Stir-Fried Bees With Bamboo Shoots- Hoa Binh’s Speciality You Must Try

Visiting Mai Chau, Hoa Binh, you not only admire poetic scenery with the cool streams winding around the green fields, small sticky floor houses nestled on the foot of the mountain and the Thai girls in the traditional clothings but also enjoy a lot of specialties with delicious aromas such as burning rice, barbecue skewers, sip a cup of corn wine and especially, you cannot ignore the indispensable dish - stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots.

A gift of the deep forest

Wild bees and bamboo shoots are available things in Hoa Binh forests. Local people often take it to sell or cook the delicious dishes. Stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots is a dish that sounds so strange but it is one of the indispensable dishes for the local people in Mai Chau whenever guests come to their houses, they consider it as a special dish to feast the guests. But bees appear only in the spring and summer and especially in the summer.

Spring is the best season to go to Mai Chau because the forests is covered by the vividly colors of flowers. At this time, the bees start to go out to collect nectar, and the plants wake up to sprout after a long sleep in winter. When the wildflowers bloom, the bees start to leave out of its nest to seek for nectar to nurture the young bees. The young and fresh bamboo shoots reach out of the soil to take the new fresh sunlight. That is the time the bamboo shoots start to turn bitter and people start to collect it. Because of the experience in the forest of local people, its taste is a mix between the sweet and bitter flavors, but after it rains, the bamboo shoots will turn into bitterness very quickly. And we cannot use it.

So when you come to Mai Chau right at that time, you are able to enjoy this delicious and special dish.

Baby bees

How to cook stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots

The ingredients of stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots

The cooking recipe for this dish is quite simple but it requires the accuracy of the ingredient choice. The main ingredients of stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots are bees and sour bamboo shoots as its name.

The secret to select the fat and delicious bees is that the types of bees have to be clearly classified after taking it from the bee nest. If the bees are old and brown, people will use it as a medicine to treat some kinds of diseases or soak it into the wine bottle, while bees are young and white, they will use it to cook this dish.

About sour bamboo shoots, we need to choose bamboo shoots that are still young. We shouldn’t choose the old shoots to ensure the taste of the dish when we enjoy it.

Sour bamboo shoots

The best way to cook stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots

After selecting bees, bees are washed with water, then picked out to drain. In addition, it is necessary to prepare some other ingredients such as onions, peppers, spices. Putting onions into the oil pan and stirring it until the onions change yellow and fragrant. Then the bee will be put to roast together. Continuously stirring to avoid the bees burned or irregularly cooked. You stop cooking when bees change golden.

Bamboo shoots are thinly sliced and put on frying pan until it ripens, then we put the bee to roast together. Stirring evenly to ripen and then we have a stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots dish. The final step is pouring it into a plate and decorating it as beautiful as possible.

Stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots

The best way to enjoy stir-fried bees and bamboo shoots

It is a dish local people eat in the summer. They often eat it with the vegetable pickles and sliced chilies.

How great it is when you have a long trip in the hot summer sun, then sitting in a cool house with a cozy cup of sweet corn wine and aromatic stir-fried bees with bamboo shoots. This is such an unforgettable memory in Mai Chau that you never have twice in other places. Forgetting the heat outside, local people and you sit around the tray, enjoy that dish and listen to the house owner telling about the old stories. That is the time we can feel the full taste of nature and life in Mai Chau.

Come to Mai Chau homestay tour, you will have a chance to join in many local activities and enjoy the stir-fried bees and bamboo shoots as well as Mai Chau’s specialties that are both strange and familiar. That definitely brings you many kinds of emotions you never experience. If this information is helpful for you or you have any questions, please contact us. Have a nice trip!