Clem's
Salted Mustard Greens
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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.
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Mustard Greens
after salting and then washing.
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Day 0 of the
salting of Mustard Greens.
The brine looks cloudy from the gelatinized rice flour.
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After 1 week of
brining.
The gelatinized rice flour has been largely consumed/settled out.
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After 2 weeks of
brining.
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After 3 weeks of brining.
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Some of the greens
after 3 weeks of brining.
The product should have yellowed.
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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.
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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
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