Pickles · FFET10224
Jiang gua (soy-sauce pickled cucumber)
Home-style jiang gua is cucumber steeped in soy sauce and vinegar, a side dish that goes with congee.
A deep white porcelain bowl holds green cucumbers coated in brown soy and vinegar sauce pooling below, with ginger slices, garlic cloves and toasted white sesame seeds, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the bowl.
Vegetables kept by salting or fermenting: sour cabbage, brined pickles and salted greens.
Home-style jiang gua is cucumber steeped in a soy sauce and vinegar liquid. Of the 2 home recipes covered here, one salts the cucumber, dresses it with the sauce and refrigerates it overnight; the other blanches it for about 15 seconds in the hot sauce and rests it 2 days. Both are quick-pickle adaptations, not traditional sauce fermentation. The Sanhe Simei sauce-pickle house in Yangzhou uses 7 traditional steps, from koji making and 2 rounds of salting to the first and second sauce fermentation. A 2025 report names cucumbers as a raw material but does not name jiang gua as a product.
What
Home-style jiang gua is cucumber steeped in a sauce of soy sauce and vinegar. The Sanhe Simei sauce-pickle house in Yangzhou aims for a fresh, sweet, crisp and tender taste. The 2 home recipes covered here are quick-pickle adaptations, not that kind of sauce fermentation.1,2,3,4
When
The Sanhe workshop in Yangzhou was founded in 1796 and the Simei workshop in 1871; they later merged. The 2025 report gives the business's founding years without naming jiang gua as a product. The listed sources do not date jiang gua, and the business's founding years cannot serve as its dates.1
Where
Yangzhou's Sanhe Simei produces sauce pickles, with cucumbers picked between the Mangzhong and Xiaoshu solar terms.1
How
The traditional sauce-pickle process has 7 steps, from koji making and 2 rounds of salting to the first and second sauce fermentation. The home methods are much quicker. One salts cucumber strips for 1 hour, pours off the liquid, dresses them with soy sauce, black vinegar, sugar and aromatics, and chills them overnight. The other blanches the cucumbers for about 15 seconds in hot soy sauce and vinegar, then packs them with garlic into a clean jar and rests them 2 days.1,2,3,4
Why
Traditional sauce pickles aim for a fresh, sweet, crisp, tender taste. Soy-and-vinegar cucumber is a summer pickle in one recipe author's hometown; another version is a side dish eaten with congee.1,2,3,4
Impact and influence
Taiwanese soy-sauce pickled cucumber, called hua gua, is eaten with congee and also appears on a Hong Kong recipe blog.4
No tale about this food has been found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is my home version of soy-and-vinegar pickled cucumber. It is a quick-pickle adaptation, not the sauce-fermented traditional pickle of Yangzhou. The amounts and method follow the second recipe (a food writer's): 500 g cucumbers, 100 ml light soy sauce, 50 ml black vinegar and 70 ml water, blanched about 15 seconds in the hot sauce and rested in a jar for 2 days. The first recipe (another food writer's) salts the cucumbers for an hour and dresses them with a cold sauce overnight, which I describe in the tips. The amounts of ginger and garlic are my own choices.
Ingredients
- Cucumbers (washed, dried and cut into finger-thick strips) 500 g
- Light soy sauce 100 ml
- Black vinegar 50 ml
- Water 70 ml
- Ginger slices 3 slices
- Garlic cloves (lightly smashed) 3 cloves
- Toasted white sesame seeds (for sprinkling when serving) 1 teaspoon
Steps
- Wash a glass jar and its lid, scald them with boiling water and let them dry.
- Put the soy sauce, black vinegar, water and ginger in a small pot and bring to a boil.
- Add the cucumber strips, blanch about 15 seconds, then turn off the heat.
- Pour the cucumbers, ginger and the liquid from the pot into the clean jar, add the garlic, let it cool and close the lid tightly.
- Refrigerate and rest for 2 days, turning the jar over once or twice so the liquid stays even. Refrigerating and turning the jar are my own habit.
- Take out the cucumbers, slice them and sprinkle with sesame seeds. I like them with congee.
Tips
- If you like it sweeter, add sugar as the first recipe does: it uses about 3 teaspoons in all for 3 cucumbers.
- This is a quick pickle, not a long ferment, so I keep it in the refrigerator and finish it within a few days. The longer the cucumber sits, the saltier it gets, so taste before deciding how long to wait. That is my own way of doing it.
Allergens: soy, wheat, sesame