Mung bean sprouts, carrot and celery in the fashion of kongnamul
Flavorful, crispy, cold vegetables to enjoy alone or with hot rice. Garlic and chili pepper flakes makes it far from the regular vegetables salad.
Serves: 4-8 (depending whether you serve it as a side dish or main course)
Preparation: 20 minutes
This recipe is (more than) heavily inspired by kongnamul / 콩나물, a Korean seasoned soybean sprouts salad. It's basically the same recipe, with some changes and addition to the original ingredient list. First it relies on mung bean sprouts, instead of soybean sprouts — yes, they’re slightly different, read below. Second, it uses Chinese rice vinegar (Chinkiang vinegar) and rice cooking wine (Shaoxing wine) instead of sugar — not that both combined give a sweety taste, it's just my way of making this recipe. It also adds carrot and celery, because I had some available at the time of making the recipe, and I fancy those vegetables. I believe I’ll also include mukimame (edamame beans) next time, to diversify the ingredients and increase the amount of proteins this recipe already provides thanks to the mung bean sprouts.
Mung bean sprouts or soybean sprouts?
This recipe uses mung bean sprouts. They look similar to soybean sprouts, though they’re from different beans (as their names suggest). Soybean sprouts come from soy, and are toxic if eaten raw. Mung bean sprouts can be enjoyed raw (still, it’s good to wash them a bit). To add to the confusion, some dishes from the same country use either one or the other; for example, Korean kongnamul requires soybean sprouts, while bibimbap includes mung bean sprouts. To raise once more the level of confusion, know that both used to be erroneously labelled as “mung/soy beans” until 2016 in France…
In Western countries, it’s more common to find mung bean sprouts than soybean sprouts — still, mind the difference.
Ingredients
500 g mung bean sprouts
1 thick carrot ~ 215 g
1 celery branch1
3 garlic cloves (or more, if you like it stronger)
Ginger root ~ 5 cm long piece
1 soup spoon of chili pepper flakes (or more, if you like it stronger)
2 spring onions
4 soup spoons of soy sauce2
4 soup spoons of toasted sesam oil3
2 soup spoon Shaoxing wine (Chinese cooking rice wine)4
1 soup spoon of Chinkiang vinegar (Chinese black rice vinegar, optional)5
If I consider Chinkiang vinegar optional for this recipe, Shaoxing wine is not; unfortunately, I can’t offer an alternative, as it has a very distinctive flavor.
Preparation
This is a salad, with little actual cooking. As a consequence, all necessary steps are listed below — there’s no Cooking section further down.
Boil enough water to cover the mung bean sprouts
Put the mung bean sprouts in the boiling water for 1 minute
Drain water, and put the mung bean sprouts in a large salad bowl covered with cold water; you can add ice cubes if you like
Peel the carrot, and cut into small matchsticks, 3-4 cm long
Wash the celery branch, slice into thin moon quarters
Slice the spring onions
In a large salad bowl (large enough so all ingredients will fit and you will manage to mix them gently without ejecting any...), combine the Chinkiang vinegar, the Shaoxing wine, the toasted sesam oil, and the soy sauce
Peel the ginger root, and cut into thin 1-2 cm long matchsticks; add to the bowl
Peel the garlic cloves, press into a purée; add to the bowl
Add the chili flakes to the bowl
Drain water from the (now cold) mung bean sprouts, and add them to the bowl; beware, if you had used ice cubes to get the water cold, you’ll either need to wait for them to melt, or triage them out after draining the water
Add the carrot and celery
Gently mix all ingredients together, ensuring you go to the bottom to let the liquids impregnate the rest
Add the spring onions on top; do not mix afterward
Cover, and refrigerate
Although it's tempting to start eating right away, be patient and refrigerate the salad for 4-24 hours to let all the flavors mingle. Your palate will be rewarded if you can wait. You can serve it as is, or as a side dish with rice — long-grain or short-grain rice. I love the option of serving this dish with rice I just cooked, especially because the cold salad gives a special feeling when eaten with hot rice.
Enjoy!
If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it - please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.
Here’s a tip before you go
If you wish carrot sticks to have a soft texture, without cooking, you can marinate them in soy sauce overnight. They will no longer be crisp, and will have a strong soy flavor aside from the carrot’s one. The longer they marinate, the softer they become. Beware, however, that this will be at the expense of increasing their saltiness — consider using reduced salt soy sauce.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, you can share it to your audience — it’s public, and free!
Be cautious: celery is a known allergen
Be cautious: soy sauce is made of soy and wheat, which are known allergens
Be cautious: sesam oil is made of sesam, which is a known allergen
Be cautious: Shaoxing wine production uses wheat, which is a known allergen
Be cautious: Chinkiang vinegar production uses wheat, which is a known allergen
Yum!