Let’s collect bamboo recipes on this page.
Send your recipes to daphne@bamboofarmingusa.com or daphne@chalosulky.com
My cooking of bamboo shoots is simple. I peel off the culm leaves. I slice the shoot to create decorative shapes. (rounds? ovals? combs? chunks?) I stir fry the sliced shoots with vegetables (celery, garlic, onions, sweet red & yellow peppers, sugar pod peas or anything bright green) and serve over hot brown rice. Easy. Delicious. Healthy. I may add broth to prevent scorching as I cook. If I expect guests, I add meat and fancier seasonings.
I would like to try, next shooting season, to broil my shoots in their sheaths and serve them to friends to be peeled at the table and eaten with an assortment of dips.
For salads, boil the shoots; cool them in the fridge; add them to salads. Photo shows white bamboo shoots, red tomatoes, green avocados. Color!
For stir fries, complement the white bamboo shoots with colorful vegetables.
Bamboo cups full of cooked rice make a meal more festive.To make bamboo cups, select large poles, preferably green and fresh; cut uniform cups. You can reuse these bamboo cups many times.
To cook rice in the bamboo cups, add salt, 2 parts water to one part rice. Set the filled cups into a pot of water and boil until the rice has cooked. The rice will swell to the top of the bamboo cup. If you get the ratio of water/rice just right for the size of the cup, the rice will swell a bit higher than the cup. It looks festive that way.
For a fancier dish, add a bit of meat and seasoning to the bottom of the cup and cook along with the rice and salt.
Chef Brian David Jones invented these bamboo pickles. When I contacted him in 2015 and brought him some bamboo shoots to experiment with, he was Chef de Cuisine at Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta. He experimented with the shoots and emailed me this recipe.
“I peeled and sliced the bamboo thin and soaked it in a brine (1 cup of kosher salt: 1 gallon water) over night. The next day I rinsed the brine and made a pickling solution out of equal parts vinegar, sugar, and water. (Vinegar was a half and half mixture of cider vinegar and red wine vinegar because I wanted a pink hue). Flavored it with orange, ginger and black pepper (cut the ginger into large thin pieces, sliced the orange into rounds). Place all ingredients on stove and bring to a boil. Pour over shaved bamboo and refrigerate.)
Give it a couple of days before eating.
I think I might try my hand at actually fermenting (natural pickle, think kraut) some next. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Take care!
The pickles need refrigeration. They would last several months… except that people love to eat them. They are gone before several months pass.
Amy Luo is an accomplished chef. She gave me the following bamboo photos and explanations.
Amy said that when my shoots were delivered to her house the butts had browned. “No big deal”, she said. “I just cut off the brown. The rest of the shoot was fine. Browning of the end happens to every vegetable.”
Amy’s second photo shows the culm leaves in the sink to the right and the shoots in the large pot to the left. Amy will cover them with water and boil them. She boils all bamboo shoots before cooking
them. With moso, she boils until foam forms on the surface of the water. Once boiled, shoots are stored in the fridge ready to drop into recipes.
In the photo with the jar, Amy has prepared a dish using Black Bean Sauce with Chili Oil. She stir fries the shoots with the Black Bean Sauce and serves them over rice. The extra shoots she refrigerates. For later meals, she serves them cold over cold foods or hot.
“Just scoop out the cooked bamboo shoots and add them to whatever you have: rice, noodles, chopped vegetables…
The last photo shows the shoots stir fried with beef and vegetables. The choice of meat doesn’t have to be beef; could have been any meat. Amy uses either black bean sauce or oyster sauce to cook with her shoots. These two sauces are staples in her pantry. Find them in the Asian aisle of your grocery store.
