25th April 2024
How to prepare & cook pak choi
If you’ve ever browsed our recipe list, you’ll have noticed that we’re big fans of Asian cuisine. We think tofu specifically pairs beautifully well with oriental flavours, and one of the best ingredients of many of these dishes is pak choi.
We absolutely love cooking with this vegetable, so we thought we’d give you a little guide to cooking with it in case you weren’t already familiar.
What is pak choi?
Pak Choi (also known as ‘bok choy’) is a member of the cabbage family. Like many leafy greens, pak choi is full of goodness, boasting a healthy amount of fibre, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants too.
Pak choi is a vegetable that has a structure like a squat celery and has dark, glossy green leaves with a paler, white stalk. The flavour is somewhere between cabbage and spinach, and the texture is wonderfully crunchy. Pak choi is perfect for a range of recipes, adding some crunchiness to curries and broth dishes alike.
How to cut and prepare pak choi
One of the things we love about pak choi is that it’s available all year round – it’s not specifically seasonal. Below is how you can go about preparing pak choi for your dish.
Firstly, you’ll want to choose the best products, so make sure you opt for pak choi that has firm-looking and glossy leaves with an unblemished stalk. The smaller cabbages tend to be the most tender, so pick those if you’re after that in your dish.
Next, it’s important to wash pak choi like you would any other cabbage.
Now, you can either tear the entire stalk and leaf off and cook as is – many Japanese-style noodle broths keep them whole like this, however, we recommend choosing a small or young pak choi for this. Simply trimming or tearing the stalk off small leaves is an easy way to prepare pak choi. But when your vegetable is a bit bigger you’ll want to chop and slice pak choi to bring the bigger leaves down to bite-size.
Storing pak choi
There are numerous ways to store pak choi to keep it fresh and to save it for later use if you have more than you need.
Refrigerating pak choi
Pak choi is best kept in the refrigerator. To keep it at its freshest, try storing it in a plastic bag or wrapped in a paper towel. It can be kept in the fridge for up to a week. If you’ve cut your pak choi for a recipe and have some left over, try wrapping the surplus in plastic wrap or foil and popping it in the refrigerator, it’ll keep for up to 3 days.
Freezing pak choi
Found yourself with a few too many leaves for your stir fry? You can freeze pak choi as both the leaves and stem have a high water content. That means pak choi keeps well - just remember to use those wilting leaves before you freeze.
Handling pak choi
Pak choi leaves can be delicate and easily bruised, so it’s best to try and handle it carefully. It’s important to handle pak choi with care. If you see any damage to the leaves or that they have started to yellow, try to use these first in your dishes so none goes to waste!
How to cook pak choi
We’ve outlined some of our favourite methods of cooking pak choi below, all of which retain the lovely fresh flavour of the vegetable:
Steamed
Sliced pak choi will take as little as 2 minutes to steam, and whole it can take up to 8 mins. So pop it on to steam when you’re nearing the end of your cooking time.
Stir-fried
We love a good stir fry! As you’d expect, this a super quick method that retains a nice crunch, only taking 2 minutes.
Blanched
Pak choi is so quick to cook it only needs a quick blanch in boiling water for 2 mins to get that refreshing crunch.
Pak choi recipe ideas
Here’s a handful of our favourite dishes which use Pak Choi to inspire your mealtimes. Packed with plants and veggies, and ready in no-time.
A delicious, fragrant and creamy Thai green curry with pieces of Caudron Authentic Tofu and crispy vegetables. Our Authentic Tofu is super tasty in this dish which is busting with flavour and zingy spices.
Or how about a Curried Tofu Ramen? This bowlful of deliciousness with its flavour packed kick is definitely a crowd-pleaser!
If you’re in a hurry and need a quick dinner, try this Wok Fried Hoisin Tofu and Rice recipe. Packed with Asian-inspired veggies, this dish is a total midweek dinner win!
For more inspiration, check out our recipe hub here.
Get stuck in
Our blog’s bursting with tips and ideas, info and inspiration. It’s all the stuff about plants that we couldn’t wait to share (but didn’t know where else to put!) There’s so much to get your teeth into.
