We are continuing our focus on healthy eating and authentic low carb Chinese food with this collection of authentic Low-carb Chinese vegetable recipes. Two of the recipes do include small amounts of pork, so not all of these are vegetarian.
Low-carb Chinese Vegetable Recipes. Image Credit: Glenn Emerson for My Chinese Home Kitchen, 2024.
We have many other vegetable recipes on My Chinese Home Kitchen. All are delicious and healthy, but this list includes only those recipes with less than 20g carbohydrate per serving.
Each of these recipes is an affordable and delicious way to include vegetables in your family’s diet. While some of the more exotic dishes, like king oyster mushrooms, might require a trip to a specialty Asian grocery, most of these low-carb Chinese vegetable recipes can be made from vegetables in your Western grocer’s produce aisle.
1
Chinese Lantern Eggplant
This Chinese lantern eggplant is one of two recipes in our low-carb veggie collection that includes meat. However, since the primary ingredient is eggplant, we included it here. It's also a delicious way to eat eggplant. This looks complex and elegant, but the steps to achieve this beautiful presentation are quite simple. You can prepare this ahead of time, set the chunks of eggplant in the refrigerator, and quickly deep-fry it for an impressive side dish on your dinner table. Try this dish if you want to learn to improve your presentation skills.
This is a very healthy eggplant dish, especially because it is steamed. That means it's not baked or fried like many eggplant dishes. This easy to prepare recipe is also delicious and spicy. If you have a steamer, you can set this to cook on a side burner while you cook your main dish in your wok.
This recipe uses Chinese yard long beans (also called asparagus beans or snake beans). You can easily substitute western green beans. This is another dish to learn simple, easy presentation skills to impress your dinner guests.
This vegetarian recipe replicates the flavor of Chinese barbecue with the satisfying meaty texture of oyster mushrooms. It is also very inexpensive and nutritious.
Try this healthy and refreshing oyster mushroom and spinach recipe for a spicy and savory dish for hot summer days. Easy to prepare and avoid long times in a hot kitchen.
This simple stir-fry makes a quick vegetable medley side dish. A single serving is low in carbohydrates, but it does contain two vegetables high in starch and sugar content, so depending on your diet restrictions it may not be suitable.
This is our most popular vegetable dish, and a single serving is both very tasty and low in carbohydrate. For those watching sugar intake, it does include carrots, however, these can be excluded. The mushrooms and broccoli are very healthy. You can also substitute chopped red bell pepper for the carrots, which adds some vitamin A back into the dish and restores the color balance.
Chinese radish, or daikon, is a healthy root vegetable with some dietary fiber and other nutritional benefits. This recipe does include a small amount of pork belly, so it's not a vegetarian dish. However, the primary ingredients are the radishes and peppers, so it's on this list. We have a great recipe for pickled daikon radish that you may also want to try if you are seeking to increase natural probiotics in your diet.
One of our specialties is recipes unique to Guangxi due to my childhood there. Guangxi cuisine uses a lot of fermentation, to preserve food, and this has real health benefits for those with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions, according to a recent Stanford University study: “the high-fermented-food diet steadily increased microbiota diversity and decreased inflammatory markers…Fermented foods may be valuable in countering the decreased microbiome diversity and increased inflammation pervasive in industrialized society.”
My Chinese Home Kitchen does not accept paid endorsements of products or participate in affiliate marketing. Products or brands listed are those we actually use ourselves. Opinions about those products are entirely our own, free of commercial influence. We are also ad-free. All of our support comes from private sources and the generous contributions of readers like you.
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Chen Jing
I was born in Guangxi. As long as I remember, I have liked cooking.
When I was a child, my dream was to become a gourmet and travel the world to taste the food of various countries. My ambition is to become a chef. The kitchen is my partner. There are many kinds of Chinese cuisine, there are 8 kinds, reflecting the richness and diversity of Chinese geography and history. I am very happy to share with you Chinese cuisine and cultural traditions.
