🇨🇳 ChinaCatalog recipe
Whole spinach leaves wilted fast in hot oil and garlic until just tender, kept loose and bright rather than boiled down to a dull green mush.
For 4 servings.
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Wash the spinach well and shake it dry.
💡 Any water still clinging to the leaves will steam them instead of letting them sear.
Heat the oil in a wok over high heat until shimmering, then add the garlic and stir a few seconds until just turning golden.
💡 Garlic turns bitter fast past golden — pull the pan off the heat a beat early if it's coloring quickly.
Add the spinach in large handfuls, letting each batch wilt a few seconds before adding the next so the wok never gets crowded and cold.
Toss constantly until all the spinach is just wilted and still bright green, about 90 seconds.
Season with salt and the pinch of sugar, toss once more, and serve immediately with its garlicky juices.
This is the dish that appears, in one leafy form or another, on nearly every family dinner table across China — a vegetable, cooked fast, to balance out the meat and rice. The technique is the whole point: garlic hits scorching oil first, then the greens go in and wilt within a minute or two, kept moving so the leaves never sit long enough to release the water that turns them soggy. It rarely gets written down as a recipe because every home cook already knows it by heart.
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Nothing here yet — questions about technique, timing, and substitutions all welcome.