Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Vegetables from Taiwan

Jiang sun (Taiwanese fermented bamboo shoots)醬筍

Jiang sun is ma bamboo shoot cut at the joints, soaked, salted briefly and then packed into jars with rice wine and green koji for two months. In the form made with dochi (fermented soybeans), Lactobacillus plantarum takes over within a day.

Fully documentedVegetables2 months

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceFarm-kitchen production; the source gives no amounts for the salt, wine or koji.
Ma bamboo shoots30–50 cm longCut into pieces at the joints[moa2006]
SaltSprinkled on, then the salty liquid is poured off after an hour[moa2006]
Rice wine (米酒)[moa2006]
Green koji (綠麴)The form Chen et al. studied used dochi (fermented soybeans)[moa2006][chen2010]
Startergreen koji (綠麴) in the Tanzi recipe; dochi (fermented soybeans) in the form Chen et al. studied

Total time across the recorded steps: 2 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Bamboo shoots are cut at the joints and soak in water

Step 1 of 5
Cut the shoots at the joints and soak in water
Time
2 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactobacillus plantarum
Moulds

Output: soaked bamboo pieces.

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

Jiang sun is ma bamboo shoot cut at the joints, soaked, salted briefly and then packed into jars with rice wine and green koji for two months. In the form made with dochi (fermented soybeans), Lactobacillus plantarum takes over within a day. Made in 5 steps over 2 months. The longest step, steep in the jar, takes 2 months (Wang Qiyan (Tanzi Farmers' Association) 2006). Lactobacillus plantarum does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2 monthsReported[moa2006]Steep in the jar

What makes this one different

Jiang sun is steeped with rice wine and green koji in the Tanzi recipe; the form studied by Chen et al. 2010 used dochi (fermented soybeans).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Dochi jiang sun (the form studied by Chen et al. 2010)Shoots fermented with dochi (fermented soybeans) in a bucket. The mixed lactic bacteria of the dochi and shoots were mostly replaced by L. plantarum after 1 day; 57 LAB isolates were collected.

Safety

As a general hazard of bamboo shoots, a 2026 study of fermented bamboo shoots reports that raw shoots contain cyanogenic glycosides such as taxiphyllin, which can release toxic hydrogen cyanide if the shoots are not properly processed. The same paper says fermentation helps reduce these compounds through plant and microbial enzymes, but it studied another product. The method on this page soaks the raw shoots for 2 hours and has no boiling step [moa2006], and no source we read measures cyanide in jiang sun, so do not assume steeping removes it. Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety advises peeling, soaking, cutting small and cooking bamboo shoots thoroughly in boiling water [cfs-hk]. Boil the pieces before eating them.

History and sources

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

The Ministry of Agriculture article describes a Tanzi farm women's group making jiang sun from lower-grade ma bamboo shoots in the early 2000s, as a taste remembered from grandmothers' time.

Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [cfs-hk] Centre for Food Safety, Hong Kong, Food Safety Focus no. 13, natural toxins in food plantsgov
  2. [moa2006] Wang Qiyan (Tanzi Farmers' Association) 2006, 漬筍尖兵 掘出傳奇-潭子鄉田媽媽的第二班 (the jiang sun method), 農政與農情 no. 167, Taiwan Ministry of Agriculturegov
  3. [chen2010] Chen Y.-S., Wu H.-C., Liu C.-H., Chen H.-C., Yanagida F. 2010, Isolation and characterization of lactic acid bacteria from jiang-sun (fermented bamboo shoots), a traditional fermented food in Taiwan, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 90:1977–1982 (abstract)paper
  4. [das2026] Das R., Tamang B., 2026, Metagenomic insights reveal beta-glucosidase-producing lactic acid bacteria from Miyamikhri with taxiphyllin degradation potential, Scientific Reports (general hazard of bamboo shoots)paper