Garlic Stir-Fried Sunflower Microgreens
Pad pak bung's technique, applied to sunflower shoots: screaming heat, garlic, oyster sauce, and under a minute in the wok so the stems keep their snap.
Recipe
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 2 min
- Total
- 7 min
- Makes
- 2 servings as a side
Side dish · Thai
Ingredients
- 150g sunflower microgreens
- 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 1 red chilli, sliced (optional)
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp neutral oil
- 1 tbsp water or stock
Method
- 1
Mix the sauce first
Stir the oyster sauce, soy, sugar and water together in a small bowl. Once the wok is hot there is no time to measure anything — the whole cook is shorter than it takes to open a bottle.
- 2
Get the wok properly hot
Heat the wok dry until it is just starting to smoke, then add the oil. Low heat steams the shoots instead of frying them, and steamed sunflower shoots are limp.
- 3
Garlic, ten seconds
Add the garlic and chilli and move them constantly for about ten seconds, until the garlic is fragrant but still pale. Browned garlic turns bitter and there is nothing in this dish to hide behind.
- 4
Greens in, sauce in, out
Add the microgreens all at once, pour the sauce down the side of the wok, and toss for 30 to 45 seconds — just until the leaves collapse. The stems should still be crisp when it hits the plate. Serve immediately.
Thailand already knows what to do with a tender green stem and a hot wok. This is pad pak bung's method applied to sunflower shoots, and it works for the same reason: a hollow, juicy stem can take direct heat for a few seconds and come out crisp, as long as you get it out again fast.
Why the timing is so tight
Sunflower shoots are mostly water held in a thick stem. Held over heat, that water leaves and the stem goes flat — there is no slow-cooked stage that recovers it. Forty-five seconds is genuinely the upper limit. If you are cooking for more than two, do it in two batches rather than crowding the wok, which drops the temperature and steams everything.
Dry greens only
If you washed them, dry them completely. Wet shoots hitting hot oil spit, and the water cools the wok at exactly the wrong moment.
Variations worth making
- Swap half the sunflower for water spinach shoots — closer still to the original, and the two textures play off each other.
- Add a spoon of fermented soybean paste with the garlic for a saltier, older-tasting version.
- Finish with a squeeze of lime off the heat rather than sugar in the sauce.
Serve it with rice and a fried egg and it is a meal rather than a side. It does not keep — the texture is the dish, and the texture is gone within ten minutes of leaving the wok.
Featured in this article
Try these microgreens
Nutty, crunchy, slightly sweet — a salad favourite.
Mild and green with hollow, juicy stems — the tender half of pad pak bung.