Chinese Vegetarian Recipes

Plain Fried Carrot Shreds

Stir Fried Carrot Shreds

Introduction:

Today, I cooked a recipe that I once enjoyed during my trip to  Tsingtao, a coastal city located in the south coast of Shandong province, when I was a child.

That vacation was very impressive to me because it was the only one that I have ever traveled to “big” city before I went to college.

When we were eating at the house of one of my father’s friends, who I called uncle Fu. Aunt Fu cooked one carrot recipe which was so delicious that I haven’t forget about it even by now.

Ingredients:

Carrot: 500 g

Seasonings:

Coriander: 5 (whole plant)

Scallion: 5 g (coarsely chopped)

Ginger: 5 g (finely minced)

Sichuan peppercorns: 5

Salt: 1/2 teaspoon

Cooking wine: 1 tablespoon

MSG: 1/4 teaspoon

Vegetable oil: 1 tablespoon

Vegetable soup stock: half a cup

Preparation Work:

1. Get such seasoning as minced ginger and chopped scallions ready;

2. Wash the carrots clean and cut them into shreds;

3. Remove the leaves and roots from the coriander and cut what’s left (stalks) into pieces that are as long as the carrot shreds;

Cooking Steps:

1. Preheat the vegetable oil in the wok until it gets 40% hot;

2. Drop the Sichuan peppercorns into the oil and take them out when the smell comes out;

3. Add in the chopped scallion, ginger shreds and carrot shreds, and stir-fry them for one minute;

4. Add in the vegetable soup stock, cooking wine, salt, and stir-fry until the ingredient begins to soften;

5. Drop the coriander stalks into the wok;

6. Spray the MSG on the dish;

7. Blend them fully before dishing out.

Cooking Tips:

When you are cooking recipes where carrot is the single ingredient, it’s not recommended to add vinegar into the dish.

Carrots are very rich in carotene which then is turned into Vitamin A after being absorbed by the human body.

Vitamin A can effectively improve the texture of the skin and prevent the incidence of nyctalopia.

But vinegar will destroy the carotene when the carrots are stir fried.

This rule also applies to potherb mustard, spinach, baby bok choy etc because these vegetables also have high content of carotene.