Napa Cabbage Stir Fry - Six Hungry Feet - Recipes (2024)

This easy Napa Cabbage Stir Fry with rice noodles makes a perfect weekday lunch or dinner for those busy days. Have you ever cooked with Napa cabbage or Chinese cabbage? Once you try it, you will most definitely love it!

If you fancy something easy to make with Asian flavours, this stir fry is what you are looking for. I could eat noodles every day of my life, we cook them way to often at home but the whole family enjoys a good sitr fry or noodle soup. You can find many noodle recipes on our blog and this is the latest addition!

Napa Cabbage

Napa cabbage or Chinese cabbage is bigger and longer than a regular white or red cabbage that you will find in most supermarkets. The leaves are thinner and when cooked properly it just tastes amazing. It's slightly sweeter than other cabbage and it's high in vitamins and nutrients.

Our stir fry is made with a lovely dark sauce that contains soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha and brown sugar and a spice mix made of five-spice powder, white pepper and chili flakes.

The recipe includes rice noodles but this stir fry would be delicious on rice, glass noodles, sweet potato noodles or wheat noodles as well. We find this type of cabbage in Asian Supermarkets. You can find Chinese cabbage in regular supermarkets but they will normally be smaller and not so tasty.

The veggies in this dish, Napa cabbage and zucchini cook quite fast so this dish can be made in 20 minutes. If you enjoy cooking Asian dishes, you will most probably already have most of the ingredients at home.

Our Napa Cabbage Stir Fry is:

• Vegan
• Gluten-free when using tamari instead of soy sauce
• Nut-free
• Easy to make
• A side or a main dish
• Spicy
• Flavourful

Ingredients

Napa cabbage or Chinese cabbage. You can find this type of cabbage in Asian supermarkets or sometimes regular supermarkets. For this dish, we use mostly the greener part, but if you like to have some extra crunch in your stir fry, use some of the white harder parts of the cabbage as well.

Zucchini. We love adding other veggies to this stir fry and after trying different ones, we found that zucchini or courgette goes really good with the Chinese Cabbage.

Rice Noodles. As mentioned before, you can choose using rice, glass noodles or wheat noodles as well. Rice noodles go amazingly good in this dish. You won't need to cook the rice noodles before, just leave them in hot water for 10-12 minutes or until softened (follow packet instructions). Don't worry if they are still a bit chewy when draining them, they will finish cooking in the pan with the cabbage.

Garlic and ginger paste. We use our ginger and garlic press for this part of the recipe. We make a paste out of fresh garlic and ginger and add it while cooking the chillies to give your stir fry a deeper flavour.

Spice mix. For this recipe, we use a combination of five-spice powder, white pepper and chili flakes.

Dark Sauce. Contains dark soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha and brown sugar. You can substitute the sugar for maple syrup or honey.

Protein. Optionally and to make this recipe nutritionally complete, you can add your favourite protein such as tofu or seitan.

Red or green chilies. To make the meal a bit hotter, you can add some fresh red or green chili.

How to prepare the stir fry

1. Soak the noodles in hot water following the packet instructions. While soaking, keep tossing them to avoid sticking. Drain, rinse with cold water and drain again. Leave aside.
2. Heat some coconut or other vegetable oil in a pan or a wok. For this recipe, we recommend using a wok. Finely chop the chillis (better to use gloves) and prepare the garlic and ginger paste using a presser. If you don't have a presser, finely chop the garlic and ginger.
3. Prepare the spice mix and the dark sauce.
4. When the oil is hot, add the chilis, and the garlic and ginger paste. Bring the oil to one side of the pan slightly lifting it with your hand. This way you avoid burning the garlic and chillies and they will release a beautiful flavour to the oil that will later be mixed with the cabbage.
5. Add the spice mix and keep cooking till fragant.
6. Roughly chop the cabbageand zucchini and add to the pan. While stirring, keep cooking for about 5-7 minutes on medium heat.
7. Add the dark sauce and the noodles, stir one last time and you stir fry will be ready to serve. Want extra spice? Add some more chili flakes before serving.

How to prepare Five-spice Powder at home

Five-spice powder has become one of the most used spices at home when cooking asian dishes. We use if to make Pho, Vietnamese Rolls and many other dishes. You can easily made this mixture at home, or simply buy it.

Five spice powder contains star anise, fennel seeds, peppercorns or szechuan peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon. Feating at home has an amazing recipe to make this blend at home.

You will need a coffee grinder if using whole spices to get a fine mixture and a sterilized jar to keep the extra mixture.