This is the typical Chinese salad you can eat in a Chinese restaurant here in Spain. I don't know if you can find it in another country, but it's so easy to prepare it. The salad is made with ham too, but I've replaced it with organic soybean sprouts. I always try to consume organic soy products to avoid gmo soy.
When I was a child, I didn't like salads, but I loved this one, it's really delicious. This is the most common recipe, but some restaurants add other ingredients like corn or tomatoes. The traditional dressing is made with white sugar, but I prefer to use coconut or brown sugar.
Chinese restaurants use msg (monosodium glutamate) in many recipes, including this salad. Msg is a controversial food additive that enhances the taste of food, but it's addictive and really unhealthy. Many foods contain msg, so I recommend you to read the ingredient labels and avoid it.
Add more or less lettuce, carrots, agar and soybean sprouts, it's totally up to you, and you can also remove any ingredient or add another one. Use another sweetener to prepare the dressing if you don't eat sugar, or even you can remove it and add less vinegar.
Iceberg lettuce is less nutritious than other leafy greens, so you can replace it for another one, my favorites are romaine and spinach, but there are so many alternatives. IÂ usually eat other greens, but I use it to prepare some recipes like this salad.
Agar is a translucent seaweed and it's really easy to use, you only have to soak it in cold water and drain it, that's all then you can add it to your salad. Agar is also used to thicken jams or to replace glelatin, it's vegan, healthier and cruelty-free.
I love this Chinese salad recipe, but if you want to eat it often, I recommend you to replace or remove the sugar. Raw fruits and vegetables are good for your health, so you should eat salads every day, they are super healthy and there are so many recipes to prepare. But not all salads are healthy, for example, Caesar salad is not a good choice because it's made with bread, cheese, chicken and a high calorie dressing, you should use healthy ingredients and dressings. If you eat healthy, you'll feel better, I promise!
Vegan Chinese Salad
Ingredients
- 1 iceberg lettuce
- 2 carrots
- ¼ cup soybean sprouts, 50 g
- ¼ cup agar
For the dressing:
- ¼ cup apple cider vinegar, 55 g
- ¼ cup coconut or brown sugar, 50 g
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Soak the agar in water according to package directions.
- In a bowl place the chopped lettuce, julienned carrots, soybean sprouts and hydrated agar.
- To make the dressing you only have to blend all the ingredients in a blender
- Pour the dressing over the salad and stir until well mixed.
Rika@VM says
Hi Iosune, thanks so much for sharing my radish cakes, you're so kind! I love your blog, it's beautiful! We spent some time in Valencia almost two years ago, gosh, Spain is such a gorgeous country! I've never seen this type of salad before, but probably at Chinese-American restaurants, but the addition of agar and dressing are pretty yummy!
Iosune says
Hi Rika! Thanks a lot for your kind words 🙂 I LOVE your blog, it's amazing!!! This is the vegan version of the Chinese salad you can find at Chinese restaurants here in Spain. Have a nice day!!!
Sarah@WholeandHeavenlyOven says
Love love this gorgeous salad! That dressing sounds absolutely fabulous. 🙂
Iosune says
Thanks Sarah! The dressing is awesome, you need to give it a try!
Thalia @ butter and brioche says
This recipe is just perfect for me to recreate for my vegetarian family. Thanks for sharing it!
Iosune says
Hi Thalia! I'm happy to read that, I hope you like it 😉
JoanKSX says
Hi there. I'm from Malaysia, South-East Asian. I'm a Chinese
citizen over here. My mum make the sauce with malt sugar, plum sauce and salt. She warms the mixture carefully in slow cook manner in a wok until the mixture thickens, turns even and the salt dissolves completely. Store in a clean glass jar. Can keep for, maybe, 1 week in room temperature? Or longer in fridge. Just experiment it =P (I don't know because I always gulp all the sauce =D I really like it!)
We stir-fry the white sesame until it smell aromatic and so with the raw groundnuts with some groundnut-palm cooking oil. We stir-fry separately.
We crush the stir-fried groundnuts into grain size and store it in a dry, clean food container.
We finely slice all the vegetables including purple cabbage, red bell peppers, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper, cucumber, waterchestnut too as well as the ingredient as your recipe shows into fine strings. I don't like raw bean sprout taste so we omit it.
We place / store the sliced vegetables separately in a food container and keep them in fridge. We always make a big bulk.
SERVING
Pour about 1 tablespoon of the sauce to the sliced vegetables you pick. We usually eat all kinds of vegetables that we sliced. Mix evenly and eat it fast! Because the water in the vegetables will 'drain'-out once we put the salty (because of salt), sweet (because of malt sugar), sour (because of the plum sauce). Might goes bad if left unintended for long hours.
I don't think I would like to use your brown sugar-sauce because of the brown sugar distinct taste, though a nice alternative sauce.
Iosune says
Hi Joan! Thank you so much for your comment and your recipe, sounds great!!! Have a nice day 😀