Bamboo Shoots: Cooking Fresh, Canned, Menma and Uses

Flavor and texture

Cooked bamboo shoots taste restrained, a little like corn and artichoke, with a nutty note. They take up broths and sauces well and mainly give a dish bite. Fresh shoots carry a slight bitterness that mostly disappears during cooking. Canned shoots often smell sour after opening. Rinse them and blanch them for a minute, and the smell is gone.

Fresh bamboo shoots: always cook them

Raw bamboo shoots contain cyanogenic glycosides. When chopped and chewed, they release hydrogen cyanide, which is why you never eat bamboo raw. Cooking breaks these compounds down, and the hydrogen cyanide escapes with the steam.

1. Cut off the tip at an angle and score the outer leaves lengthwise. Then peel them off layer by layer until the pale core is exposed.
2. Cut away the hard, woody end and cut the core into slices or pieces.
3. Boil the pieces in plenty of water, uncovered, at a rolling boil for at least 20 minutes. Larger pieces need longer.
4. Pour off the cooking water and rinse the shoots.

In Japan, cooks boil whole shoots (takenoko) unpeeled for an hour or longer with a handful of rice bran and a dried chili. They are done when a wooden skewer slides in without resistance. Then they cool in the cooking liquid, which takes out more bitterness.

Types and forms in stores

• Can and jar: pre-cooked in water, as slices, strips, cubes or whole tips. The most common form in Germany.
• Vacuum-packed: cooked whole shoots or halves in a bag, found at an Asian grocery store in the refrigerated section or the dry goods. They taste fresher than canned ones.
• Fresh: rare, mostly in spring at an Asian grocery store. Look for heavy, firm shoots with undamaged outer leaves.
• Dried: must be soaked overnight and then boiled until soft.
• Fermented and sour: in Thailand and Laos as nor mai dong or nor mai som, pickled in brine. They smell strong and add sourness to curries and soups.
• Menma (メンマ): fermented, seasoned bamboo shoots from Japan, with soy sauce and sesame oil. The shoots usually come from Taiwan or China.

Uses: curry, soup, ramen

Bamboo shoots go into many dishes of East and Southeast Asia, usually in strips or slices:

• Thai curries: In green curry with coconut milk, bamboo strips simmer for the last few minutes. They taste more pronounced in the ground pork curry with bamboo. The matching pastes are explained on the page Thai curry pastes.
• Laos: Mok nor mai steams bamboo shoots with herbs in banana leaf.
• Chinese cuisine: In suan la tang, bamboo strips give the hot and sour soup bite, and in chop suey they are part of the vegetables.
• Indonesia: Lumpia Semarang are spring rolls with a filling of braised bamboo shoots.
• Ramen: You make menma yourself from canned bamboo shoots. You find more toppings under ramen toppings.

Add canned or jarred bamboo to the wok or pot only in the last three to five minutes, since it only needs to get hot. It stays firm even with longer cooking, but gains nothing from it. For stir-fries, cut the slices into thin strips so they mix with the meat and vegetables.

Substitutes for bamboo shoots

For bite in the wok, canned water chestnuts work best. Kohlrabi in sticks or strips also stays crunchy and tastes mild. In curry, you can use baby carrots or white asparagus, though the asparagus brings its own flavor. Hearts of palm from a jar are softer. For menma there is no equal substitute, so leave the topping out.

Buying and storing

You find canned bamboo shoots on the Asian shelf of many supermarkets. Vacuum-packed shoots, jars, sour shoots and menma are stocked by an Asian grocery store, and online you can get all forms. For cans, read the ingredient list: bamboo shoots, water and an acidity regulator are enough.

Transfer opened cans to a container with fresh water and put it in the fridge. Change the water daily, and they keep for a few days. Store freshly cooked shoots the same way. Freezing is not worth it, because the shoots turn fibrous and spongy afterwards.