Many novice cooks, especially girls who care about their looks, are a bit afraid of stir-frying. It's difficult to control the heat, and if you can't manage the smoke and oil fumes, it not only harms the skin but also increases the risk of lung cancer. Cleaning the kitchen after cooking is also a hassle.
In contrast, boiling is much simpler. Water at 100°C doesn't get any hotter and produces no carcinogens. However, most people have a prejudice that boiled food isn't as fragrant as stir-fried food. Boiling meat and fish is one thing, but the moment they hear "boiled vegetables," they find it hard to imagine it being palatable.
Oil-boiled vegetables have a better texture and retain more nutrients
There are many variations of oil-boiled vegetables. If you have the means at home, vegetables boiled in chicken broth, meat broth, or bone broth are naturally the best. However, when most families boil vegetables in broth, there's always far more broth than vegetables, unlike the oil-boiling method described above, which only uses a small amount of water. If you don't have chicken or meat broth but prefer a richer flavor, you can start by stir-frying a small amount of scallions, ginger, and garlic in a little oil, add a bowl of clear water and dried tiny shrimp or shrimp skin, bring to a boil, add the vegetables, toss to combine, cover, and simmer for half a minute, then boil for another one or two minutes. Turn off the heat, season with salt, and it's ready.
Another common gourmet version of oil-boiled vegetables is "upper soup vegetables," which I didn't try until many years later. Start by stir-frying a small amount of garlic in oil until fragrant, then add water or chicken broth, along with some chopped century eggs and vegetables to boil. For a more elaborate version, you can also add a small amount of ham slices. The alkali in century eggs will keep green leafy vegetables green, but it destroys vitamin C and vitamin B2, so it's not recommended. In fact, replacing the century eggs with chopped hard-boiled eggs also results in a very savory broth, and the vegetables taste great too.
Oil-boiling is simple, convenient, delicious, and healthy. It doesn't cause air pollution, produce carcinogens, and the stove top is easy to clean. Its advantages are second only to steaming. This method helps us easily consume half a pound of green leafy vegetables in one meal. Especially when cooking slightly older leaves, the texture is much better than when stir-fried.
Legumes, fungi, algae, and meats are all suitable for oil-boiling
Another major advantage of oil-boiling is that it makes it easy to achieve dietary variety because various ingredients can be boiled together. Whether it's bean products like tofu, yuba, bean curd skin, or vegetarian chicken; fungi like mushrooms, shiitake, or wood ear; algae like kelp or wakame; or meats like chicken, pork, beef, or mutton—they all become delicious when boiled with vegetables. At the same time, there is great flexibility in seasoning; you can adjust it to your preference for salty, sour, spicy, or numbing flavors. Of course, stewing has the same advantages in this regard.
Someone online also asked: When oil-boiling, vegetable oil definitely isn't as fragrant as using lard, right? If I use just a little bit of lard, will it have any negative health effects?
Actually, if you don't eat much meat on a daily basis, no more than 50 grams, but you consume a large quantity of vegetables, then a small amount of animal fat is not that scary. To avoid excessive saturated fat, it's not recommended to specifically buy lard for cooking vegetables. However, you can skim the fat from the surface of boiled pork, stewed ribs, chicken soup, or old duck stew. Don't throw it away; instead, scoop it into a jar and store it in the refrigerator. It can be kept for about a week, to be used for cooking vegetables, just a small spoonful each time. If you already suffer from high blood pressure, high blood lipids, or diabetes, it is not advisable to use lard or beef tallow for cooking.