During my childhood, I regularly ate stir-fried bok choy with garlic. Aside from the garlic, I didn’t taste much flavor from the vegetable. Regardless of my experience, I still decided to try a similar recipe, first using baby bok choy and later with Shanghai baby bok choy. What I preferred was definitely the latter!
Below are some links to more details, including photos:
My Story
Despite not enjoying bok choy much growing up, I bought a couple bags of baby bok choy because it was on sale for $.99 per pound.
Inspiring Recipe
Since this would be the first time cooking bok choy, I searched for a recipe. What I found online was Easy Bok Choy from the Allrecipes website.
First Try
Initially, I was going to cook one bag of the vegetables, but it didn’t seem to be enough for the family, so I used both.
Ingredients to Use
With 11 heads of baby bok choy, I increased the rest of the measured ingredients and used the following:
- 1 tablespoon + 1 1/8 teaspoon of oil
- 3 cloves of garlic
Also, since I was missing one of the four listed ingredients, I made a substitution as follows:
- Avocado oil for vegetable oil
Steps to Prepare
For the three steps in the directions, I only modified the last step. After cooking the garlic for 1 minute in a wok, I had to cook the bok choy for 18 minutes before the stalks came close to being translucent.
Time to Eat
Here’s the baby bok choy ready to be served.
Recipe Rating
Below were the results of the recipe after the first try:
| # of Ingredients | Effort | $ / Serving | Try Again? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 |  | |  |
The stalks came out crunchy and leaves chewy, as expected. Also, my older son said that the dish tasted good except that there was too much garlic.
Second Try
My goal for the second attempt was to tone down the garlic flavor.
Ingredients to Use
As compared to the first try, I made the following substitutions:
- Shanghai baby bok choy for baby bok choy
- Crushed garlic cloves for crushed and chopped ones
Also, in terms of the measurements, I followed the default recipe as written.
Steps to Prepare
Since I had fewer heads of bok choy this time, I only had to cook them for 10 minutes before the leaves were bright green and stalks slightly translucent.
Time to Eat
With the green stalks, the Shanghai baby bok choy morsels were certainly more appealing than the regular ones!
Recipe Rating
Below are the results of the recipe from the second attempt:
| # of Ingredients | Effort | $ / Serving | Try Again? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | | |  |
The leaves were soft, while some stalks were a little crunchy and others were soft. Also, the dish had the right amount of salt. Lastly, the kids liked this type of baby bok choy much better than the regular ones!
Since we enjoyed the Shanghai baby bok choy, I’ll be adding it to our vegetable rotation, but will tweak it by doing the following next time:
Continuous Improvement
- Cook it a little longer.
By trying two different varieties of bok choy, I learned the following that I would like to share with my younger self:
Lesson for Dumber Self
- If you don’t like one variety of a vegetable, try another one from the same family!
What will you do now?
Next Step for You
- Try the recipe, Easy Bok Choy, from the Allrecipes website?
- Learn more about the different types of bok choy? (The post Bok Choy: Different Types & How to Cook It from the blog, The Woks of Life, is a great place to start!)
- Read another post on this site? (Go to the menu at the top of the page.)
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