This recipe is a super fast way to cook and enjoy potatoes, with a new texture that will blow your mind. {vegan, gluten-free}
In the past few weeks I’ve shared a few Chinese stir fry sauce recipes and taught you how to make easy and great tasting Chinese food in your own kitchen.
The stir fry I’m going to introduce today is slightly different, because it does not require a stir fry sauce.
Shredded potato (炝炒土豆丝, qiang chao tu dou si) is one of the most popular Chinese home-style dishes. If you’ve been accustomed to eating French fries and roasted potato, you’ll be surprised at the texture of this dish.
The Chinese-style potato uses a super high temperature to cook thinly shredded potatoes in a few minutes, to generate a crunchy crispy texture that is similar to cucumber. The cooking oil is usually infused with chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorn to add a smoky, savory umami flavor to the dish. It is then finished up with salt and a splash of Chinkiang vinegar for a refreshing tart flavor.
Unlike the saucy Cantonese-style (or Chinese-American) stir fry that you’re familiar with, this is the type of stir fries dish I ate growing up. It is super fast to cook and makes vegetables irresistible.
The recipe below is quoted from the cookbook Smashed, Mashed, Boiled & Baked by Raghavan Iyer. In this cookbook, the famous author and James Beard Award winner, Raghavan introduces 75 irresistible potato recipes. Not only can you find your ultimate comfort dishes, such as mashed potato and hasselback potatoes, but the book also introduces many new approaches to cooking potatoes, such as water chestnut potato potstickers and potato-stuffed chiles rellenos.
I was thrilled to see the top Chinese potato dish being featured in the book the authentic way! Check out this book if you’re a potato fan.
The recipe has been quoted from the book directly, but I added tons of notes on the bottom of the recipe. Since the recipe is super popular in China, there are many ways to approach the cooking, depending on the region. I added these notes so you could adjust the ingredients according to your taste.
The one important thing to note is that you have to rinse the shredded potato before cooking. If you have enough time, let the shredded potato soak in water as long as possible. Not only does it remove extra starch, but the soaked potato will harden up so the potatoes won’t stick together or break apart during the stir fry process, and this method generates a extra crispy texture once cooked.
Happy cooking and hope you enjoy the dish as much as I do!
This post is brought to you by the Idaho Potato Commission. All the opinions are my own.
Shredded Potato Stir Fry (炝炒土豆丝)
Ingredients
- 1 pound (450 g) russet potatoes (*Footnote 1)
- 1 large green bell pepper (*Footnote 2)
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or homemade scallion oil) (*Footnote 3)
- 4 dried red chiles such as chile de arbol, stems discarded (*Footnote 4)
- 4 teaspoons Chinkiang vinegar (or rice vinegar) (*Footnote 5)
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil (*Footnote 6)
- 1 teaspoon coarse sea (or kosher salt)
Instructions
- Fill a medium-size bowl with cold water. Peel the potatoes and give them a quick rinse under running water. Shred them with a mandoline or a julienne peeler along the length of the potato. You want the shreds to be like long, thin matchsticks. Submerge them immediately in the bowl of water to rinse off excess surface starch. Usually 30 minutes is a good amount of time to soak them, but I have been known to soak them overnight in the refrigerator.
- Cut the bell pepper in half lengthwise and discard the stem, seeds, and ribs. Thinly cut the pepper halves lengthwise into matchstick-like shreds. Ideally they should be the same thickness as the potato shreds.
- Lay out a clean cotton kitchen towel or several layers of paper towels on the counter, for drying the potatoes. Drain the potatoes in a colander and give them a quick rinse under cold running water. Give the colander a few shakes to rid the shreds of excess water. Spread the shreds out on the towel and pat them completely dry.
- Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Once the oil appears to shimmer, drop in 2 of the chiles and stir them around until they blacken and smell smoky, 5 to 10 seconds. Add half of the potatoes and half of the bell pepper to the smoky oil. Stir-fry them vigorously, without stopping, to briefly cook the shreds but still make sure they maintain their toothsome quality (*Footnote 7), 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape everything into a serving bowl. Wipe out the pan with paper towels before you repeat with the remaining oil, chiles, potatoes, and bell pepper. (*Footnote 8)
- Add them to the batch in the bowl, stir in the vinegar, sesame oil, and salt, and serve immediately. (*Footnote 9)
Notes
- It is about 1 large russet potato.
- You can leave out this ingredient or you can replace it with other peppers such as Jalapeno, for a spicier dish.
- You can cook this dish by using homemade scallion oil or adding a bit of chopped garlic or green onion at the beginning of the stir fry. This will make the dish extra fragrant.
- When you use whole dried peppers to infuse the oil, it only adds smokiness but not spiciness. Tear the dried peppers into 3 to 4 small pieces to add spiciness to the dish. Also, it will make the dish extra fragrant if you add 1 teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns before adding the dried peppers. When their color turns dark, fish them out by using a fine mesh. You can leave them in the dish as well, but you need to pick them out while eating.
- I highly recommend using Chinkiang vinegar if you have any.
- You can skip the sesame oil if you added herbs or used scallion oil in the stir fry.
- This is very important. If the potato starts to turn tender, it’s overcooked.
- If you have a wok or a large pan and heat it up properly, you can make the dish in one big batch. I cooked it in one batch and did not have any problems.
- I prefer to season the dish during the stir fry, which give the potatoes a bit more flavor. Sprinkle with salt when you stir fry the potato for a minute. Once the stir fry is finished, turn off the heat and add vinegar. Stir to mix well before transferring everything into a serving dish.
If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @omnivorescookbook on Instagram! We’d love to see what you come up with.
This looks amazing! I’m going to have to give it a try!
Love this dish! I always add more vinegar (I stayed in Shanxi for 3 years and came to appreciate their famous vinegar and it’s great in this dish!)
I’m surprised (and happy) to hear about “more vinegar”! That is truly the Shanxi style. My friend who used to live in China adds vinegar on almost everything 😉
Can the potatoes in the stir fry be shreddedin a spiralizer? It would be much easier and faster.
Hi Joe, yes I’m pretty sure you can shred the potatoes by using a spiralizer. Just to make sure to pick out the blade that makes the thin shred, so you can get the best texture 🙂
Happy cooking and hope your dish turns out great!
Hi Maggie, I enjoy your posts so much. It’s wonderful to come across real Chinese home cooking recipes that haven’t been watered down.
I have a request for you. I have a friend from Taiwan that I like to cook for. She is vegetarian and can’t eat food with garlic or onion. When she cooks for us, her food is really tasty. How does she do it? What flavourings would she be using? Any hints or recipes would be appreciated. It’s northern Chinese style as she serves with noodles rather than rice. Many thanks, Karen
This was one of my favorite go-to dishes when I lived in China for a couple years, no matter where you go, every province seems to have a version of this dish. I am very keen to replicate it in my own kitchen. I know the recipe states to use a mandoline or julienne peeler but I have often wondered about the cutting technique they use to get such uniform potato slivers, my knife skills are not up to par when it comes to julienned and slivered things so I’m in awe thinking of how they use their cleaver to cut up the potatoes so perfectly! Looking forward to making this dish. Thanks, I love your work.
Hi Sarah, if you want to challenge the recipe with a cleaver, I highly recommend you to watch the video in this post: https://omnivorescookbook.com/recipes/chinese-style-potato-salad (scroll down, you’ll find the video right above the recipe). I was shooting my mom cutting the potato slices for the salad. In fact, Chinese restaurants always use a knife, because it creates better and crunchier texture.
Happy cooking and let me know how the dish turns out! 🙂
Maggie I love your site! I have used your Kung Pao, Zucchini Stir Fry and now also this. This one is my favorite. I have never had potatoes like this before and the taste was very reminiscent of a Szechuan restaurant near me but I don’t think I’ve seen this dish on the menu (I bet they would make it if I ask).
Mine did not turn out a clean and “pretty” white color like yours and I am curious if you have any time for input on how mine went, but honestly even if I do it this way every time it is so delicious. Mine would turn yellow after about 1 minute of cooking; here is how it was different:
1. I used Jalapeno instead of Bell pepper for more spiceness
2. I don’t have dried chilies so I used Korean red pepper flake
3. I LOVE Szechuan peppercorn and I cannot see it thrown away so instead of infusing the oil with this and the chili, I added them at the same time as the potatoes and stir dried them all together in the wok (and kept them)
4. My wok was set to 7/10 on electric burner. I stopped cooking around 1.5 minutes because of the color it was getting — I think maybe mine was hotter than your instructions perhaps
5. I used peanut oil instead of vegetable since I love its flavor on potatoes or chilies
Hi John, thanks for your kind words and I’m glad to hear you like the dish! I wonder if the color difference is caused by the different types of potatoes? Or maybe you can soak them for a longer time, because I do think it will make the potatoes turn whiter after the soaking.
SO AMAZING. I have only had this at restaurants and loved it. Never thought I could make it on my own. I bought a julienne mandoline JUST to create this dish, and it was so worth it. The flavors were heavenly.