Ever since I began studying Chinese food some years ago, I noticed how much fermented and pickled foods factor into their cooking. Most of us know about Korean kimchi and many have had Japanese pickles before, but Chinese pickles are still relatively rare here in America.
One of my favorites — and one that can easily be done with wild food — is their ubiquitous pickled mustard greens.
Take a look around Chinese restaurant menus (not including the cheapy Chinese steam-table places) and you will see them. Often used in soups and stir-fries, pickled mustard greens come in various forms and styles. Many are pickled with vinegar, but some are old-fashioned brine pickles, which means the greens are fermented. That’s the kind I decided to make.
My recipe is an amalgam of a dozen or more I looked up in an assortment of Chinese cookbooks, notably Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking and Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. Keep in mind this is a fermented pickle, so you will need a cool, dark place for it to do its thing. A quiet corner of the house is a good place, but not the refrigerator, which is too cold.
I ferment my greens (and pretty much everything else) with this set-up:
- An old, rimmed baking sheet; old because the salty brine can damage some metal surfaces if it slops over. And it always does.
- Quart Mason jars for the greens.
- Narrow jelly jars to keep the greens submerged.
How long is up to you. Minimum 3 days at room temperature, or you will wonder what the fuss is about. A week is good for beginners, but I prefer several weeks or even longer. The longer you go, the saltier and more pungent everything gets.
I fermented my greens for 3 weeks, which is an awful long time for some people, and not enough for others. I decided to pull them at this point because a) there was a roaring mold cap on the jar (gnarly but not harmful), and b) the greens just looked right. How did I know this? Hard to say. I used The Force.
Whatever the power was that guided me, it did not steer me wrong. These greens are a flavor bomb. Pungent, because, well, they are mustard greens, spicy from chiles and Sichuan peppercorns, tangy from the ferment and crunchy-ish, too.
Not cracker crunchy, but the greens still had some bite to them, which was good. I was worried that the ferment might make them limp and slimy.
You can use any sort of mustard, radish or turnip greens, but I used wild mustard. It grows with abandon around the farm fields in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and can be harvested by the grocery bag in minutes. My friend Josh and I pillaged these in the beginning of March.
If you are harvesting wild mustard — or garden mustard greens, for that matter — do so before your weather gets too hot. In most places, that means now, or by mid-June at the latest. If you pick in hot weather, you will be sad: The leaves will be impossibly bitter. Better to wait for the fall crop than try to push things in July.
How to use these fermented beauties? I use them as the “green thing” in everyday stir-fries, and they are also really good in noodle soups. I suppose you could chop them and use them in a dumpling filling or just slap a leaf or two on a sandwich. If you come up with some other good uses, let me know.
Meanwhile, get out there and pick yourself some wild mustard! It’s there for the taking.
Much of this recipe is malleable, but the ratio of salt to water is not: Too much and you kill any ferment, too little and everything can rot. Your nose is a good guide. If your fermented greens stink like rot, don't eat them. They should have a pleasing pungent smell like a cross between mustard and dill pickles. Once the greens have fermented to your liking, seal the jars and store in the fridge. They'll last this way for up to a year.
- 3 quarts water
- 3/4 cup kosher salt
- 3 to 5 star anise
- 5 to 10 dried chiles, broken in half
- 1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns (optional)
- A 2-inch piece of ginger, sliced thin
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 tablespoons molasses or brown sugar
- 1 1/2 pounds mustard greens, cut into large pieces
- Bring everything but the mustard greens to a boil in a large pot. Turn off the heat and let it cool to room temperature.
- Get out 5 quart-sized Mason jars with 5 narrow jelly jars to keep the greens submerged. You need this many because you will only pack the greens in 3/4 of the way into the jars -- you want at least 1 inch of brine above the level of the greens. Distribute the solids (chiles, ginger, etc) among the jars (break the cinnamon stick in pieces) and then pack the mustard greens into the jars, again only about 3/4 of the way in.
- Submerge the greens in the brine, using a chopstick or skewer to get rid of any air bubbles. Place the jars in the sink and put the narrow jelly jars in them. The brine will overflow but the narrow jar will prevent the greens from contacting the air. Set the jars on the baking sheet and put in a cool place away from direct sunlight.
- Let them ferment at least 3 days, or longer. Mold will form eventually. This is normal. I wait until the mold cap is pretty solid, then pick it off. It's not harmful.
- Finish by packing the jars tight with the fermented greens, leaving about 1/2 inch of brine over them. Seal and put in the fridge. They will continue to ferment very slowly, so open the jars every week or two to release pressure. If you want to kill the ferment, boil the brine and cool before packing the jars the final time.
Note that prep time does not include fermenting time.
Pickle Recipes and Preserved Foods
You can find all sorts of ways to pickle and preserve your harvest here on Hunter Angler Gardener Cook!
No need for all the extra work. The most basic salted mustard greens: rub the whole leaves with salt. Rub salt into every part of leaves and stalks. For one big bunch, I used a couple of tablespoons of Himalayan salt. Let them sit for half hour or so. Rub againwith no more salt in another half hour. One more rub no more salt. Put them in jar with lid or in sealed gallon plastic bag. Refrigerate. Use within a week. Before use rinse 3 times, squeeze out water. Your salted greens should be a brilliant green. Chop and use in stir fries or soups.
Yeh: Sure, that sounds like a fine idea, but as you say, “use within a week.” My greens will keep for more than a year.
Hank,
I would love to try fermenting some greens and veg but for some reason I’m very intimidated by the process. Can you recommend any good books for a novice?
Beth: Look up books by Sandor Katz.