Bok Choy-adding variety that's simple, easy and inexpensive

Baby Bok Choy:



I'm sure many of us, by now, have eaten some form of Bok Choy, but some might not know how to cook it. I'm always looking for healthy variety items that are easy to cook.

I like Baby Bok Choy for this. In some Asian food markets I can buy some individual bunches or packs of four of them. Cut off the base and clean and separate the leaves. This takes seconds. The base is sorta like celery, so remove any brown or discoloration, if any and check the leaves. You might wish to cut apart larger Bok Choy.

A quick, and delicious way of cooking this is to get a large frying pan, heat up a bit of cooking oil, olive oil works for me on many things. Place the veggies in there and hit it with garlic salt. Begin cooking until tender. I hit it when it's cooking with soy sauce. (For me, garlic and soy sauce works on a lot of veggies, it also kills my desire for butter in there.)

If I were doing a LOT of Bok Choy, I'd do it as I would if cooking a lot of cabbage, celery or some other such veggies, I'd start with simmering it in chicken broth, then work toward the oils once the veggies softened up. This greatly reduces the amount of oil or butter needed. At that point, add your garlic, soy sauce or whatever you want to add.

I might follow up the Bok Choy with some nice fish fillet or slices of chicken in the same pan.

 

I believe it's related to cabbage, but here's the cool thing, the leafy tops are similar to spinach, and the bottoms are similar to celery bottoms, while the middle is closer to cabbage in taste. Put that all together and with it's own flavor it's interesting. I used the baby one, but the big one has much more in the way of the leafy parts and that really, really tastes like spinach. Often in buffets they have that with garlic and butter and it's yummy.

This is the veggie they make into Kim Chee. What an utter waste! However, if you can handle Kim Chee, a simple meal made by many in Korea and other places is a bit of that on top of rice. That's it, a lunch or breakfast!

 

I'm hoping that others here have some experience with some lesser well known, to the average American, veggies. I'd like to be able to recognize these items and be able to properly cook them if I am lucky enough to find something different. Heck, going to some Asian food stores, some veggies or roots or whatever are unfamiliar enough to me that I might not even see them as food if I saw them growing.