Eating Bamboo in Springtime

Much like chestnuts are fall food and are great mixed in with rice, bamboo shoots are a springtime food.

It's the season when the new bamboo shoots start to come up, and where they are unwanted, get dug up. Conveniently, bamboo shoots can be eaten if they are boiled. It's not just for pandas.

If you search your region, there is likely a bamboo shoot digging たけのこ堀り experience you can participate in, on property owned by the person organizing the event. It's not proper to dig up bamboo shoots on someone else's property. It seems like the stuff grows everywhere and like weeds, but it is also expensive to buy.

It is early in the season, but I've seen large fresh bamboo shoots in supermarkets in the last week for 1000 yen and up a piece.

I think it's easer to buy the prepared type, which is available year round, and avoid the bother of peeling off all the outer leaves. It's also really affordable compared with the fresh type.

I found a packet of small take no ko in Max Value for 298 yen. It is organic, but we joked that the stuff grows underground and hardly has any need for pesticides normally. I experienced some weird white sandy oozy stuff between the layers after cutting them in half, and it was a pain to wash off. I'm not sure what that was as I haven't seen it before, but probably some naturally occurring silicon? I didn't get a photo.

First the excess liquid inside of the packet of 'boiled in water' (水煮) take no ko was removed, then they were thinly sliced and cut into large bite size. A bit of the shoots were added to a salad, but the majority of it was used for mixed rice (混ぜご飯).

I prepared two cups of brown rice as usual, then added a bunch of bamboo shoots and some tsuyu (soy sauce also works) on top and cooked normally. 

When the rice is done, it needs to be mixed well to blend in all the pieces of bamboo shoot and distribute the browned from tsuyu parts more evenly.

We ate the mixed rice for breakfast with a lightly fried egg on top, along with some fried toumyou (bean sprouts) and miso soup.

Because I made two cups of rice and added lots of bamboo shoots, there was plenty to also make two decently sized onigiri for our lunches. I thought it wasn't salty enough so I added some salt and iri goma (sesame seeds).

Another popular way to eat bamboo shoots is boiled with other seasonal vegetables in a traditional way. Nimono (boiled stuff) is usually made with dashi like kombu seaweed and katsuobushi (shaved bonito flakes), mirin, and soy sauce. It's common in prepared meals at supermarkets in spring.

The taste of bamboo shoots is almost nothing and the texture is crunchy even after cooking. I'm not sure why, but some people love it. I mostly think it's cool to be able to eat bamboo and enjoy the seasonality of it. 

Give it a try for yourself.