Chinese-Style Steamed Zucchini

‍Soft steamed zucchini strips with delicate flavor and silky texture perfect for soaking up a garlicky, sweet, sour and salty sauce. Swapping zucchini for the traditional eggplant, this take on the Chinese dish - liang ban qie zi - is quick, easy and can be served either hot or cold alongside simply-prepared chicken or fish. A perfect side-dish for when you’ve got one two many zucchini!

Zucchini VS Eggplant

Inspired by the traditional Chinese steamed-eggplant dish liang ban qie zi, this recipe swaps in zucchini for the eggplant and makes a few modifications to simplify the sauce preparation. 

Looking for more Chinese recipes to try? How about Cantonese steamed fish, scallion oil noodles, or soy-braised chicken thighs.

Though not as creamy as eggplant, the mild flavor and soft texture of zucchini serves a similar function to that of the eggplant in the original dish - mainly as a vehicle for sauce delivery. 

Eggplant is a polarizing vegetable that’s sometimes difficult to find in Western grocery stores. Zucchini, on the other hand, is ubiquitous here while in season and, if you have a home garden, you’re undoubtedly always on the look out for a new way to use the prolific vegetable. 

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

This recipe uses mostly what I consider to be staple ingredients, but the ingredient list may seem long if you’re used to cooking really quick and easy meals. There are a few specialty ingredients that are worth tracking down (or growing yourself) if you want to cook a lot of Asian (particularly Chinese) dishes at home, but some of these ingredients can be omitted or substituted if you don’t already have them or prefer to cook with as few ingredients as possible.  

Dark Soy

Dark soy is somewhat saltier, thicker and darker in color than regular, or light, soy sauce. It adds a nice color to the finished sauce, but it isn’t strictly necessary for the dish. If you don’t have it, you can omit it from the recipe or substitute an equal amount of additional light, or regular, soy sauce instead. 

I like to have dark soy sauce and Chinese black vinegar on hand for these quick and easy scallion oil noodles.

Sesame Oil

Sesame oil adds a subtle nutty flavor to the dish. It’s worth having as a finishing oil for Chinese and some other Asian-style dishes. But, if you don’t have it, simply substitute any neutral-flavored oil. 

I also use sesame oil in this spicy Korean cucumber salad and this Cantonese steamed fish.

Herbs

Adding fresh herbs to the dish is an optional finishing touch, but I find the added freshness contrasts nicely with the rich flavors of the sauce. I recommend using cilantro, but Thai basil would also work nicely, if you have it. 

How to Make Chinese-Style Steamed Zucchini

Choosing or Harvesting Zucchini

When choosing zucchini look for small fruits, ideally about 6-7 inches long, with dark green smooth skin and no soft spots or wrinkling. You may think bigger zucchini are better, but as zucchini grow larger they lose flavor, their texture becomes soft and watery and they develop large seeds and tough skins that are unpleasant to eat. 

When harvesting zucchini from your home garden, remove them from the plant as soon as they are big enough to use. If you don’t, the plants will slow down or stop producing new zucchini and the zucchini left on the plants will become overgrown and unappealing. During the warm summer months new fruit will develop on zucchini plants quickly, so be sure to check your plants often - every couple of days - and remove ripe zucchini to store them inside on the counter for a few days or the refrigerator for up to a week rather than leaving them on the plant until you are ready to use them.

Preparing Zucchini to be Steamed

To prepare your zucchini for steaming: 

• Cut the stems and ends off the zucchini and discard them. 
• Slice the remaining zucchini in half lengthwise. 
• Depending on how long your zucchini are, cut the halves crosswise into 2-3 smaller segments, about 3 inches long. 
• Cut each segment lengthwise into ¼-½ inch strips. 

Cooking with Overgrown Zucchini

I recommend avoiding large, overripe zucchini. Personally, when I find enormous zucchini in the garden I toss them in the compost.  For me, the extra work of peeling and removing the seeds and interiors of overgrown zucchini is just not worth it.

If you’re going to cook with overgrown zucchini, it’s best suited to recipes that call for shredded zucchini and don’t depend on the flavor or texture of the zucchini fruit itself - like quick breads or meatballs, where the function of the zucchini in the recipe is to add moisture.

That said, if you really want to use an overgrown zucchini for this recipe - or any other - there are a few extra steps you will need to do to prepare it for cooking:

Peel It

Large zucchini have tough skins that don’t break down well even after cooking. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the skins and discard them. The finished dish won’t look as aesthetic as it would if you left the dark green skins, but tough zucchini skins are unpleasant to chew. 

Remove the Seeds and Inner Flesh

When an overgrown zucchini is halved, there will be a visible difference in the appearance of the softer, stringier, inner flesh that contains the seeds and the outer, firmer, zucchini flesh. Using a spoon, scoop out the seeds along with the inner, more watery, flesh of the zucchini. Discard the seeds and surrounding inner flesh.

Remove Excess Moisture

It’s always a good idea to salt and drain zucchini before cooking with it, but it’s especially important when using large zucchini. Overgrown zucchini are significantly more watery than those that are picked when smaller. This extra moisture can affect the texture of your finished dish. To remove some of this excess moisture: 

• After cutting the zucchini into strips, toss them with ½ teaspoon of salt.
• Transfer to a sieve placed over a bowl and leave to drain for 15-30 minutes.
• Discard the liquid that has drained into the bowl and blot the zucchini strips with paper towels to remove most of the salt and excess moisture sitting on the surface of the zucchini.

How to Steam Zucchini

If you’re looking for more ways to use your steamer, try this steamed white fish with ginger and scallions. 

1. Set a wok or a wide skillet with high sides - large enough to fit your steamer - on the stove and fill it with an inch or two of water. The water, once simmering, should be high enough to keep the bottom of the bamboo steamer submerged, but not high enough to touch the bottom of the lowest compartment of the steamer. 
2. Bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat to bring the water to a simmer. 
3. Pile the zucchini strips into the steamer compartments and set the compartments on top of each other in the wok. Top with the bamboo steamer lid. 
4. Steam for 15 minutes.
5. Turn off the heat and, using oven mitts or kitchen towels, carefully remove the steamer compartments from the wok.

If you don’t have a bamboo steamer you can use a metal steamer basket set inside a pot instead.

Make it Spicy - Or Don't!

The base recipe for this sauce is tasty on its own - garlicky, salty, sweet and sour. But, if you’re someone who can’t resist making your food spicy, there are a few good options for adding heat to the dish. 

• If you cook Asian cuisines a lot at home, you probably have a jar of chili oil (or chili crisp) kicking around in your fridge. Add a few teaspoons of the oil to the finished dish just before serving. Or, leave it on the table for individual diners to help themselves. If you don’t have store-bought chili oil, making your own is surprisingly easy and can be customized to include as many, or as few, extra spices and mix-ins as you want.

Make your own chili oil at home with this recipe for a Sichuan-style chili oil. 

• Crush some Sichuan peppercorns and add them to the pot when you make your sauce in step 2 of the recipe below. Sichuan peppercorns will add just a bit of heat in addition to their unique tingling or numbing sensation. 
• If you have neither chili oil nor Sichuan peppercorns, thinly slice some hot peppers of your choice and add them to the top of the zucchini before adding the sauce. Try thinly sliced jalapenos or serranos if you want mild heat and habaneros or bird’s eye chilis if you want the finished dish to be extra spicy.

Options for Preparing the Sauce

The Sizzling oil Method

The sizzling oil method is a classic Chinese cooking technique whereby very hot oil is poured over a garnish of raw aromatics to quickly cook them just before serving and create a bit of a sauce. Some versions of liang ban qie zi (steamed eggplant) use this technique to lightly cook the scallions and garlic after they are placed on top of the eggplant. When the nearly smoking oil hits the aromatics, they should sizzle. 

I’ve used the sizzling oil technique in this Cantonese steamed fish recipe

Stovetop Method

For this steamed zucchini I’ve opted instead for a simple stovetop method for preparing the sauce. It’s not traditional, but I prefer to do it this way for a few reasons: 

• Sometimes pouring hot oil over the garnish of a finished dish doesn’t get everything and you can be left with harsh flavors of garlic. Heating the garlic with the oil allows the garlic flavor to infuse the oil slowly and mellows out the raw garlic flavor.
• Cooking the sauce on the stovetop allows the sugar to dissolve into the sauce. Some recipes that call for mixing the sauce separately from the sizzling oil leave the sugar grainy and it tends to settle at the bottom of the dish, so you don’t get enough sweetness in every bite. 
• This way is just a bit simpler, all the ingredients go into one sauce rather than making a sauce, then heating up oil separately to pour over the finished dish. 
• Not as time sensitive. The sizzling oil technique is cool, but it adds an additional time-sensitive element to cooking your meal - which is fine on its own but can become overwhelming when you are making a main and a few sides at the same time.