Amazing Chinese Sweet and Sour Salad Dressing

This is a super easy but amazing Chinese sweet and sour salad dressing. The flavor is profound, strong but well balanced. In Chinese, we call it “大拌菜” dressing.

Possibly around 2 weeks ago, I visited a local Northern restaurants featuring lamb skewers, braised large bones and other Northern cuisines. Lamb skewers are good as wished. But what makes me feel amazing is the sweet and sour salad mixing. We give it a lovely name “大拌菜”. Literally means “large mixed salad”.  It is really a big portion and with lots of contents inside. Then I feel it is necessary to copy that one at home. The sauce has a very strong, profound but well balanced sweet and sour taste, lasting for quite a long time. This is the best match for common meat dishes like red braised pork belly and roasted pork belly.

Salad also called cold dishes in China is quite different from its form in western cuisines. Chinese salad can be quite heavy with lots of chili oil and also can be extremely light like easy smashed cucumber. The raw ingredients can be almost everything. Raw food is not very popular in traditional Chinese cuisine. We stir-fry green vegetables to improve the amount taken by each meal. But now, we are using more modernized cooking method. We eat raw salad from time to time. For example, in my family, raw green vegetable salad and stir-fried dishes share a ratio of 5:5. Generally we get a regular store bought salad dressing like Caesar dressing. But this one really is more efficient for a typical Chinese kitchen. This one is unbelievably delicious but only made from super common ingredients.

Cook’s tips

1.Always right rule for salad: drain the raw ingredients completely.

2.Heat the sweet and sour sauce can make the sauce combined better and the most importantly it can add some thickness. This thickness can help the sauce attached to the vegetables closely. That’s why this one taste much stronger and profound than common directly mixing salad. However, do not let the sauce boils during the process. As we all know that vinegar is quite easy to volatilize. Boiling can greatly weaken the sour taste.  

3.Using garlic water is another brilliant idea. It creates a universal but light garlic flavor, hard to discover and easy to feel.

Instructions

Clean the vegetable well and then drain completely. Shred the bell pepper and slice the radish.

In a pan, add around 2 tablespoons of vegetable cooking oil and place the peanuts in when the oil is cold. Use medium fire to heat until there are small bubbles around the peanuts. Continue heating with slowest fire until you hear lots of Papa Sound. Transfer the peanuts out immediately. Drain off extra oil and set aside.

In a small pot, add sugar, black vinegar, light soy sauce and salt in. Heat over slowest fire and gently stir the sauce. Make sure the sugar is dissolved. Always keep slow fire and remove the pot from fire if necessary. Don’t let the sauce boils.  Set aside and cool down completely.

Smash too garlic cloves and add 1 tablespoon of hot boiling water. Soak for 10 minutes.

Assemble| mix vegetable, shredded bell peppers, sliced red radishes and toasted peanuts in a large mixing bowl. Add olive oil and sesame oil, squeeze the garlic water and drizzle the sweet and sour sauce. Mix well and serve immediately.