{"id":191492,"title":"Chinese-Style Eggplant (Yu Xiang Qie Zi)","modified":"2026-10-12T08:43:31+02:00","plain":"Eggplant sticks, fried and then coated in a spicy sweet-and-sour sauce with ginger, garlic and black vinegar, Sichuan style.\n\n\n\nSome nights you want a bold, straightforward dish with a bit of heat, the kind you eat with lots of rice. Chinese-style eggplant comes out of the wok still glossy, its purple skin lacquered a deep red, the flesh so tender it gives way under your chopsticks. \n\n\n\nThe ginger and garlic hit first, then the black vinegar and sugar take over, and the chili finishes the job. You go back for more to finish your white rice, then once more for the sauce.\n\n\n\nAnother Sichuan classic for the same bowl of rice: mapo tofu\n\n\n\nWhat Is Chinese-Style Eggplant?\n\n\n\nBehind the name is yu xiang qie zi, Sichuan\u2019s \u201cfish-fragrant\u201d eggplant, one of the best-known eggplant dishes in Chinese cuisine. Long eggplant sticks are salted, pressed and fried, then tossed in the wok in a glossy sauce of pickled chili paste, black vinegar and sugar. \n\n\n\nMany restaurants add ground pork. This version leaves it out, but its sauce contains a little chicken broth, so it isn\u2019t vegetarian.\n\n\n\nYu xiang means \u201cfish fragrance,\u201d yet the dish contains no fish at all. The name refers to a seasoning: pickled chilies, garlic, ginger, scallion, sugar and vinegar, the blend Sichuan cooks used to reserve for fish.\n\n\n\nA Sichuan Sauce Designed for Fish\n\n\n\nThe story most often told features a Sichuan cook who hated to waste anything. She is said to have reused the aromatics prepared for braising a fish (ginger, garlic, scallion, pickled chilies, vinegar and sugar) to season another dish. The combination was such a hit that it became a style in its own right, later applied to pork and vegetables.\n\n\n\nSichuan cooking likes to say that a hundred dishes have a hundred flavors. Yu xiang is a good example: salty, sour, sweet and spicy in the same bite, with the umami flavor of soy in the background.\n\n\n\nAnother sweet, tangy and spicy Sichuan stir-fry: kung pao chicken\n\n\n\nEggplant is also cooked as hong shao qie zi, braised longer in a darker soy sauce. In Hong Kong, some menus take the name literally and add salted fish, a variation far removed from the original dish.\n\n\n\nThe Main Ingredients in Chinese-Style Eggplant\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLong eggplants, known as Chinese or Japanese eggplants, have thin skin and few seeds. They stay tender when fried and soak up less oil than large round eggplants. Salting draws out their moisture before cooking: once pressed, they have lost some of their water and come out of the oil meltingly tender, without excess grease.\n\n\n\nThe sauce is built on pickled chili paste (pao jiao), bright and tangy, which you\u2019ll find at Asian grocery stores. If you can\u2019t find it, doubanjiang, the spicy fava bean paste, gives a deeper flavor. \n\n\n\nLight soy sauce seasons without darkening, black vinegar brings a malty tang and sugar balances the chili. Cornstarch binds everything together and chicken broth adds body.\n\n\n\nGinger, garlic and scallion form the base, stir-fried for a few seconds in the oil. The scallion greens go in at the end for freshness, and a drizzle of Sichuan chili oil adds the final gloss.\n\n\n\nTechnique Tips for Melt-in-Your-Mouth Eggplant\n\n\n\nCut the eggplant into 6 cm sticks, salt them, wait 15 minutes, then press them well: that\u2019s what limits how much oil they absorb. The frying is quick, about 2 minutes at 180 \u00b0C, and once is enough. With round eggplants, let them sit in the salt longer and allow about 1 extra minute of frying.\n\n\n\nIn Japan, eggplant is also glazed with miso: try miso eggplant\n\n\n\nThe sauce needs to reduce until it is glossy and syrupy before the eggplant goes back in, or it will stay at the bottom of the plate. This dish does without Sichuan peppercorns and Shaoxing wine. Serve it piping hot, with white rice.\n\n\n\n\n\n\tChinese-Style Eggplant\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t400 g eggplants (long)5 g saltOil for frying20 ml oil15 g ginger (minced)20 g garlic (minced)30 g scallions (thinly sliced)30 g scallion greens5 ml chili oilFor the sauce20 g pickled chili paste ((pao jiao), or use doubanjiang if unavailable)10 ml light soy sauce15 ml black vinegar15 g sugar5 g cornstarch50 ml chicken stock\t\n\t\n\t\tCut the eggplants into sticks 6 cm long.Toss them with the salt and let them sweat for 15 minutes.Squeeze the sticks to press out the water.Heat the frying oil to 180 \u00b0C.Fry the eggplant sticks for about 2 minutes, until tender and lightly golden.Drain them on paper towels.Mix together the pickled chili paste, soy sauce, black vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, and stock.Heat the oil in a wok.Add the ginger, garlic, and scallions and stir-fry for 30 seconds, until fragrant.Pour in the sauce and cook until glossy and syrupy.Add the eggplant sticks back in and toss gently for 1 minute to coat them well.Stir in the scallion greens.Plate and drizzle with chili oil.\t\n\t\n\t\tPickled chili paste (pao jiao, \u6ce1\u6912) is what gives the dish its character. You'll find it in Asian grocery stores. If you can't get hold of it, use 15 g of doubanjiang (chili bean paste) instead. It's easier to buy in France, and the dish stays true to the original.\nIdeally, use long eggplants, known as Chinese or Japanese eggplants. Their skin is thin, they have few seeds, and they stay tender and absorb less oil. If you're using round European eggplants, cut them into 6 cm sticks as well, salt them and let them sweat a little longer since they release more water, then fry them for about 1 minute longer, as their flesh is denser.\nSalting and then squeezing the eggplant significantly reduces how much oil it soaks up during frying. That's what gives it a melt-in-your-mouth texture without excess grease.\nServe piping hot, with white rice.\n\t\n\t\n\t\tAccompagnementChinoise","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcwiner.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}