Easy Chinese style potato shreds salad—a basic cold dish popular across the country.
You may find that recently I posted lots of super easy vegan dishes. That’s because we are having really hot days and meat is not so comforting in hot summer. I am eating more vegetables and fruits each day to help my body to cool down. Summer is really great for salads (yummy salads from the world). In China, we call salad as cold dishes as an opposite to hot dishes (stir-frying, steaming, and soups). In fact, we have lots of salads too in Chinese cuisine and they can be made either with meats or not. The famous Fu Qi Fei Pian is a cold dish made with beef and mouthwatering chicken is made with chicken.
This shredded Chinese potato salad super easy and taste good with breads, buns and pancakes.
Steps
How to shred the potatoes | peel the potatoes and the cut a thin slice off, using this side as bottom and stand your potato. Then cut the potato into large slices. Then lay the slices down and cut into fine shreds.
How to prepare the shredded potato for salad | wash the potato shreds firstly to remove extra starch attached. Then place the shredded potatoes in a large pot of boiling water. Cook for 1 minute, transfer out and soak in cold water. Those steps help to create a clean and crunchy texture.
How to assemble salad | mix shredded potato with coriander or other vegetable you prefer. Then mix in salt, sugar, light soy sauce and vinegar.
Then top with Sichuan peppercorn, dried chili peppers, green onion and chopped garlic. Then heat oil until smoky hot and drizzle the hot oil over the aromatics.
Other Summer Cold Dishes
- Lotus root salad
- Okra salad with black vinegar
- Kelp salad
- Chinese cold tofu salad
- Chinese smashed cucumber
- 2 middle size potatoes , finely shredded
- 1 small bunch of coriander , cut into sections
- 2 dried chili peppers , optional
- 1 tbsp. vegetable cooking oil , heated until hot
- 1/4 tsp. Sichuan peppercorn
- 2 cloves garlic , chopped
- 1 scallion , cut into smaller pieces
- 1 tbsp. black vinegar
- Pinch of salt
- 1/8 teaspoon sugar
- 1 tbsp. light soy sauce
- 1/2 tbsp. sesame oil
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Wash the shredded potato with a strainer under running water to remove extra starch and obtain a crunchy texture. Cook the shredded potato in a large pot of boiling water. Transfer out, soak in cold water until cooled and drain.
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In a bowl, mix shredded potato with coriander and then add salt, sugar, light soy sauce and vinegar. Mix well.
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Heat oil until almost smoky. Spread Sichuan peppercorn, ,green onion, dried chili pepper and chopped garlic. Pour the hot oil evenly on those three ingredients.
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Mix well and serve directly.
If you want a little spicy taste, add around 1 tablespoon of chili oil and reduce sesame oil accordingly.
This looks really good. It will definitely find its way into my lunch box when summer finally arrives here. How do you manage to cut the vegetables so evenly? Do you do that by hand or do you use a mandolin?
Hi Susanne,
Thanks for your kind word. I cut the shreds by hand but I do practice for a long time. So you can use mandolin.
Hi Elaine, I live in Suriname, South America, and we have a large Chinese population, coming from different regions of China, so we have a large array of Chinese dishes to choose from. This is one of the the dishes I love and was looking for. I will be teting it soon. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the recipe. However I am perplexed. How can there be
1549mg of sodium per serving in this recipe when there is only
1 tab soy and and a pinch of salt between two serves.
Nice catch, Iris! I believe the sodium amount is wrong calculated by my colleague.
Hi Elaine,
you mention the Fu Qi Fei Pian dish. I’d be delighted if you would post a recipe for that, too. I can’t get all parts of beef, but all meat cuts and tongue, are easily available. With a little bit of searching i can get liver, heart and kidneys, too.
I will try to search the ingredients here. Recently I found a market selling some of the ingredient and see whether I can pull everything together.
Do you mean green scallion instead of green pepper in the instructions?
Yes, it is green onion. Thanks for the correctness, Kay.
Oooh I’ve been looking for this dish! Thanks very much for posting. In step 2, by basic seasonings do you mean the sayce seasonings? Also in step 3, are the spices spread in a separate bowl before you drizzle oil and then mixed with the potato? Or is are the spices spread on the potato and then the hot oil is drizzled over?
Aria,
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I have already updated the recipe for more details. In step 2 salt, sugar, light soy sauce and vinegar is added as basic seasonings. And in step 3, add the spices on the potato and then drizzle hot oil over the spice before mixing.
Many thanks for the recipe. I tasted this dish in a small village in Guangxi. I couldn’t ask them what the dish was. (I do not speak Cantonese or Mandarin). But I knew they where shreded potatoes. I decided to search in the internet and you recipe looks really like the dish I tasted. Many thanks. I plan to try this at home and remember that trip.
Happy cooking! Hope it turns out as wished.
Extremely simple yet so delicious. The dried chili and the black vinegar work together so well to create that earthy, spicy, sour flavour I love. Thank you!
What is the chinese name for this dish?
It is “凉拌土豆丝”.
So much healthier than American potato salad and super testy!