This authentic Chinese tiger salad is a great option if you’re searching for a quick and easy vegetable side dish.
A Tiger Salad with a Crisp, Refreshing Taste
Now that the weather is becoming warmer, I’d like to introduce you to tiger salad, a traditional cold dish from Northern China.
It has a powerful yet refreshing flavor thanks to the combination of cilantro, English cucumber, green onions, and green chiles, along with some simple seasonings.
Course: Salad
Cuisine: Chinese
Prep Time: 5 MINUTES
Total Time: 5 MINUTES
Servings: 4 servings
Quick and simple cold dishes that will satisfy any palate.
There are both hot and cold dishes at a traditional Chinese lunch served to a family or at a restaurant. This not only helps maintain a pleasant temperature range throughout the meal, but it also prevents the chef from becoming too overwhelmed.
The cook can quickly expand the meal’s appeal by incorporating tiger salad and other cold items. The cold dishes might be prepared the day of, or even the day before, the main meal.
While you might not find many restaurants serving cold dishes like this one outside of China, they are a mainstay throughout the country.
Tiger Salad: A Variety of Flavors
There are a few variations on this appetizer, but I’m relieved to say that NONE of them use tiger. I’ve added greens because they’re the most prevalent item. Some versions of the tiger salad call for an abundance of cilantro and green onion to give the dish an intense aroma.
Ratio Optimization
- When perfecting this tiger salad recipe, we chose to cut back on the stronger herbs so that they wouldn’t overpower the dish.
- The dressing calls for only five basic ingredients. A few examples of these are rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar, and salt.
- Our intention was to strike a balance between the dish’s various flavors, including heat, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, umami, and nuttiness.
A Word About Knife Skills
Prepare the vegetables in julienne strips, as depicted in the pictures, for the best results. While julienning requires a little more attention, the benefits are well worth the effort.
- As a result, you can more easily grab a bit of everything with your chopsticks.
- larger sauce can be absorbed by the larger surface area provided by the long, thin cuts.
- It’s visually appealing, and aesthetics play a role in the eating process before flavor does.
Simple and ideal for the summer
It’s true that the ingredients are few, and the process is straightforward, but trust me when I say that once you combine them, you’ll be hooked on the dish’s surprisingly refreshing and wonderful flavor.
On hotter days, tiger salad is one of my go-to cold foods. It’s a healthy and delicious way to increase your intake of greens and herbs. Your tiger salad will have additional depth of flavor and freshness if you grow any of these ingredients.
Adaptable to Any Setting
Quick and easy to prepare, tiger salad is a great option for a light and healthy lunch. Use it as an appetizer for a quick weekday meal or to impress guests with something fresh and healthful.
Quick Glances
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 cup cilantro, stems removed and cut to a size no larger than 1″ (2.5 cm)
- 1 cuke from an English cucumber, thinly sliced
- 1–2 long green chili peppers (such as anaheim or cayenne peppers), cut thinly (or to taste).
- Thinly cut on a diagonal, 2 green onions
Dressing
- An ounce and a half of rice vinegar
- An ounce and a half of sesame oil
- Soy sauce, half a teaspoon
- 2 tsp sugar and 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Put everything for the salad into a big bowl.
- After you’ve added all the salad components, toss the salad with the dressing.
Nutrition
- Serving: 1serving,
- Calories: 42kcal,
- Carbohydrates: 5.6g,
- Protein: 0.8g,
- Fat: 1.8g,
- Saturated Fat: 0.3g,
- Sodium: 333mg,
- Potassium: 156mg,
- Fiber: 0.7g,
- Sugar: 3.5g,
- Calcium: 20mg
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