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Health & Fitness

The Joy of Bok Choy

Continuing my obsession with cabbage, I humbly submit a post on bok choy, otherwise known as “Chinese cabbage.”  While this name isn’t an exact translation (the Chinese character means “white vegetable”), bok choy is indeed a member of the cabbage family and, therefore, eligible for the label “cabbage.”  If you are interested in things like literal translations and scientific names, I suggest you Google “bok choy,” because what you will get here is merely a celebration of delicious greenery, all the more worthy when it’s organic.

Bok choy is an amazingly versatile plant that most Americans associate with Chinese food—authentic Chinese food and Chinese-American.  Most Americans, though, don’t realize the stalks and leaves they are consuming are indeed bok choy, and for those who say they don’t like cabbage, this is a good thing, because they are getting some of the benefits of eating cabbage without even knowing it.  This is not to say drowning bok choy in sauce and goo is healthy, but at least some of the nutrients and antioxidants (yes, there’s that word again) remain in spite of the Americanization of traditional Chinese dishes.  So that is one way to eat bok choy.  Order out.  Just make sure you order a vegetable dish of some kind.

The healthier ways to eat bok choy are much more simple.  Try it steamed with just a little low-sodium soy sauce.  Try it with chopped up ginger and peanuts.  Try it in soup.  Try it raw in a salad.  Try it plain and raw.  It’s wonderful, and if it’s organic, it’s like other cabbages–you don’t even have to remove the outer leaves.  Just wash and eat.  Or wash, cook and eat.

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When bok choy is cooked in the healthiest manner, the leaves take on a pretty, almost emerald color.  Overcooked bok choy yields limp, dull things that look less appetizing on a plate, and when food looks less appetizing, people are less likely to eat it.  Here at Wintergreen Organics, we want people to eat their vegetables.  I, personally, want you to eat cabbage of any kind.  It’s a great food.  And did I mention it has antioxidants?

So to end this endorsement of bok choy, I offer you a challenge.  Because you probably don’t have bok choy sitting in front of you, go to your refrigerator, pull off some leaves, wash them and eat them right now.  Go ahead.  Right now.

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If you don’t have bok choy in your refrigerator, we know the place to get some.  Take a guess where.

Katherine Gotthardt, writer for Wintergreen Organics & Naturals


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