Moyashi Bean Sprouts
An easy Japanese-style bean sprout stir-fry recipe with lots of veggies. Crisp textures and flavorful– add shrimp, chicken, or tofu. Easily adapted to make it vegetarian.
Ingredients
For Shrimp
- 100-150 grams shrimp about 10 medium size raw shrimp
- 1 tbsp cooking sake
- 1 tbsp potato starch
- 1-2 pinches sea salt
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 2-3 cloves fresh garlic medium size
For Vegetable Sti Fry
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- ⅓ onion about ½ cup chopped
- ½ -1 carrot medium size (to make ¾ cup julienne- sliced)
- 1 cup cabbage chopped
- 1-2 stalks green onion to make make ½ to ¾ cup sliced
- 1 bag moyashi bean sprouts
- 2 pinches sea salt
- 1 tbsp soy sauce (or gluten free alternative)
- 1 tbsp chicken soup stock
- 1 tsp cooking sake
For Garnish
- 2-3 dashes aonori seaweed powder
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar optional
Instructions
Prepare ingredients
- Peel and clean shrimp (if needed).
- Use a strainer to rinse off shrimp under the faucet. Then, pat dry with paper towel.
- Soak shrimp in mixture of sake, potato starch, and a 1-2 pinches of salt.
- Peel garlic cloves. Slice garlic cloves crosswise and chop into smaller pieces. Set aside.
- Chop off the portion of onion you're going to use. Peel the onion. Slice with the grain into half moon slices (about 2cm wide). Set chopped onion aside.
- Rinse clean carrot in water. Peel half of a carrot. Chop off the peeled portion of carrot. Then, slice the carrot lengthwise into julienne sticks.
- Add carrot slices to a bowl or cup. Add cooking sake and let the carrots soak.
- Cut off two short stalks of green onion. Rinse clean in water. Slice green onion crosswise into about 2 - 3 cm wide slices.
- Soak green onion in sake with the carrots.
- Using your fingers, squeeze the green onions to help it absorb the sake.
- Rinse clean and chop cabbage into bite-size pieces.
- Using a strainer, rinse off bean sprouts.
Cooking Garlic and Shrimp
- Pre-heat fry pan on low heat.
- Add 1 tablespoon of sesame oil to fry pan.
- Once sesame oil warms up, add chopped garlic to the pan.
- Stirring with a spatula, cook garlic for 1 - 1.5 minutes.
- Once garlic begins to brown, add shrimp to the pan.
- Turn the heat up slightly. Stir shrimp and garlic from time to time with a spatula.
- Once shrimp begin to brown, remove shrimp and garlic from pan. Set aside on a plate.
Cooking Vegetables
- Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Blanch bean sprouts for one minute. Then drain them using a strainer. Set aside while stir-frying the vegetables.
- Heat fry pan on low heat.
- Add 1 tablespoon of sesame oil to fry pan.
- Once sesame oil warms up, add chopped onion to the pan.
- Stir onions occasionally. Cook onions until it softens and the edges begin to brown.
- Then add the julienne-sliced carrots. Turn the heat up to medium to medium high.
- Stirring with a spatula often, cook carrot for about 2 minutes or until the begin to soften.
- Then, add cabbage and spring onion to the pan.
- Continue to stir often with a spatula to prevent burning.
- Once cabbage softens and begins to brown, add moyashi.
- Continue to stir with spatula.
- Add 2 pinches of salt, soy sauce, and chicken stock, and potato starch. Stir together until all the potato starch is mixed in.
- Add sake and mix in with spatula.
- Finally, add the cooked shrimp with garlic. Mix together with spatula.
- Add freshly ground pepper to season. Stir again with spatula.
- Top with rice vinegar or sushi vinegar (optional but recommended!)
- Sprinkle aonori on top (optional but recommended!)
Notes
Potato starch on the shrimp make it easy for the garlic to stick to the pan and burn. To prevent burning, it's easier to keep the heat low. You may need to repeatedly scrape the garlic off the pan so they don't burn.
Because the potato starch sticks to the pan, I usually wash the pan after I cook the shrimp before I stir fry the vegetables. If you are using a non-stick pan, this may not be necessary.
Japanese leek also work as a substitute for green onion.
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