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Vegetables from Arunachal Pradesh, India

Ekung, eup and hirring

Ekung, eup and hirring are bamboo shoots fermented in bamboo baskets for one to three months in Arunachal Pradesh. Hirring is made from the cut tender tips, and eup is fermented like ekung and then sun-dried for 5–10 days. They are non-salted products fermented mainly by lactic acid bacteria.

Fully documentedVegetables35 days – 3.3 months

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional process with no fixed batch size or amounts in the sources. They describe only the shoots packed in bamboo baskets, and call the products non-salted.
Young bamboo shootsWhole young shoots for ekung and eup; for hirring, the tender tip cut into 2–3 pieces or flattened[das2024]
No saltThese are non-salted acidic products[sonar2014]
Starternatural fermentation

Total time across the recorded steps: 35 days – 3.3 months

Start
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What changes: Young bamboo shoots are prepared, and for hirring the tender tips are cut or flattened

Step 1 of 4
Prepare the shoots
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactococcus
Pediococcus
Lactobacillus plantarum
Lactobacillus xylosus
Lactic acid bacteria

Output: young shoots, or tender tips cut into 2–3 pieces or flattened for hirring.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Ekung, eup and hirring are bamboo shoots fermented in bamboo baskets for one to three months in Arunachal Pradesh. Hirring is made from the cut tender tips, and eup is fermented like ekung and then sun-dried for 5–10 days. They are non-salted products fermented mainly by lactic acid bacteria. Made in 4 steps over 35 days – 3.3 months. The longest step, ferment in the baskets, takes 30 days – 3 months (Das R 2024). Lactococcus, dominant in ekung and Pediococcus, 53.2 % of the community in hirring do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 days – 3 monthsReported[das2024]Ferment in the baskets
AciditypH 3.9–4Reported[behera2021]Ferment in the baskets

What makes this one different

The three are fermented in bamboo baskets and are non-salted. Eup adds a sun-drying step; the dried product (eepe) is dark brown with a stronger flavour and a longer shelf life.

Related ferments

Variants

  • KupeTender tips separated, fermented, then sun-dried for 7–10 days.

Safety

A 2026 study says fermented bamboo shoots in general carry cyanogenic glycosides that need detoxification; it gives no cyanide measurement for ekung, eup or hirring. In a survey EFSA cites, raw bamboo shoots held 24–550 mg HCN/kg and pickled ones 9.6–44 mg/kg, and another study it cites found boiling removed about 80–95 %, yet boiled shoots in that survey still held 28–73 mg/kg, so boiling lowers the cyanide rather than clearing it. The 2026 study's 16 reconstructed genomes of lactic bacteria, from six products including ekung and hirring and sampled at about a week of fermentation, showed no virulence genes and no mobile genetic elements, but 13 carried vancomycin-resistance genes, which the authors think are likely natural to these bacteria. Its whole-sample DNA also held other antibiotic-resistance genes, with β-lactam genes mostly in ekung and three other products. None of this says anything about cyanide.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [das2024] Das R., Tamang B., Najar I.N., Bam M., Rai P.K. et al. 2024, Probiotic yeast characterization and fungal amplicon metagenomics analysis of fermented bamboo shoot products from Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, Heliyon 10(20), e39500paper
  2. [das2026] Das R., Kumar R., Tamang B. et al. 2026, Microbial community structure, functional potential, probiotic signatures, and MAG reconstruction of fermented bamboo shoots from Northeast India, FEMS Microbes 7, xtag032paper
  3. [sonar2014] Sonar N.R. and Halami P.M. 2014, Phenotypic identification and technological attributes of native lactic acid bacteria present in fermented bamboo shoot products from North-East India, Journal of Food Science and Technologypaper
  4. [behera2021] Behera P. and Balaji S. 2021, Health benefits of fermented bamboo shoots, the twenty-first century green gold of Northeast India, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology 193(6):1800–1812 (a review; the ekung and hirring pH values are quoted from its reference 13)paper
  5. [efsa2019] EFSA CONTAM Panel 2019, Evaluation of the health risks related to the presence of cyanogenic glycosides in foods other than raw apricot kernels, EFSA Journal 17:e05662, doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2019.5662gov