Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Homemade Salted Vegetable / Hum Choy / Kiam Chai / 自腌咸菜

Nothing beats homemade.

After seeing some videos/posts on how salted/preserved vegetables were made commercially, I'd actually try to limit purchasing of salted or preserved vegetables.

So I decided to make my own using a simple recipe I got from Best-ever Cooking Of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia & The Philippines. This is the 2nd time I'm making it, the end result is a crunchy salted vegetable with no chemical after taste like those you get from store bought ones.

♥Recipe for Homemade Salted Vegetable♥

Ingredients
1/2 cup of rice (actually this can be any amount, just make the amount you will be eating as porridge for that day)
5 cups of water (adjust the quantity according to how much rice you'll be cooking, 'rice water' is what we'll need to preserve the mustard green, and it has to be enough to submerge the vegetable)
500g mustard greens
35g salt

Method
1. Wash the rice, bring to boil in a large pan with the water. Cover and simmer for 12 minutes. Drain the rice, saving the liquid and letting it cool. The rice itself is not used in this recipe, so you can have the porridge like rice as a meal served with another dishes).

2. Wash the mustard green in lots of water and dry thoroughly. Using a kitchen towel to pat each leave and stalk. It's important that they are fully dried.

3. Cut the mustard green into smaller stalks and mix with the salt in a non metallic bowl. Leave it for 30 minutes, then squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Salt will cling to the leaves.

4. Place mustard green into a jar, and pour over the completely cooled rice water, make sure the rice water submerge the leaves. Place the jar in a cool place for 4 to 7 days.

5. Drain the salted vegetable. Use immediately or store it in a container and refrigerate for later use. It can be stored up to a week in the fridge, but will taste better if used immediately. These homemade ones are not so salty, so you do not need to wash them before cooking or serving it straight as a dish.





Not too difficult right? The most tedious part of making this is the cleaning of the mustard green (they have lots of sand) and patting them completely dry.

Here are some photographs to document the steps.

Step 2 (Most tedious step) - Wash and pat them dry




Step 3 - Cut them, sprinkle with salt and let it sit for 30mins.
Cut the mustard greens


Mix with salt and leave for 30mins


After 30mins, the liquid in the mustard green will be drawn out


Step 4 - Place them in a jar with the rice water for 4 to 7 days.
Day 1


Day 7


Ready to eat


So how did we eat ours?

Cut a few stalks up and add into a bowl of noodle as condiment.


Stir friend them with chili, minced chicken with some salt and sugar, and drizzle a bit of soy sauce at the end.


(photos without watermark were taken from the phone, hence the bad quality)

1 comment:

  1. don't leave the vegetables jutting out of the brine, it will start to grow fungus.

    ReplyDelete