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Vegetables from Zhejiang, China

Xue cai / xuelihong (Ningbo salted potherb mustard, "red in snow")雪菜

Xue cai is potherb mustard dry-salted under a heavy stone until it sits in its own brine, then sealed in jars to ferment for about a month. Lactic acid bacteria, mainly Weissella with Lactobacillus, sour it while the nitrite that peaks in the first days falls away.

Fully documentedVegetables31 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts are one lab-scale trial's (Kong 2025), 60 kg of Jiangsu mustard (var. crispifolia) in an 80 L stainless steel container with a stone of equal weight. The paper says the finished product generally holds more than 5 % salt.
Fresh potherb mustard60 kg[kong2025]
Salt60 g per kg of mustard[kong2025]
Starterspontaneous (lactic acid bacteria starters are being tested)

Total time across the recorded steps: 31 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countWeissellaWeissella cibariaL. mesenteroidesLactobacillusSalt 6 %

What changes: Salt and a heavy stone press the juice out until the mustard sits in its own brine

Step 1 of 5
Dry-salt the mustard and weight it with stone
Time
24 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
6 %
Reported
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Weissella
Weissella cibaria
L. mesenteroides
Lactobacillus

Output: salted mustard under its own brine.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

salt draws the juice out of the leaf cells

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Xue cai is potherb mustard dry-salted under a heavy stone until it sits in its own brine, then sealed in jars to ferment for about a month. Lactic acid bacteria, mainly Weissella with Lactobacillus, sour it while the nitrite that peaks in the first days falls away. Made in 5 steps over 31 days. The longest step, ferment to day 30, takes 30 days (Kong X 2025). Salt is 6 % (Kong X 2025). Weissella, 65 % of the bacteria after 31 days of natural fermentation and 86 % with a Weissella cibaria starter; W. cibaria was isolated from the Ningbo product and Leuconostoc mesenteroides, isolated from the Ningbo product; only 0.06 % of the bacteria after 31 days of natural fermentation do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 daysReported[kong2025]Ferment to day 30
Salt6 %Reported[kong2025]Dry-salt the mustard and weight it with stone
AciditypH 6.1 → 4.34Measured[kong2025]Early days, nitrite peaks and falls

What makes this one different

Unlike Sichuan zha cai, which is the swollen stem pressed and spiced, xue cai is the whole leafy potherb mustard, dry-salted and fermented in its own brine with no spice paste.

Related ferments

Variants

  • North-China salted xuelihongThe salted stems and leaves keep a deep green colour; the root is pickled separately as jiecai tou (芥菜头).
  • Southern salted-then-dried xue caiIn south Anhui, south Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan and Chongqing it is salted first and then dried; Hubei calls it yan cai (盐菜). Compare meigan-cai.

Safety

In one study nitrite rose from 4.24 to 36.73 mg/kg on day 2 of natural fermentation and fell to 6 mg/kg by day 10; starter cultures made the peak lower and shorter. Eat it after the first weeks, not in the first days.

Hazards the sources name: Vibrio (among the halophilic bacteria found during spontaneous fermentation).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Kong et al. (2025) describe a processing and consumption history of several centuries for pickled potherb mustard, a crop grown south of the Yangtze, and say it is very popular in Zhejiang. They note that it is traditionally made by natural fermentation, by microbes already on the raw mustard.

  1. [kong2025] Kong X., Zhang J., Shen H., Shi N., Zhou H., Li Y., Guo Y., Luo H., Yu L. 2025, Screening, identification, and fermentation characteristics of lactic acid bacteria from pickled potherb mustard and potential applications, Foods 14(8):1431 (isolates from a Ningbo factory product; lab fermentation of Jiangsu mustard)paper
  2. [liu2021] Liu D., Zhang C., Zhang J., Xin X., Liao X. 2021, Metagenomics reveals the formation mechanism of flavor metabolites during the spontaneous fermentation of potherb mustard (Brassica juncea var. multiceps), Food Research International 148:110622 (abstract)paper
  3. [s2] Chinese Wikipedia, 雪里蕻 (names and salting forms), read 2026-10-23wiki