Bamboo shoot dish - Việt Nam’s culinary essence

Hoàng Lan

Bamboo shoot dishes are very familiar to all Vietnamese, particularly mountainous people.

Common dishes cooked from bamboo shoots include stir-fried bamboo, sour bamboo pickles, duck with bamboo shoot noodle soup, pork/fish braised with bamboo shoots.

Not only are they tasty, but bamboo shoots are rich in fibre compared with other vegetables, so they are considered an ideal food to reduce weight, because of the lower calories for the size of each dish.

Boiled bamboo shoots, eaten with salt mixed with chilli, 'mắc kén' (a kind of spicy wild seed) and its leaves which are ground into powder and minced garlic. Photo baodantoc.vn

Nông Thị Noọng, a native of the Northwestern province of Sơn La, said local people are fond of boiled bamboo shoots eaten with salt mixed with chilli, mắc kén (a kind of spicy wild seed) and its leaves, which are ground into powder and minced garlic.

“At our daily meals, a plate of boiled bamboo shoots is always available. The dish has been handed down from our ancestors. We all like it so much,” said Noọng.

It is a different preference of the people in Sơn La, while lowland people like eating boiled bamboo shoots with roasted sesame or shrimp paste, she said. 

Noọng’s friend Lý Thu Mùi in the northern province of Lạng Sơn told Việt Nam News that her province is the most famous nationwide for fresh bamboo shoots pickled with fresh chilli and mác mật (a wild tiny fruit with aromatic condiment), a combination locally known as măng ớt. The popular dish is eaten with roasted duck or pork.

Mùi said she herself is an addict, loving the dish which is usually eaten with a hot rice vermicelli soup.

Many foodies are addicted to rice vermicelli with duck and bamboo shoot soup. Photo dienmayxanh.com

Mùi explained that first, using chopsticks, diners take out several sour bamboo shoot slices, spread them evenly on the bowl of vermicelli, and use a spoon to scoop some light red liquid and several mác mật pieces from the pickle jar and put them in the bowl. The mixture then needs to be stirred, to become a very colourful, attractive and tasty bowl of soup.

Mùi said she often delivers bamboo shoot pickles in jars to customers in Hà Nội.

“Many of them become addicted to the dish which can also be eaten with white rice or vermicelli soup,” she said.

Mùi said no one knows when the dish came into being, but it is especially popular in Hà Nội and surrounding provinces.

“I send 20-30 jars of sour bamboo shoot pickles to my regulars in Hà Nội every day, earning nearly a million Đồng,” said Mùi.

A tray of traditional dishes including a plate of forest bamboo shoot salad. Photo baodantoc.vn

It is not a main dish, but it is a beloved side dish of Vietnamese from the north to the south. Cooks nationwide know how to make sour bamboo shoot pickles, but the tastiest one is that from Lạng Sơn, which has ideal growing conditions offering up quality bamboo shoots, wild mác mật fruit and chilli planted on the mountainside. It is a combination of these three ingredients which come together to create this famous food across the country, said Mùi.

Mùi said pickling bamboo shoots with chilli is simple. The secret is to choose the hottest kind of chilli and fresh and big bamboo shoots with thin covers.

Meanwhile, Hanoian housewives like young bamboo root which is cut into a finger size and braised with pork leg.

“The dish is really tasty from the fatty pork leg meat and soft bamboo root, such an enjoyable dish which foodies can never have enough of,” housewife Trịnh Thu Hằng said, noting that stir-fried bamboo shoot with beef and garlic is also a popular dish of Vietnamese.

There are still other bamboo shoot recipes. They include braised fish with bamboo shoot and pork-stuffed bamboo shoot. Minced pork, mushroom, wood ears and onions are mixed together with spices and fish sauce then stuffed into a bamboo shoot tube, and then steamed. "It is called divine dish," said Hằng.

Jars of fresh bamboo shoot preserved with red hot chilli and 'mác mật' (a wild tiny aromatic fruit). The bamboo shootpickle has been called a divine dish by mass foodies. Photo thuongmaibiengioimiennui.gov.vn

While fresh bamboo shoot is widely cooked for daily meals, dried bamboo shoot is only cooked for special or big parties such as the Lunar New Year holiday, wedding and death anniversaries, said Hằng.

She added that while fresh bamboo shoot is easy to cook, dried bamboo shoot needs a complicated cooking process. It must be first soaked in water for many days, changing the water every three or four days, before boiling it for five or six hours. It has to be cut into pieces about the size of two fingers, stir-fried carefully in pork fat before stewing with pork broth and pig leg cut into pieces for several more hours.

“The dish is among Việt Nam’s culinary essence, preserved and handed down from our ancestors hundreds of years ago,” said Master Chef Phạm Tuấn Hải.  VNS