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Vegetables from Chenguantun, Jinghai District, Tianjin, China

Tianjin dong cai (garlic preserved cabbage)天津冬菜

Napa cabbage is cut into small squares, dried in the open until just dry enough, then mixed with red-skinned garlic and roasted sea salt. The mix is sealed in crocks and left in a dark, airy place for five to eight months, where lactic bacteria ferment it into a salty, garlicky seasoning.

Fully documentedVegetables5 months – 8 months

Recipe

Tianjin dong cai (garlic preserved cabbage), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Glane23, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceThe sources give the garlic share but no fixed weights for cabbage and salt; makers mix them "in proportion".
Qingmaye napa cabbage (青麻叶大核桃纹白菜)Grown in Chenguantun; English sources name the long-stalked jiangan cabbage[tj-gov][wp]
Red-skinned garlic (四六瓣红皮蒜)About 20% for "meat" dong cai; none for "vegetarian" dong cai[jiang2023][tj-gov]
Sea salt, roasted at 800 °C[tj-gov]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 months – 8 months

Start
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What changes: The cabbage is cut by hand into small, nearly square pieces

Step 1 of 6
Cut the cabbage into small squares
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacillus
Weissella

The traditional cut is 12 mm wide and 10 mm long, so the pieces come out near square. Machine cutting, salting and pressing spread from the late 1980s. Output: small cabbage squares.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Napa cabbage is cut into small squares, dried in the open until just dry enough, then mixed with red-skinned garlic and roasted sea salt. The mix is sealed in crocks and left in a dark, airy place for five to eight months, where lactic bacteria ferment it into a salty, garlicky seasoning. Made in 6 steps over 5 months – 8 months. The longest step, leave to ferment in a dark, airy place, takes 5–8 months (网信天津 (Tianjin cyberspace office) 2021). Lactobacillus and Weissella does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step5–8 monthsReported[tj-gov]Leave to ferment in a dark, airy place
Temperature800 °CReported[tj-gov]Roast the sea salt

What makes this one different

Tianjin and Chaoshan-style dong cai are made from napa cabbage, while Sichuan dong cai is made from mustard. The Tianjin samples in one study had the most salt of the three regions.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Vegetarian dong caiMade with no garlic.

Safety

Dong cai is a high-salt condiment. The Tianjin samples had the highest salt of the three regions studied. The same study did not detect Bacillus spp., Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus or Shigella spp. in the three regional dong cai, though its conclusion lists Salmonella and Vibrio among the salt-tolerant bacteria it identified, so the paper is not consistent on Salmonella.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Chenguantun dong cai making is on Tianjin's municipal intangible heritage list. Jijiazhuang village, where it is said to have started, grows the most cabbage.

  1. [tj-gov] 网信天津 (Tianjin cyberspace office), 千问千寻大运河 | 行走运河两岸,看天津市静海非遗"惊艳满满", The Paper (thepaper.cn) government account, 24 December 2021gov
  2. [jiang2023] Jiang Y., Fu H., Li M. et al. 2023, Characterization of functional microorganisms in representative traditional fermented Dongcai from different regions of China, Foods 12(9):1753paper
  3. [wp] Wikipedia, Tianjin preserved vegetable (outline only)wiki