Moo shu pork
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| Moo shu pork | |
|---|---|
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| Chinese name | |
| Simplified: | 木须肉 |
| Traditional: | 木須肉 |
| Hanyu Pinyin: | mù xū ròu |
Moo shu pork (literally "wood shavings pork") is a pseudo-Chinese dish served primarily in Chinese restaurants in the United States. It is of northern Chinese origin, and is believed to have first appeared on the menus of U.S. Chinese restaurants in the 1970s.[1]
[edit] Description
Moo shu pork consists of sliced or shredded pork chop meat and scrambled eggs, stir fried in sesame and/or peanut oil together with cabbage (usually the predominant ingredient), carrot, wood ear mushrooms (black fungus), day lily buds, bean sprouts, and scallions. Shiitake mushrooms, bok choy, bamboo shoots, snow pea pods, and bell peppers are sometimes also used. The dish is seasoned with minced ginger and garlic, soy sauce, and cooking wine (usually huangjiu, although dry sherry is sometimes substituted). The cabbage, carrots, and wood ears are generally sliced into long, thin strips before cooking. While these are the typical ingredients, there is some variation in the recipe from chef to chef or restaurant to restaurant. Monosodium glutamate, salt, sugar, corn starch, and ground white pepper are also often added. In less authentic restaurants, the wood ears and day lily buds (ingredients less familiar to most American customers) are often omitted. Because finely sliced cabbage and carrots make up a large portion of the recipe's ingredients, pre-bagged coleslaw mix is often used to save the time of slicing these vegetables.
Moo shu pork is served with hoisin sauce and several thin, tortilla-like wrappers made of flour, called "moo shu pancakes" (Chinese: 木须饼, pinyin: mù xū bǐng; or 薄饼, pinyin: báo bǐng, literally "thin pancakes"); these are similar to those served with Peking Duck. Some inauthentic North American Chinese restaurants have begun serving flour tortillas in place of the traditional moo shu wrappers.
Although most commonly made with pork, the dish can be prepared with another meat or seafood in place of the pork; generally only a single meat is used. If made with chicken instead of pork, the dish is called moo shu chicken, and the name is similarly altered if prepared with beef or shrimp. If prepared without any meat, it is called moo shu vegetables or moo shu tofu.
[edit] Etymology
The name of the dish comes from the fact that the thin vegetable strips resemble wood shavings (mù xū; 木须 or 木鬚 in Chinese). Such shavings (which resembled shredded wheat) were used as a packing material for shipping fragile objects until approximately the middle of the 20th century.
