Clem's Salted Mustard Greens
 


The practice salting of fresh vegetables is cross cultural. The Chinese salt various greens to preserve and add flavour to the end-product (and unknowingly until shown by science, improving the nutritional status of such halo-fermented food products). Salting encourages the proliferation of halophilic/halotolerant microorganisms (bacteria in the main) whose occupation of the environmental niche of the ferment excludes "bad" microorganisms and which transforms the preserved food. The transformation is largely one of the development of organic acids (and thus tartness in the fermented product) and flavour compounds (fermented products smell different from the fresh matter).

Mustard greens (Brassica juncea) are commonly salted by the Chinese to ensure a supply in the winter months when the greens do not grow.
It is a relatively easy process and you can do it thus:

  • Procure your supply of Mustard Greens in a quantity commensurate with your ability to salt/preserve it.
     

  • Wash the greens and drain off all water from the vegetable afterwards.
     

  • Sprinkle coarse salt (use non-iodized salt where available as this will avoid microbiocidal iodine) all over each bunch of greens ensuring that the inner parts of each bunch are treated too.
    Set aside for a couple of hours.
     

  • Wash off all the salt with plenty of fresh water and then dry off the greens by shaking them.
     

  • You may need to squeeze each bunch of greens to remove the water used to wash them.
     

  • Prepare the salting brine.
    Add 70 g non-iodized salt to a litre of water (making a 7% weight/volume solution).
    Make more than 1 L if required.

    OPTIONAL - Add carbohydrates to the brine:
    Take some 50 mL of the salt solution into a saucepan and add a teaspoon or two of rice flour.
    Boil the solution until the flour gelatinizes (if ungelatinized, starch in the flour will be largely unavailable for fermentation).
    Add this flour solution back to the rest of the salting brine.
    The gelatinized flour will add easily assimilable saccharides to the brine for the fermenting microorganisms to metabolize.
     

  • Squeeze the mustard greens into a jar or jars with air-tight lids.
     

  • Pour the 7% salt solution over the greens, covering them completely.
    Tap the jar(s) to dislodge any air bubbles trapped amongst the greens.
     

  • Seal the jars with the lids and set aside somewhere cool for some three or four weeks.

 


Mustard Greens after salting and then washing.

 


Day 0 of the salting of Mustard Greens.
The brine looks cloudy from the gelatinized rice flour.
 


After 1 week of brining.
The gelatinized rice flour has been largely consumed/settled out.

 


After 2 weeks of brining.
 


After 3 weeks of brining.
 


Some of the greens after 3 weeks of brining.
The product should have yellowed.
 



Some of the 3-week salted greens used to make Salted Mustard Green + Pork Rib Soup (Haam Choi Tohng)
Comprises: Salted greens; pork rib; soft tofu; quartered tomatoes; quartered shallots.
 

 

 

All my cooking (some without recipes) can be found here (click on each photo to go to that dish's page):

 

http://clemkuek.com/photoalbum/photo696.html

 

Video presentations can be found here:

Earlier days: https://youtu.be/BWyHY1h9Y5s

More recently: https://youtu.be/cph2XmwuQLU

 

 

www.clemkuek.com

 

13 June 2025
 

 



Created by Clem Kuek