Bamboo shoots?
My favorite dish at a local Chinese restaurant was their Szechuan Chicken. It was a pretty simple dish of chicken, onions, green peppers and bamboo shoots in a spicy sauce. Recently they removed the bamboo shoots and just upped the amount of onions, which I found disappointing. I asked one of the owners about it and he said Americans don't like the smell of bamboo shoots. I'm Asian-American and didn't necessarily grow up eating a lot of dishes containing bamboo, but I love them in stir-fry type dishes. Your thoughts?
(bamboo is definitely one of those words that starts to look funny the more times you write it)
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Sam Fujisaka
May 5, 2009 05:41 PM
Love canned bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. Always have. No smells involved. Back in the 60s in Clovis, California, however, the bamboo grove in back of my Aunt and Uncle's lifted their first house off of its foundation. Good thing they were building a new house at about the time.
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re: alkapal
gmm
May 1, 2009 01:05 AM
They definitely use canned. They will put them in if I ask, but it annoys me a touch that they still list bamboo shoots in the menu description. That's a pet peeve of mine when a dish comes out and the ingredients aren't as listed in the description. But that's another issue.
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Miss Needle
Apr 11, 2009 04:52 AM
Fresh bamboo shoots are really delicious and have no smell. But canned ones (which I presume that your restaurant is using) do have a somewhat funky canned metal smell. I can definitely taste it in a more delicate dish. But I'm not so sure I would be able to taste it in a spicier dish like your "Szechuan chicken."
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After falling in love with fresh waterchestnuts years ago I entertained the idea of putting a stand of bamboo on the farm. Haven't yet, but it seems that there are varieties that are touted as inedible. Does anyone who harvests their own have any input on that? Or are they all somewhat edible young, just some better than others?
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re: alkapal
Bamboo can be quite invasive, but this usually applies to the "running" varieties, as opposed to the clumping varieties. Depending on the variety, the runners can be managed by trenching around the area which one wishes to confine it. Sometimes this is used in conjunction with steel foil or corrugated metal barriers. Keeping running bamboo takes relatively active management. So if one doesn't have a lot of land, is only a casual gardener, and loses interest fast, then it's time to open a panda sanctuary.
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re: bulavinaka
kchurchill5
May 1, 2009 04:03 AM
At my house I had 6 bamboo plants, the clumping variety. Very manageable. Started at 4' and was over 40 in just a few years. I am not sure if mine was edible but I certainly had more shoots enough to give me fresh shoots daily. I had a friend who bought some not knowing it was NOT clumping. Big mistake!!
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luckyfatima
Apr 6, 2009 12:42 AM
I am American and I LOVE bamboo shoots. They were my favorite part of Chinese food as a kid. I don't mind the canned ones, but also love fresh bamboo shoots, and dried rehydrated bamboo shoots, which have a virtue of their own.
That is just a weird thing to say that Americans don't like them.
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I think your restaurant owners have been buying the cheap canned bamboo shoots. Yes, those do have a distinctive aroma and taste - of metal! If they stop using junk they might realize that Americans do like the taste and smell of bamboo shoots, just not the smell/taste of *bad* ones. It's like bad fish, sorta.
Real - cut from the ground - bamboo shoots are fabulous in taste and aroma. I watch my neighbor's bamboo grove all the time and harvest the shoots when they appear. Then I seal the whole shoots in vacuum bags until I get a good bunch and create dishes around the shoots themselves.
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re: KiltedCook
I searched the web for more bamboo shoot video and found an "Iron Chef" episode dedicated to the bamboo shoot on YouTube. This is part 1/5 - the succeeding parts are included on the same page:
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I consider myself lucky in the fact that I have access to "Fresh" bamboo shoots in the bulk section of my local Asian supermarket, and at .89 a lb. There is no smell that I can detect and at that price i can't see how much of a cost savings it would be.Perhaps it has something to do with mouthfeel?
On a side note, A friend from Hong Kong sent me a piece on making fake bamboo shoots using take out chopsticks and the step by step process.Looks fake to me but..............
The web site was in Cantonese but you can google it. -
It's almost bamboo shoot season here in SoCal. If you know of places that have a grove of larger diameter bamboo (like Timber bamboo), you can harvest the shoots after they've just emerged from the ground. You'll need to dig down a bit around the emerging shoot and you'll end up with a speciman that is anywhere from 6 inches to a foot or a foot and a half long. Here's a YouTube video of a family harvesting in Japan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12-lV...
The flavor is sweeter, more savory, and the texture is softer and far less fibrous than the canned shoots. You can search the web for more examples as well as many recipes that might surprise you as to the many culinary uses for bamboo shoots.
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scoopG
Apr 5, 2009 08:48 AM
I agree. What offensive smell? Ask the owner if he will put them in when you order next time.
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re: gmm
MikeG
Apr 5, 2009 09:56 AM
My vote is for the restaurant owner not wanting to say just come out and say it's a cost-cutting measure, albeit a bizarre one to my mind. This is a bit of an exaggeration but to my mind it's almost like saying they stopped using soy sauce because Americans think it smells funny (and seriously, the smell of average soy sauce straight out of the bottle has to be way funkier to the least-common denominator American palate than bamboo shoots.)
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re: gmm
Samuelinthekitchen
Apr 5, 2009 07:41 PM
I think bamboo shoots definately have a distinct smell. My favourite local Thai restaurant (Thai Wi Rat - Brisbane, Australia) doesa fresh bamboo salad, which is amazing.
Every time it comes to the table it smells exactly like perfectly spiced bamboo furniture, which i think is just fun.
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re: Scargod
My parents have been fortunate to almost always have some source of fresh shoots, so my perception of bamboo shoots was quite different from what the canned variety offers. I remember trying the canned version for the first time as as child, and had to be repeatedly convinced that those were also in fact bamboo shoots as well. IMHO, there is no similarity.
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re: Scargod
Canned bamboo shoots are my least-favorite canned thing. Several times they've tasted kind of tinny or like they were reacting with the metal or just weren't good. Given that I have had bamboo shoots that I did like before, I wonder if the restaurant guy was basically hearing this from his patrons.
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kattyeyes
Apr 5, 2009 07:58 AM
I'm an all-American mutt (Italian/Irish/Polish/Heinz 57). I love bamboo shoots both in stir-fry dishes and soups like Tom Ka Gai. I never associated bamboo shoots with any particular smell--certainly not an offensive one, anyway. And I'd also be disappointed about the change you mentioned to your favorite dish.
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kchurchill5
Apr 5, 2009 07:58 AM
Born in raised in Michigan and I love them. A few of my friends that eat chinese with me love them too. I know get them from Whole Foods and make a few stir frys with them some I have to buy canned, but I still love them. Maybe just more expensive and not available as much. But I would think that shouldn't be a problem for them. I know that sometimes during the year Winter usually they aren't available but that American don't like them just sounds like an excuse.
