Stir fried water spinach facts for kids
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| Course | Main |
|---|---|
| Region or state | East Asia: Southern China
Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam South Asia: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Eastern India |
| Serving temperature | hot |
| Main ingredients | water spinach |
Stir-fried water spinach is a super popular vegetable dish across Asia! It's known by many different names, but it's always made with a leafy green called water spinach. This yummy plant is quickly cooked in a hot pan (that's called stir-frying) with lots of other tasty veggies, spices, and sometimes even meat. You can find this dish almost everywhere in East, South, and Southeast Asia, from China to Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and many more countries!
Contents
What Do People Call Stir-Fried Water Spinach?
This dish has many different names, depending on where you are in Asia. Here are a few examples:
- In Indonesia, it's called tumis kangkung or cah kangkung.
- Malaysians call it kangkong goreng.
- In the Philippines, you might hear ginisang kangkóng or adobong kangkóng.
- Thais say pad pakboong (ผัดผักบุ้ง).
- Vietnamese people call it rau muống xào.
- In China, it's often called stir fry kong xin cai (空心菜) in Mandarin.
- In Cambodia, it's khteah tuk chien cha (ខ្ទះទឹកចៀនឆា).
- In Sri Lanka, it's known as kankun mallung.
- In Bangladesh and eastern India, it's kolmi shak bhaja.
How Is This Dish Cooked?
Stir-fried water spinach is one of the easiest and cheapest vegetable dishes in Asia. This is why it's so popular! Water spinach grows really well in tropical places like Southeast Asia.
To cook it, first, garlic and onions are quickly fried in a hot pan called a wok. Then, the clean, cut water spinach is added to the wok. It's cooked very fast over a strong fire with a little bit of cooking oil. This quick cooking makes the vegetables slightly sweet and tasty.
After that, special sauces are added to give the dish its flavor. Some people like to add slices of red chili pepper to make it spicy. Others might add fresh or dried shrimp for a seafood taste. You might even find diced tofu in some recipes!
Different Flavors and Styles
The taste of stir-fried water spinach can change a lot based on the seasonings used. It can be simply flavored with garlic, black pepper, fish sauce, or soy sauce. Sometimes, oyster sauce is used. Other times, it's made spicy with chili pepper, tauco (which is a fermented soybean paste), or shrimp paste.
- Vietnamese versions often use fish sauce or oyster sauce.
- Indonesian** and **Malaysian recipes often use shrimp paste.
- The Filipino style often mixes soy sauce and vinegar, similar to their famous Philippine adobo dish. They also use shrimp paste or fermented fish.
- In Southern China, people might prefer oyster sauce or fermented tofu.
- In West Java, a part of Indonesia, the Chinese Indonesian style often uses tauco (fermented soybeans) for flavor.
- In Burmese cuisine, stir-fried water spinach is usually cooked with mushrooms, garlic, onions, and fresh chilies. It's seasoned with oyster sauce, chicken stock, sesame oil, and salt.
Water Spinach with Shrimp Paste
One very popular way to make this dish is by stir-frying water spinach with shrimp paste. This paste is called belacan in Malay, terasi in Indonesian, and bagoong alamang in Filipino.
This specific dish is known as kangkung belacan or kangkong belacan in Malaysia and Singapore. In Indonesia, it's cah kangkung terasi, and in the Philippines, it's binagoongang kangkóng. It's a favorite vegetable dish in many Southeast Asian countries. In the Philippines, sometimes fermented fish or fish sauce is used instead of shrimp paste. It's often served with crispy deep-fried pork belly, called lechon kawali.
