Last Updated on 17th December 2021 by
Bok choy is a staple of Chinese food. It’s crunchy texture, slightly better flavor, and varied nutrients make it a good addition to your stir fry. I want to share how to prepare bok choy in a number of ways to help you expand your at-home cooking possibilities.
Depending on what you are making, the way you prepare your bok choy will vary. Cooking with bok choy, how to prepare it for soup or ramen or salad or stir fry maybe done slightly differently. You might use a different cooking method, or you may use different ingredients and seasonings to flavour it. You might cook it for longer depending on which dish you are going to use it in.
You can eat bok choy raw after it’s washed, if you like, but there are definite benefits to cooking before eating it. Most people will cook their bok choy before serving it, and it’s definitely the preferred way to eat it.
Bok Chow- How to Prepare It for Soup
For bok choy soup, you are cooking the bok choy until it is soft. Traditional bok choy soup uses well cooked veggies without much of a crunch. How to prepare bok choy for soup? You can cook your bok choy in vegetable stock until the stock starts to simmer. Then, continue to cook the bok choy for another 5 minutes. By then, it should have cooked fully and be soft enough for traditional bok choy soup.
When making bok choy soup, keep in mind that the bok choy doesn’t take too long to cook, so you may want to cook it last with the rest of your ingredients after most everything else has cooked thoroughly.
How to prepare baby bok choy for soup? You can use the same method I just described to cook your baby bok choy. Being cooked for five minutes at a simmer should be enough to cook the baby bok choy thoroughly.
How to Prepare Bok Choy for Ramen
What about if you were making traditional ramen noodles? Do you need to prepare or cook the bok choy? No, you can use the same method as described above for how to prepare baby bok choy and regular bok choy when you’re making ramen noodles or ramen soup.
Keep in mind that whether you’re making ramen or soup, the vegetable stock is where most of the flavour comes from. The ramen and the bok choy have very little flavour of their own, so make sure your vegetable stock is flavourful if you want your dish to be flavourful.
How to Prepare Bok Choy for Stir Fry
Cooking stir fry is a bit different from cooking soup or ramen. You want to have some crunch to it, so you will prepare your bok choy a little differently than you did for the soup. If you’re looking for how to prepare baby bok choy for stir fry or regular bok choy, the method we will use is the same.
Even though a little crunch is okay when you stir fry, you can also cook your bok choy until it is tender for this dish. Whether you do a tender or crunchy bok choy may depend on the texture of the rest of your stir fry. If you have no other crispy crunchy vegetables in your stir fry, you may want to leave the bok choy crunchy.
It is important that you prep the bok choy properly. Start by placing a colander in the sink and then set your bok choy into the sink directly. Rinse the bok choy thoroughly using running water. Pull off the outer leaves and leave behind only the stem.
This is a bite size piece, and you will need to use a sharp knife like a paring knife to slice through its tough ends. You’ll discard the tough ends and put the peeled bok choy into the colander and allow it to drain.
This process gives you bok choy that is easy to cook and easy to make tender for your stir fry. How to prepare bok choy in stir fry? It all starts with the preparation of the bok choy before any cooking begins.
You can usually cook up the bok choy in your stir fry with all the other ingredients together. It only needs to cook for a few minutes- probably about five. If you have anything else in your stir fry that needs to cook for longer, you should cook that first, and then add it to the stir fry so it can all cook together.
It’s important for all of your ingredients in a stir fry to cook as a group. What this does is ensure they are all seasoned and flavoured the same so they work together as a single dish with a shared flavor.
How To Prepare Bok Choy For Salad
Next, I want to show you how you can fix up your bok choy to use in a salad. Do you want the bok choy there to be crispy and crunchy or would you prefer it to be soft? I think by now you know how to make it soft for your salad, if you want to cook salad.
How to prepare bok choy salad? I don’t usually cook the bok choy when I make it part of a salad. I do ensure it is properly cleaned and trimmed, though. You can clean bok choy and baby bok choy similar to the way you would clean and trim celery.
First, pull off the edge of the bulb and take the stalks apart. From there, rinse off the stalks and brush off any debris that may be on the leaves. You can use the entire stock of bok choy for the salad even the leaves that are on the top. It’s all good and all edible.
You will want to add your bok choy to the salad right away. If you are not going to use it immediately, then wrap it up in a paper towel and store it in your fridge’s crisper drawer for up to a week.
Now you know how to prepare bok choy for cooking in a few different ways. Whether you’re looking to make a stir fry a salad or a soup, bok choy is a great addition, packed with nutrients, and it offers a nice, crispy crunch to your dish.
I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!
