Wood Ear Salad
Rehydrated wood ear fungus in black vinegar, garlic and chilli oil. Almost no calories, no cooking to speak of, and a texture nothing else has.
Photograph credit: Wood ear mushroom salad by T.Tseng · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
The Method for Wood Ear Salad
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Soak the wood ear in plenty of cold water 4 hours, until fully swollen and soft.
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Rinse them thoroughly, trim off any hard stem nubs and tear the larger pieces in half.
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Blanch them in boiling water 60 seconds.
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Drain and plunge straight into iced water for 5 minutes, then drain thoroughly.
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Whisk the vinegar, soy sauce, chilli oil, garlic, sesame oil, sugar, salt and Sichuan pepper together.
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Toss the wood ear with the cucumber and the dressing.
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Leave 10 minutes for the dressing to take, then scatter with chilli, coriander, spring onion and sesame seeds.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Things to Watch For
- Cold soak, several hours. Hot water leaves them slack.
- Blanch a minute, then straight into iced water.
- Ten minutes in the dressing before it reaches the table.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- Out of spring onions? A small regular onion, finely sliced, or a few chives stirred in at the end both cover the job.
- Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the chilli. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
About This Recipe
Blanch the soaked wood ear for a full minute and then plunge it into iced water. The blanching removes the faintly muddy taste that soaked-but-raw wood ear carries, and the ice bath is what makes it snap between the teeth rather than feeling rubbery. Soak in cold water rather than hot, over several hours if you can: hot water swells them fast but leaves them slack, and cold-soaked wood ear has noticeably better bite.
To Go With It
Smashed cucumber · Bang bang chicken · A cold beer
Keeping Wood Ear Salad
Refrigerated for 3 days and it improves overnight.
Questions People Ask
How long does Wood Ear Salad take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and 5 minutes of cooking, plus 4 hours of soaking the dried wood ear in cold water, so allow 4 hours 20 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
Nutrition per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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