A popular vegan dish from Northern China –DiSanXian (地三鲜) made with the three most common vegetables in the Chinese daily market: potato, eggplants, and green peppers. This dish gives a slightly crispy potato texture, soft eggplant, and fresh green peppers.
What’s Di San Xian
Di San Xian (地三鲜) literally can be translated as the three treasures of the earth. In daily cooking, we are more likely to use seasonal and local fresh ingredients. The most famous version is with potatoes, eggplants, and green peppers. But they are never dull! You can combine some of them together and season them with different flavors.
The name Di San xian literally translates to “three fresh ingredients”, because all the ingredients are grown on the earth. Traditionally, the ingredients are deep-fried and then coated with a savory sauce. But we will use a shallow frying process which takes longer time and less oil.
How does it taste like
Basically, this dish has a sweet, garlicky, and savory taste. So is typically served with steamed white rice or noodles. The sauce will combine well with the staple food and makes it even better.
Make eggplant easier to cook
Sometimes we feel eggplant is quite hard to cook because it will absorb the oil at the first and make the food become greasy. Here is a tip about how to solve this.
- Soak the eggplants in salty water for around 15 minutes. The water absorbed can help to fasten the cooking process.
- Coat them with cornstarch, this helps to hold the shape of the eggplants.
How to cut the potatoes
You can choose to cut the potatoes either into slices or larger chunks. However, the treatment of the two might be slightly different. If you cut the potato into slices, you can use fry or sautee. However, for larger chunks, we recommend boiling them first and then frying them until a little bite crispy on the surface.
📖Steps
Soak the eggplants in slightly salted water for 15 minutes. Drain and then coat evenly with a thin layer of cornstarch. The eggplants can be softened even with a small amount of water. Drain completely.
In a small bowl, mix all of the stir-frying sauce together.
Heat oil in a wok (recommend adding more oil to fasten the process, do not worry, we will remove extra oil later) to form a 3 cm oil layer.
Place boiled potatoes in and fry until well cooked. Then place the eggplant in and gently fry during the process until well cooked.
Also, fry green pepper for 10 seconds.
Pour extra oil out and leave around ½ tablespoon of cooking oil in. Fry green onion white and garlic until aromatic. Place the stir-fry sauce in.
Wait for a while until boiling. Place potato, green pepper, and eggplants in. Fry until each piece is well coated.
Serve hot with steamed rice.
Other Chinese Eggplants to try
Eggplant is my favorite ingredient for my daily cooking. Following are some of the most delicious eggplant dishes you must have a try.
Chinese Eggplants with Garlic Sauce
Chinese Eggplants with Minced Pork
Chinese Steamed Eggplant Recipe
Chinese Yu Xiang Eggplant Recipe
Di San Xian—Chinese Sautéed Potato Eggplants and Green Peppers
Ingredients
- 2 long eggplants , cut into 2cm chunks
- 1/4 cup cornstarch for coating
- 1 potatoes , cut into thick slices or chunks
- 1 green pepper , cut into small pieces
- 1 green onion , white part only, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves , chopped
- oil for frying
Stir-frying sauce
- 2 tbsp. light soy sauce
- 1/4 tsp. sugar
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tbsp. dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp. cornstarch
- 3 tbsp. water
Instructions
- Soak the eggplants in slightly salted water for 15 minutes. Drain completely and then coat evenly with a thin layer of cornstarch.
- In a small bowl, mix all of the stir-frying sauce together.
- If you cut potatoes in chunks, then cook the chunks in boiling water for around 4-5 minutes. Transfer out and drain.
- Heat oil in wok (recommend adding more oil to fasten the process, do not worry, we will remove extra oil later) to form a 3 cm oil layer.
- Place potatoes in and fry until the surface becomes slightly crispy. Then place the eggplant in and gently fry during the process until well cooked. Fry green pepper for 10 seconds.
- Pour extra oil out and leave around 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil in. Fry green onion and garlic until aromatic. Place the stir fry sauce in. Wait for a while until boiling. Place potato, green pepper and eggplants in. Fry until each piece is well coated.
- Serve hot with steamed rice.
Notes
Traditionally, this dish is deep-fried. If you are watching out the daily oil intake, you can fry all the ingredients with less oil. But the later method requires more time and patience.
Nutrition
Very good recipes I’m a vegetarian and I use to make your without meat. That works ! I love your recipes .
Thank you Suzana. Happy cooking.
The recipe says the potatoes should be sliced thick but they look pretty thin (maybe 1/8″?) in the pictures. Are they thicker than that?
Thinner or Thicker slices work fine too.
Wow…This dish was so delicious and simple to make!
I hosted a dinner party last night and made (from this site) Salt & Pepper Tofu, Bok Choy and Mushrooms, and Di San Xian, (Chinese Sauteed Potatoes Eggplant, and Green Peppers), along with Chinese BBQ Beef Ribs, for the meat eaters, and Jasmine Rice. We devoured everything and drank 2 bottles of Sake…there were no leftovers!
love this site…Cheers!!!
That’s a great job Butch and good combination too! Happy cooking!
Hi can i have the recipe for the salt and pepper Tofu.
Hi Margery,
Get salt and pepper tofu here.
With the shorter commut, during this stay at home period, we’ve been using some of the extra time to explore more vegetatian dinner options. Thank you for this authentic recipe! We used a combination of green peppers – bell, poblano and jalepeno, It was delicious!
Simple ingredients taste plain and 3 simple ingredients combined together creates brilliant flavors. Happy cooking, Liz.
Simple and yummy .
I add chopped garlic, ginger and fresh chilli to sauce to give it an extra kick.
Perfect vegan dish.
Thanks Kez for your lovely feedback. This is one of my favorite vegan dish too.
Hi!
This dish looks amazing! What type of eggplants did you use? I live in Europe so the shops mainly have the big rounder shaped ones. If I use that, maybe just one eggplant?
Hannele,
That one works too. I use long Asian eggplant, which definitely is smaller.
I soaked the eggplants in salted water and drained it. Then I sprinkled them with starch. But because of the starch, they began to stick strongly to the bottom of the pan. There was about 1 cm of oil. How to avoid this?
Hi, Alex
You can add more oil to allow more parts of the eggplant to come into contact with oil.
My Chinese friends were so impressed when I made this. They couldn’t believe I could make such authentic Chinese food!