This easy Hot & Sour Cabbage stir-fry shines with thin slices of cabbage that cook down to almost noodle-like perfection, all coated in a hot & sour sauce. It’s our new favorite way to cook cabbage!

This humble vegetable lasts forever in the fridge, is good for you, and it’s inexpensive. If you’re not cooking cabbage regularly, this recipe will give you a reason to!

Cabbage Demands More Flavor

Sometimes, when you cook cabbage just with garlic, salt, and oil—the usual treatment we give most leafy vegetables around here—it can feel a little lackluster.

Put simply, cabbage demands a little more flavor! This recipe is it.

Ever since we discovered how amazing cabbage becomes when you add a little bit of vinegar, we’ve regularly made some version of my mom’s Sichuan Napa Cabbage Stir-Fry, which combines dried chili peppers and black vinegar to delicious effect.

The heat in that dish is much more subtle, whereas this Hot & Sour Cabbage uses chilies and spicy doubanjiang. That’s spicy bean sauce, with chunks of fermented broad beans (read: addictive little flavor bombs that you’ll find in some of your favorite dishes; see Mapo Tofu).

It’s an incredible combo when you add lots of garlic, Chinese black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper.

The whole dish is finished off with a little cornstarch slurry, which is my favorite trick for giving my vegetable dishes that restaurant-style sheen and taste! I use the same technique in my bok choy stir fry.

Some of our other favorite cabbage recipes!

We did a whole roundup of our favorite cabbage recipes earlier this year. Once you master this dish, you can try your hand at our other favorites!

What Kinds of Cabbage Can I Use?

Most of the time, we reach for Taiwanese cabbage. It has a flat shape with light green leaves and is incredibly tender and sweet.

That’s what we call for here. You could use bog standard green cabbage, white cabbage, or even a savoy cabbage.

Napa cabbage could work here too, but it’s more delicate, with higher water content. If using napa, salt to taste, as the ratios may be off if you’re making the substitution.

How to Wash Your Vegetables

This recipe is so easy that the main steps are washing and cutting the cabbage.

We always wash our vegetables in a large stainless steel bowl of water—with a little baking soda to get rid of pesticides (which can reduce pesticides anywhere from 65-98%!) The rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon of baking soda for every 2 cups of water.

We let the vegetables soak for a bit, then rinse with cold water to get rid of the baking soda. Depending on the type of vegetable, you may want to do an initial soak to loosen debris, then do a second soak with the baking soda. For cabbage, it’s often fairly clean from a dirt standpoint, so the baking soda soak followed by the rinse is great.

How to Cut Cabbage

As in the way certain pasta shapes are more pleasing than others depending on what kind of sauce you’re using, this dish shines with thinly sliced pieces of cabbage that get nicely coated in the spicy hot & sour sauce.

The beautiful thing about cabbage is that it comes layered, which means it is that much easier to thinly slice it!

For a small or medium-sized cabbage, you can cut it in half, then cut a wedge out to remove the thick stem. Next, just cut crosswise using a larger knife to get thin slices, which will eventually cook into something resembling large shreds.

Tip!

Once you have your cabbage and garlic prepped, make sure you have all the other ingredients close at hand, including the premixed cornstarch slurry.

You may opt to premix the Chinese black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, and sugar, but the cabbage is forgiving and doesn’t cook as quickly as other vegetables. Be sure to keep the doubanjiang separate, however as it gets fried in oil first.

Hot & Sour Cabbage Recipe Instructions

Heat a wok over medium-high heat until it’s just starting to smoke. Reduce the heat to medium if it’s smoking heavily. Add the oil, followed by the garlic. Let the garlic cook briefly—15 to 20 seconds. You don’t want it to brown.

Add the doubanjiang, and let it fry in the oil for about 30 seconds to a minute. The oil will turn red and fragrant.

Add the cabbage and stir-fry to distribute the doubanjiang. Add the Chinese black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, sugar, and salt (to taste; doubanjiang is very salty, so you may not need much).

Stir-fry to combine the ingredients, and add ¼ cup of water. Keep stir-frying until the cabbage is crisp tender.

To add the cornstarch slurry, stir it up, as it has a tendency to settle. Push the cabbage aside, exposing the little pool of sauce, and pour it directly in. You don’t want to pour cornstarch slurry on the hot sides of the wok, or it will cook and clump up.