Potato is such a versatile ingredient – boil it, bake it, mash it, make chips with it… or shred it for this stir fry recipe. This simple recipe tastes just as good once the potatoes have gone cold, so it’s a refreshing one to try (despite the spice) now that the weather’s hotter. What gives this its refreshing nature is the vinegar. Usually in Chinese cooking, when you mention vinegar, you’d automatically think of black vinegar from Zhenjiang. However, here you should go for white wine vinegar instead.

Also, if you have a spiraliser, feel free to shred the potato and carrot with that instead. It’s important to get these cut as thinly and as evenly as possible.

This recipe serves 2, and takes roughly 10 minutes to prep and 10 minutes to cook.

Ingredients
1 large potato (or 2 small potatoes)
1 carrot (optional)
1 spring onion
1 green chilli
3 slices of ginger
10 Sichuan peppercorns (optional)
1 tsp of chicken stock powder
1 tsp of sugar
2 tbsps of white wine vinegar
Salt to taste

Step 1: Prepare a large bowl of water with a touch of salt. Peel and shred the potato into thin strips, dropping the strips into the bowl of water as you go along. Leave the potatoes to soak for roughly 10 minutes while you proceed with the rest of the prep work.

Step 2: Peel and shred the carrot into similar sized strips as the potatoes.

Step 3: Separate the white and green parts of the spring onion. Cut the whites into roughly 1 inch sections and set aside. Slice the green parts vertically into strips.

Step 4: Slice the green chili.

Step 5: Rinse and pat dry the shredded potatoes – rinse several times if needed to get rid of most of the starch.

Step 6: Place a generous amount of oil into a pan. Head the oil on high head and drop in the ginger, white parts of the spring onion, chopped chili and Sichuan peppercorns. Heat until the oil is bubbling.

Step 7: Drop in the potatoes, stir, then drop in the carrots. Keep stirring. After a minute, drop in the chicken stock powder and sugar. Keep stirring to avoid the potato sticking to the pan. After another minute, pour in the vinegar.

Step 8: keep stirring until the potatoes are all glossy and add a little salt to taste. The potato strips will be cooked yet still have a lot of bite. This should take no more than 10 minutes.

Step 9: finally, drop in the green parts of the spring onion and stir for a further 30 seconds. Now it’s ready to serve!

This usually tastes more refreshing once it’s cooled down, but you can of course eat it while it’s still hot. Which version do you prefer?