Sweet, Crunchy Lotus Root and Bright Pickled Greens Are a Match Made in Heaven

I can’t imagine anyone not loving lotus root. Crunchy and mild with a faint bit of vegetal sweetness, it’s a natural crowd pleaser. It’s also extremely versatile, able to take on the flavors of the ingredients it’s cooked with and just as good simmered in a soup or lightly pickled in a cold dish (liángbàn, 凉拌) as it is seared in a stir-fry.

Lotus root became a go-to ingredient in my kitchen when I was living in Kunming, and I ordered it out regularly, too. I had it simmered with chicken in a rich soup in Northern Yunnan, stir-fried quickly with toasted garlic in a crayfish restaurant in Puzhehei, and lightly pickled at the dumpling restaurant across the street from my apartment (where the low tables were arranged around the edges of an apartment complex’s courtyard, with ping-pong tables in the center). But my favorite lotus root dish, by far, was the stir-fried lotus root with pickles (suāncài chǎo ǒu, 酸菜炒藕) that I ordered at Dragon Phoenix Restaurant, a Hui minority hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Shaxi. 

As I’ve written about in my recipe for Hui-Style Stir-Fried Beef With Pickles (Suancai Chao Niurou; 酸菜炒牛肉), Dragon Phoenix (Lóngfèng, 龙凤) restaurant is one of my very favorite places to eat in Yunnan. It’s a slightly dingy family-run spot in the small town of Sideng (the main town of the Shaxi Valley), but the food is so good that when I traveled to that part of Yunnan regularly, I would eat at Longfeng at least twice on each trip (even if I was only there for a couple days). My first meal there was kind of an accident—I walked into town from a small inn a couple villages over, and it was the only place I could find that was open—and I just ordered the food that looked good at the one other occupied table. But that meal of stir-fried beef with pickles (the one linked above) and stir-fried lotus root, also with pickles, was a revelation. 

Once I had visited the spot enough times that the cook recognized me, I asked her if I could watch her cook my favorite dishes and include this recipe (and the beef) in my book Cooking South of the Clouds—Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province. The recipe below is lightly adapted from that version, as the original was made with milder chilies than you’ll find through The Mala Market. I’ve tweaked the amounts a bit to accommodate the added heat, and I’ve made a couple other subtle changes to reflect how I make this dish at home now that I’ve spent 15 years or so experimenting with it.

Lotus Root Slices—Finding the Goldilocks Thickness

The original version of this recipe, from Dragon Phoenix Restaurant, was made with relatively thick slices of lotus root, cut at about ½ inch, cooked with a fair amount of broth. The result retained its crunch while absorbing some nice beefy flavor, but it’s not really something I can replicate at home regularly, as I don’t usually have long-cooked Yunnan-style beef broth in my refrigerator (or freezer) ready to add to the wok. So over the years, I’ve experimented with a variety of thicknesses, including the almost paper-thin slices that some cooks in Yunnan prefer (especially when they are preparing dishes fast and want to get a little bit of a sear on the slices). 

For this dish, I’ve come to prefer a medium path—a kind of Goldilocks spot right in between the thick slices and the paper thin slices. This thickness, around ¼ inch, is thick enough that the slices still have a nice bite to them once they’re cooked but not so thick that you need a lot of broth. (I use any meat-based broth I have around, usually chicken, or just some water flavored with some of the rendered bacon fat I usually have on hand.)

If you have beef broth, and you want to do the thicker slices, I suggest using a cleaver to do your slicing. But for the ¼-inch slices (or anything thinner) a mandolin will give you the most uniform results.

However you plan to slice your lotus root, you’ll want to start with a whole root—or two, if they’re very short. (I don’t use pre-sliced lotus for this, as the slices are always too thick.) You want it to be heavy and firm, without soft spots, and the skin should be a light beige with brown speckles but no large brown areas that would indicate a bruise or an area of soft flesh. If you cut into your lotus root and see that the flesh is brown, or the interiors of the holes are grey or brown, it is starting to go bad. You can still use the rest of the root, but you’ll want to cut out those spots (or try scrubbing them with a bottle brush, to see if you can scrub away the bad layer).

Alternative Pickle Options for Stir-Fried Lotus Root

This dish is traditionally made with Yunnan-style suancai (a traditional pickle made from lacto-fermented mustard greens), but these pickles are not commercially available in the U.S (or in many places outside of Yunnan, for that matter), so if you want to use them, you’ll need to make your own. The process is actually pretty simple—you can find my method here—but you do have to wait a few weeks for the pickles to ferment. 

The good news is that other pickles are also delicious in this dish. If Southwestern Chinese pickles were arrayed on a spectrum based on their level of fermentation and depth of flavor, suancai would fall somewhere between Sichuan’s zhacai and yacai varieties (both of which are available through The Mala Market). They’re richer and funkier than zhacai (and lack that pickle’s light sweetness) but less salty-funky and more sour than yacai.

For this dish, yacai might get you the closest approximation to the original, but both options are delicious, so use whichever you like best or already have in your kitchen. You can’t go wrong. Just remember that, because yacai is a bit saltier and stronger than suancai, you might want to use a little bit less than the ½ cup of pickles called for in this recipe; start with ¼ cup, then taste the dish and add more as needed. (If using zhacai, go ahead and add the full amount.)

For more delicious ways to cook with Yunnan- and Sichuan-style pickles, see Xueci’s recipe for Yunnan Rice Noodles With Tofu (Douhua Mixian, 豆花米线) and Sichuan Stir-Fried Chicken With Yacai (Jimi Yacai, 鸡米芽菜) and Georgia’s recipe for Grandma’s Potatoes (Laonai Yangyu, 老奶洋芋).