San choy bau (pork and prawn lettuce cups)
32 min · 31 g protein · 297 cals / serving
The Cantonese-Australian restaurant favorite: savory pork and prawn mince stir-fried with shiitake, crunchy water chestnuts and oyster sauce, spooned into cold, crisp iceberg cups. Fast, hands-on, and the lettuce does the job of the rice.
Ingredients
- 1 iceberg lettuce, leaves separated into 12 cups, chilled
- 2 tsp canola oil, or peanut oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- a thumb-sized piece ginger, grated
- 350 g pork mince, lean
- 250 g shrimp, peeled, chopped
- 150 g shiitake mushrooms, finely diced
- 1 small can (120 g drained) water chestnuts, finely diced
Sauce
- 6 tsp oyster sauce
- 4 tsp soy sauce, salt-reduced
- 2 tsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1/2 tsp white pepper
- 100 g bean sprouts
- 4 green onions, sliced
To serve
- a handful fresh cilantro
- 1 long red chili pepper, sliced
- juice of 1 lime juice, served in wedges
Steps
- Trim the lettuce cups with scissors into neat bowls and keep them in the fridge while you cook; the contrast between cold lettuce and hot filling is the point.
- Heat a wok or large frying pan over high heat until it smokes. Add the oil, then the garlic and ginger, and stir for 20 seconds until fragrant. Add the pork and stir-fry, breaking it up, for 3–4 minutes until browned and no longer pink, 160°F.
- Add the prawns, shiitake and water chestnuts and stir-fry 2–3 minutes, until the prawns turn pink and opaque all through (145°F, 145°F) and the mushrooms soften.
- Stir the oyster sauce, soy, rice vinegar, sesame oil and white pepper together, pour into the wok and toss for a minute until everything is glossy and most of the liquid has cooked away.
- Toss in the bean sprouts and spring onions for 30 seconds, just to warm them. Spoon the filling into the lettuce cups and top with coriander, chili and a squeeze of lime. Eat with your hands.
Good to know
No lean pork mince at the shop?
Ask the butcher to mince a piece of pork fillet or loin, or pulse it in short bursts in a food processor. Chicken mince works too, at about the same score.
Why so much heat?
A very hot wok browns the mince and drives off the water from the mushrooms and prawns. At medium heat everything stews in its own juice and the filling turns gray and wet, which soaks the lettuce.
Per
- Calories
- 97
- Protein
- (42%)
- 10 g
- Fat
- (41%)
- 4 g
- Carbohydrates
- (17%)
- 5 g
- of which sugar
- 2 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 192 mg
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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. How
As written, 1189 kcal goes into the pot and 1441 g of ingredients comes out as about 1230 g of food: 97 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.