Bamboo shoot

What it is

Bamboo shoots are the new culms of many bamboo species, harvested while still young and tender. They are used as a vegetable in many Asian dishes and broths, and they are sold fresh, dried and canned. Most young shoots are edible after boiling, but only about a hundred species are harvested regularly, according to the Wikipedia article.

Many local traditions dry, pickle or ferment the shoot, and the preserved forms are part of the cuisines that use it.

Why the raw shoot must be treated

Raw shoots contain cyanogenic glycosides, natural toxins that are also present in cassava. Thorough cooking destroys them, and canning also destroys them. Every preparation described in the sources therefore either cooks the shoot or removes the toxins before it is eaten, and this is the central safety point for the ingredient.

Because the toxins are removed by heat and leaching, the sources' methods vary: boiling, slicing and leaching, soaking and turmeric boiling. The page gives these as regional practices rather than a single standard, and this page does not give a safe time or temperature beyond what is listed.

Regional preparations

In Indonesia the shoot is thinly sliced to help leach out cyanide. In Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and northern Tamil Nadu, sliced shoots soak for two to three days, with the water replaced each day. Sikkim varieties in Nepal are boiled with turmeric for 10 to 15 minutes to remove bitterness. The East Asian species Bambusa oldhamii is sliced thin and boiled several times in a large volume of water when the shoots are older.

Fresh shoots are boiled before other uses in most of these traditions, and the boiling step is the one most often shared across them.

Fermented and preserved products

Tama in Nepal is fermented bamboo shoot, cooked with potato and beans. Khorisa in Assam is fermented shoot used with pork, chicken, duck and pigeon; the Wikipedia article says that fermentation makes some nutrients more bioavailable and degrades toxins, which is a claim the page reports and this page does not verify. Medukkeye from Diyun in Arunachal Pradesh is fermented shoot, often fried with pork, and the article notes that shoots can also be fermented and stored with vinegar.

Bas tenga in Nagaland is fermented shoot, usually cooked with pork. Soibum and soijin in Manipur are fermented shoots, and soijin is preserved for many months. Hendua in western Odisha is sun-dried shoot used in fish curries. In Burma, hmyit chin hin from Naypyidaw is a sour bamboo shoot curry.

Pickles

Menma is the pickled shoot served as a ramen topping in Japan. Pickled shoots appear in luosifen in Guangxi, China, and in no mai dong in Thailand. Atchara in the Philippines is a sweet pickle often made with papaya. These are pickled rather than fermented in the sources, and their method is not given in detail.

Limits of the sources

The sources reviewed here do not give safe fermentation times, salt levels, storage periods for the fermented products or the microbiology of the fermentation. Fermented bamboo shoot, and the cyanide removal it relies on, need a dedicated source before any method is given.