Lunar New Year is approaching, and I bet everyone is looking forward to gathering with friends and family, having fun, and sharing a feast with foods that symbolize prosperity for the New Year. Vietnamese Lunar New Year is the time of the year for festive food traditions, and the must-have dishes for any Tet celebration are Banh Tet, Banh Chung, Vietnamese Sausage (Gio Cha), Jellied Pork (Thit Dong), Spring rolls (Nem), and many more. Yummm!
However, Tet’s traditional foods are not usually the healthiest. Therefore, in order to cut back the greasiness and stimulate your taste buds, pickled mustard greens (Dua Cai Chua) with its satisfying crunchiness and tartness is a great condiment to pair with almost any rich and savory dishes. After many trials and failures, I have finally perfected the art of pickling the mustard greens.
Even though you can easily find pickled mustard greens at any Chinese or Vietnamese market, commercially-made pickles usually contain food coloring and preservative that aren’t good for you. With all that said, why not making it yourself? This simple recipe is guaranteed to save you some time at the grocery stores while giving you the perfect batch of pickled mustard greens every single time!
As always, before we get started, let’s take some mental notes! The following are the “secrets” for making the perfectly pickled mustard greens:
First, let’s talk about our mustard greens. If you visit an Asian grocery store, try to look for Gai Choy in the produce department. Asian mustard greens are usually curved, bodacious looking, and have thick and chunky stems. If you prefer having more heads than leaves, older ones usually have more stems than leaves. And vice versa, the younger ones aren’t as crunchy, but have a decent amount of leaves. Also, try to pick the freshest looking mustard greens. When prepping the veggies, trim the parts that are bruised, yellow, or eaten by bugs.
When washing our mustard greens, try to be gentle and wash it with care to retain the crunchy texture of the stems and the leaves. Nothing is worse than waiting for your greens to get pickled for 5 days and finding out they are soggy, mushy and wilted.
Another tip to perfect your pickled mustard green is to avoid and types of contamination. You have to make sure the utensils that you are working with are fully-contaminated before using. Reason being is that the unwanted bacteria can cause your pickled mustard greens to produce puckers (khú).
Without any further or due. Let’s get started, shall we? We shall!
Vietnamese Pickled Mustard Greens
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 3-4 days
Ingredients:
2lbs of mustard greens
Scallions
3 liters of water
65 - 70 grams of sea salt (Don’t substitute for regular salt. After trying out different types of salt, I find sea salt works best!)
20 grams of sugar
A large plastic bowl and something heavy (I use a heavy plate) to weigh down the veggies
Let’s get pickling!
1. Prepping the mustard greens
Cut off the ends of the mustard greens and discard. Trim the parts that are bruised, yellow, or eaten by bugs. Cut our veggies into bite size pieces (2-inch length) and wash until completely clean. Drain well my shaking off any excess water.
Same thing, wash the scallions and cut into 2-inch length pieces. Drain well and set aside.
2. Prepping the brine
Bring 3 liters of water to a boil. Allow it to cool down to about 100 degree Fahrenheit or until warm to the touch. Add our salt and sugar and mix until completely dissolved.
3. Pickling the mustard greens
Add our greens into the brine and carefully transfer it to a large clean bowl. Repeat this step until all the veggies are transferred to our plastic bowl.
Pour the brine on top of our mustard greens until they are completely submerged.
Use a heavy plate on top to weigh it down. Weighing the veggies down will help them to get fermented evenly.
Cover the bowl with plastic wraps and let it works its magic!
4. Serving our Dua Muoi
After 4-5 days, your pickled mustard greens should be ready to eat. Dua muoi goes really well with Chinese Crispy Roast Pork Belly or any savory dishes. To stop the pickling process, simply drain the pickling water and place your pickled mustard greens in the refrigerator. Enjoy!
Bon Appetit, everyone!
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