Moo shu pork, pork loin strips stir fried with wood ear mushrooms and dried lily buds, are the nicest filling for Mandarin pancakes. Or thin warm tortillas.
What is moo shu pork?
Moo shu or moo shi is a stir fry originating from Northern China. Traditionally, it is a dish cooked for dinner, served with rice, like all stir fries. Its main ingredients are pork strips, rehydrated wood ear mushrooms and either dried lily buds or sliced cucumber or cabbage.
The finished stir fry is combined with scrambled eggs, which give the dish its name: the egg curds look like osmanthus flower, moo shi in Chinese.
But I have skipped the egg in my recipe because I’m a little averse to that addition to my stir fries. My eggs have their firm place at breakfast.
Without egg it is still just as gorgeous a dish, even though should arguably not be called moo shi. And it isn’t, because it its western version, ‘moo shu’ is accepted as the name and that is supposed to mean ‘wood whiskers’ referring to the dried fungus and lily buds. Clear as mud? Probably a little.
Exotic ingredients
If you think this recipe is far from doable at home since it calls for such exotic ingredients as lily buds and wood ear, think again. Packets of dried fungus and lilies are widely available from online Asian stores, they are inexpensive and will last for ever in a store cupboard.
It is completely worth stocking up on a few ‘exotic’ ingredients because guess what – cooking with less common stuff takes away the tedium. And your palate will thank you for a new experience too!
How to serve moo shu?
In China, this is an ordinary stir fry, as I already mentioned. Once it became an immigrant dish though, and travelled across to Europe and America, it went in the fancy direction and turned into a pancake filling.
If you see moo shu in an American Chinese restaurant, it will come with the thin Mandarin pancake stack on the side and extra hoisin sauce, similar to how shredded duck is served.
So Kenji Lopez-Alt, whose recipe this one follows, suggests serving the pork with Mandarin pancakes or the next best alternative: thin flour tortillas.
I have assembled my moo shu in shop-bought, decent quality pancakes for the purpose of this photo session, but when I make it for us at home, I serve it with rice.
And however you decide to serve it, moo shu pork is a stunningly delicious dish, surprisingly easy to make and hugely adaptable.
Adapt moo shu to your taste and cupboard
I’ll say it again: it is completely worth sourcing wood ear mushrooms and lily buds for a new taste and texture experience. Both swell up exponentially when rehydrated in hot water, and they both taste a little earthy. Fungus is slightly slippery in texture, as mushrooms tend to be, and the lilies are soft but crunchy and absorb sauce flavours like a sponge.
But if you dig your heels in and refuse to visit Chinese supermarkets or online delis, fine. You can swap wood ears for any dried mushrooms available in supermarkets and replace the lily with either sliced cucumber, sliced cabbage or a mix of both.
The additional fresh mushrooms bulk out the stir fry and give it more plant substance. Instead of king oyster mushrooms from my recipe, again any fresh mushrooms can be used, even the bog standard white cup mushrooms.
And you can increase the amount of mushrooms, especially if you have an interesting mix that includes some exotic/wild ones, and omit the pork altogether making it thus a vegan dish. And now you know why I skip the egg! Ha, just kidding: I do usually make it with pork.
How to prepare the pork?
Pork loin is extremely easy to cut into neat strips, once you’ve trimmed all the fat and tendons.
To make it extra tender and succulent, wash the pork strips in cold water, then squeeze dry against a strainer’s mesh. The strips are marinated in a mix of Shaoxing wine and soy sauce with a pinch of salt and pepper and some cornflour.
How to prepare the dried ingredients?
If you go down the route of authentic wood ears and lily buds, cover them in bowls with boiling water. They will expand hundredfold, especially the fungus!
When rehydrated, they can be drained and sliced, with the tough centres of the wood ears cut away.
Moo shu stir fry
As with all stir fries, it’s essential to prepare all your ingredients in separate bowls, in the order they will go into the wok.
That means one bowl with the marinated pork, second with the sliced king oyster/your selection of mushrooms. The third bowl will contain sliced lily and fungus together with sliced spring onions, and the sauce should be mixed in the last bowl or a cup.
And then it’s just five minutes of roaring hot wok, tossing and stirring vigorously without crowding the wok, all the ingredients in turn, before reassembling them all again, with the sauce splashed and sizzled around the sides.
If you want to add an egg, either break it in right now, to scramble with the pork and all, or have it cooked beforehand, ready to be stirred into the wok.
Mandarin pancakes
Kenji obviously makes his own pancakes from scratch, but I buy mine – so judge me. You can warm them up following the instruction on the package, which usually means moistening the pancakes before stacking them and wrapping in foil, to briefly heat up in the oven.
If you use tortillas, do likewise, or warm them up in the microwave wrapped in plastic.
Or serve moo shu pork like I do, with plain rice.
More Chinese recipes
Beef and asparagus stir fry with beef so tender you won’t believe it’s a cheaper cut. There’s a secret to a successful beef stir fry and you’d never guess what it is.
Chicken chow mein takeaway style with crispy noodles: 'chow mein' means 'fried noodles'. With stir fried chicken and a salty touch of smoked ham, it's actually much better than a takeaway.
Crispy fried minced pork with noodles called 'ants climbing a tree' in Sichuan cuisine. Traditionally glass vermicelli, my recipe is for egg noodles, so the poor ants have more traction!