My favorite baby bok choy recipe! Plenty of veggies and a tangy ginger garlic sauce make this easy stir fry a delicious, flavorful weeknight meal.
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Stir fry was probably the first healthy-ish meal I learned to make, although it used to look nothing like this. When I was in college, I’d stock up on frozen vegetables because I was broke and they were 4 for $1 at Publix. I’d mix the frozen veggies with instant brown rice and drown it all in soy sauce. While I appreciated the bargain, that dinner was “healthy” for healthy’s sake, and I’d try to convince myself it was delicious while my roommates all ate pizza. Now, I love to make this actually delicious stir fry with lots of fresh vegetables, like baby bok choy, and a tangy sauce made with sesame, ginger, garlic, and lime juice.
Key Bok Choy Stir Fry Ingredients
Since college, my stir fry game has improved dramatically. Aside from the frozen edamame, the vegetables here are fresh:
- Baby bok choy adds crispness and leafy greens.
- Shiitake mushrooms punch up the umami flavor.
- Broccoli and broccoli STEMS fill it out with lots of green, so this stir fry is mostly veggies! I use vegetable peeler to slice thin ribbons off the broccoli stalk and toss them into the pan with everything else. Delicious. College budget or not, it’s so fun to figure out resourceful ways to use every part of a vegetable.
Another thing missing from my college stir fry was a good sauce. This one – made from tamari, ginger, rice vinegar, fresh lime and sesame oil – is light, tangy, and delicious. Make extra if you want to have a quick weeknight stir fry ready to go – the sauce will keep well in the fridge for a few weeks.
For more bok choy recipes…
Try this Golden Turmeric Miso Soup, Red Curry Lemongrass Soup, or Easy Vegetarian Pho!
Bok Choy Stir Fry
Ingredients
sauce:
- 1½ tablespoons tamari
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice, plus extra lime slices for serving
- ½ teaspoon honey, or maple syrup
- ½ teaspoon minced fresh ginger
- 1 small garlic clove, minced
- ½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil
for the stir fry:
- 4 ounces soba noodles or brown rice pasta
- 1 tablespoon sunflower oil, or any high-heat oil
- 4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
- ½ small head broccoli, florets chopped, stems peeled into strips
- 2 scallions, chopped
- 2 baby bok choy, quartered vertically
- ½ cup frozen edamame, thawed
- 1 carrot, peeled into thin strips
- 2 teaspoons sesame seeds
- Sriracha, or sambal, for serving
Instructions
- Make the sauce by stirring together the tamari, rice vinegar, lime juice, honey, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil. Set aside.
- In a pot of salted boiling water, cook the noodles according to the package directions until al dente. Drain, rinse and set aside (or leave them in cold water or toss with a little oil to prevent clumping).
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the shiitake mushrooms and broccoli, stir to coat then let cook 1 to 2 minutes until the mushrooms begin to soften and the broccoli begins to brown. Give the pan a good shake and stir, then add the scallions, bok choy, and edamame. Cook, stirring occasionally for another 2 minutes, until the bok choy and broccoli are tender but still vibrant.
- Add the carrots and noodles and toss. Add the sauce, toss again. Add a squeeze of lime. Taste and adjust seasonings. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve with extra lime slices and sambal or sriracha on the side.
Omigosh! So I had to improvise on a lot of things because at the moment I live in Korea and not a lot of ingredients on hand but the base of the sauce really made it tasty anyway. I used gluten free buckwheat noodles and for the sauce I didn’t have any lime so I used a small amount of lemon pepper seasoning in hot water to get the half teaspoon of lime juice. Luckily I had just enough tamari to equal the 1½ tablespoons. I just now realized I forgot the garlic lol Anyway I had some chicken I needed to use in the fridge so I took the same ingredients I could to make a marinade. I didn’t have any carrot, broccoli, or edamame so I put kidney beans and sweet peas instead. I would have put scallions but I had debated at the store between a heck of a lot of green onions (Korea has HUGE green onions!!) or two white onions so I went with the two. I also was walking so that was another factor in my purchases lol All in all it was pretty good! Thanks for the suggestion! lol
Hi Candace, I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
This was soo good for lunch! Used kelp noodles for my gluten free husband! I am a plant based mom of two who LOVES your recipes. Oh my goodness. I own all of your books and still use your website. My family enjoys everything I make and consider me a good chef thanks to you and your hard work! Keep up the great work and come out with more cookbooks please!
Aww, thank you for this sweet note, I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying the recipes!
Great base recipe! Omni hubby wanted sausage in it so I used cut up beyond patties instead of edamame but added red peppers. I also doubled the sauce, added some coconut sugar and added a huge spoonful of peanut butter to it. Turned out great 🙂 Toddler also loved it!
Ima have to agree with it being to tangy and not enough flavor maybe some ?
Living alone always looking for delicious nutritious meals that are quick to prepare Yum!!
So glad you enjoyed it, Coralie!
Add water chestnuts, too
I’m not a fan. It’s tangy.. but not much to it. Wish there was more depth to it. I added other sauces to make it more flavourful.
I was looking for bok choy recipes and came across this. Eager to try with my meat eating family; I plan to make this with chicken, what do you think about adding ramen noodles instead of soba? I can only add so many new things to my son’s plate.
I made. A bok choy type soup by adding chicken( bouillon) stock and top with no salt peanuts and raw sunflower seeds. I added peanut butter before the chicken stock snd a pinch of red pepper. Actually pretty good!
Sooooooooo goood over quinoa!!!!! I didn’t add sweetener but I added more garlic. Will definitely make it again. Thank you
Hi Nan, I’m so glad you loved it!
Too much acid. It seemed like too much reading the recipe through. Normally I would have just cut it way back, but I’ve really liked recipes I’ve tried on this site in the past, so I thought maybe I should humble myself and followed the recipe as written. Maybe I’d learn something, etc. But I should have trusted my instincts on this one.
My thoughts exactly!!
Can I use ground ginger instead of fresh ginger and if so, how much would i need?
Do you have nutrition information on this by chance ?
Hi Alexandra, unfortunately we don’t calculate the nutrition facts for our recipes. The best way to get an estimate is to use an online nutrition calculator like MyFitnessPal. Hope this helps!
I really liked how easy this recipe was to make but I think if you have a different stir fry sauce you like, to use that instead. This one was very light other than the flavor of vinegar. We then doubled it and the vinegar taste just got stronger.
I loved this! Very easy to put together and the sauce was wonderful! Better than takeout and much healthier! Thank you.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
For me this was pretty good, but not great. I’d probably give it 3.5 stars, I think my mistake was adding an extra squeeze of lime before tasting it (which the recipe suggested but was a rookie mistake). I squeezed a small piece but the lime was pretty juicy and the end result was way too sour/acidic for me. I tried to balance it out with more sesame oil and honey, and that helped the acidity, but it was still not my favorite sauce. I added some fried chili oil to it and that helped make it more interesting, but I don’t think I’d make it again.
Made with rainbow chard instead of boo choy. We are overrun with it! I’m sure the boy choy would have been much better. The east of it was very good.
I’m so glad you loved it! If you still have rainbow chard, we really love this pasta recipe: https://strong-nights.today/lemony-swiss-chard-pasta/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv class=reply>
Very easy and tasty. We didn’t have all the veggies you used — just a ton of bok choi, some carrots and red peppers. But I followed the sauce exactly and it was spot on delicious. Rice instead of noodles. Next time we’ll try it with the noodles!!
I’m so glad you loved it!
How about the amount of noodles? So basic. We guessed. Don’t leave this hanging.
it says 4 oz on the recipe, I made last night.
Read the comments, doubled the ginger and garlic, made sauce in the morning, used 7 hours later. Marvelous flavour, great mix of veggies. Will make whenever Mom’s Organic has requisite veg. In stock. Thank you!
Nice textures but I found I found it rather bland.I’m even added Sriracha to the sauce and extra ginger. Nice mix of veggies..
I concur. We tried making this recipe and everything just fell flat (taste wise). Might need some retooling on the next go around. We used it as a side dish for some fresh fish we sautéed in an adjacent skillet.