Chinese Broccoli is a popular type of vegetable that can found in Asian cuisine. It’s not hard to see why! It’s a delicious veggie, and it’s very easy to just stir fry with some garlic and serve as a delicious side! This recipe will show you the simplest way we like to make Chinese Broccoli Stir Fry with Garlic.

What is Gai Lan?

If you’ve never had Gai Lan, it’s also known as Chinese Broccoli or Chinese Kale! In Chinese, there’s also several dialects or spellings – so it’s also known as Jie-Lan and Kai-Lan too.

Whatever it is called, it’s a very delicious leafy green veggie and pretty common in Chinese food.

Fun fact! You may have had a veggie called broccolini before. Well, broccolini is actually a hybrid between broccoli and gai lan!

Also, if you want to learn more about various types of Chinese veggies – I wrote an article about them here! There’s bok choy, chinese mustard greens, chinese broccoli, red amaranth and more!

How to make Chinese broccoli?

The most simple way is to stir fry with garlic. You can mince the garlic, or I prefer to smash it! Smashed garlic will help release stronger garlic taste. My personal preference is to smash it because then it’s also completely whole and I get to eat it whole!

First gather your ingredients:

• 1 lb Chinese broccoli (aka gai lan)
• 3-5 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 tbsp cooking oil of choice
• Salt, as desired

Cut the Chinese broccoli into 1 to 2 inch sections, and keep the stem section separate from the leafy section.

Smash your garlic – I like to do this by using a large bladed knife, cover garlic cloves with paper towel, and just smash the flat side of the knife down a few times. If you do this before peeling, it actually makes the peeling process even easier as the garlic will pop out a little, and then you just remove the peel/skin as needed.

In a large cooking pan or wok, add oil and smashed garlic, and cook on medium high heat for a minute.

Add the stems to the pan / work first. Stir fry for a minute. The stems take a little longer to cook so that’s why we are cooking them first.

Now, add the leaves and stir fry for another 2 minutes or until all of the Chinese broccoli is tender and bright green.

Remove from heat and serve!

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