Celery & Peanuts (Qing Cai Chao Hua Sheng)
The humble stir-fry Chinese grandmothers make on autopilot: snappy celery, crunchy peanuts, five minutes.
The story
This is the "vegetable dish" that appears beside every braised meat in a northern Chinese home — celery cut on the bias, fried peanuts for crunch, nothing else. It is a texture lesson: three kinds of crunch in one plate.
Ingredients (5 + pantry staples)
- Celery — 4 stalks, bias-cut
- Roasted peanuts — 1/2 cup
- Garlic — 2 cloves, sliced
- Soy sauce — 1 tsp
- Salt — to taste (counts here)
Pantry staples used (don't count toward the 6): cooking oil. Not stocked yet? See the pantry page.
Steps
- Stir-fry celery and garlic in hot oil 2–3 minutes — it should stay snappy.
- Peanuts in for 30 seconds to warm through.
- Soy sauce and salt; one toss.
Swaps
Add diced carrot for color, or a few dried chilies for heat. Makes a great cold lunch-box dish too.
More 10-minute dishes
Smashed Cucumber Salad (Pai Huang Gua)
The most-ordered cold starter in China takes 8 minutes and requires you to attack a vegetable with a blunt object.
Egg & Seaweed Drop Soup (Zi Cai Dan Hua Tang)
The default weeknight soup of a billion people: 7 minutes, 4 ingredients, zero knife work.
Blanched Greens with Oyster Sauce (Bai Zhuo)
The Cantonese technique that makes any green vegetable taste like a $18 restaurant side.