
For the dressing, mix the mustard, walnut oil, and apple cider vinegar together. If necessary, add a little water if the dressing is too thick. Season the dressing with salt and pepper.
Pour the dressing over the pak choi salad and mix well.

Additional tips for cooking

However, similar to chard, which is often confused with pak choi, the stalks of the vegetable can sometimes be a bit firm. You should therefore cut the pak choi for salads as small as possible.
Nutty components such as sesame oil or walnut oil in the dressing go well with the light mustard aroma of the crunchy sticks.
A fruity note balances the tart taste of the green leaves. Pomegranate seeds or pieces of apple, for example, are therefore suitable as toppings.
Make sure your ingredients are organic. Seals such as Bioland, Naturland or Demeter identify products that come from environmentally friendly cultivation. Among other things, you can be sure that they are free of chemical-synthetic pesticides.
If you shop seasonally and regionally, you can also save on CO2 emissions. This is particularly important with pak choi, as it often comes from Thailand.
If you don’t like it raw, you can also add fried pak choi to the salad.

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Cooking Tips

Frying Pak Choi: You Have to Pay Attention to That

To fry Pak Choi, you only have to pay attention to a few points. We’ll show you how to prepare the delicious Asian cabbage in a pan or wok.

Pak Choi, or Bok Choy or Pak Choy, is related to Chinese cabbage and is particularly popular in Asian cuisine. The vegetable looks similar to the local chard, but has its own taste with a mustard note. In this article you will find out how to fry pak choi deliciously.

Frying Pak Choi: Preparation

Basically, it is very easy to prepare Pak Choi in a pan or wok. Before you can start roasting, you must first prepare the cabbage:
Cut off the base of the stalk so that the leaves come loose one by one. If necessary, remove wilted leaves.
Wash each leaf thoroughly with water. To dry them off afterwards, you can shake them off or use a salad spinner.
Separate the leaves from the stems by either plucking them off or cutting them off with a knife. Keep the leaves separate from the stems, as you don’t want to add them to the pan at the same time afterwards.
Cut the stems and leaves into bite-sized pieces. Since the thicker stems in particular need a little longer in the pan, you can cut them a little finer.

Frying Pak Choi: This is how it’s done with a pan or wok

After you have washed and cut the pak choi, you can fry the cabbage. In Asian cuisine, the wok is usually used for this. In this you can serve Pak Choi particularly crispy. If you don’t have a wok, you can also fry the cabbage in a normal pan.

In Asian cuisine, pak choi usually goes into the wok with many other ingredients – for example other vegetables and diced tofu. But you can also serve Pak Choi separately with a side dish. The only important thing is to fry the stems first, as they take longer to cook.

How to fry pak choi:
Heat some oil in a pan or wok. In principle, you can use any oil that is suitable for frying. The Pak Choi is particularly tasty with sesame oil.
Then first put the chopped stalks into the pan and fry them for about three minutes.
Then add the leaves and fry them for about one, maximum two minutes.
Take the pan off the stove and season the fried pak choi with salt, pepper and some soy sauce.
Variations: Of course, you can also season Pak Choi creatively. Depending on your taste, some chilli paste, lemon juice, roasted sesame or peanuts are suitable.

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