Sze Chuan Vegetable (榨菜/ 四川菜) is a preserved swollen stem mustard with red spicy chilli paste from Si Chuan, China. They are sold in a few forms: shredded and bulb form or cooked shredded packet.
It used to be one of my favourite as a child and I had to dilute it with water as it was too salty and spicy. The soup I drank was a lot simpler as it consisted of just sze chuan vegetable, dried mushroom stem and pork bones.
Nowadays I rarely cook this soup as I am trying to reduce my consumption of commercially preserved vegetable. I have added some vegetables: carrot, radish and tomatoes to flavour the soup and to add more vegetables to my diet.
To prep it, rinse off the spicy layer. Some people soak it for a few hours to reduce the saltiness. Another way to reduce the saltiness is to use less sze chuan vegetable.
Sze Chuan Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
100g-200g sze chuan vegetable
1 carrot
1 radish
2 tomatoes
6 red dates
2L water
400g pork bones
Method
Parboil pork bones for a few minutes. Put all ingredients into the pot. Boil then simmer for 2-3 hours. Add salt to taste.
