Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Vegetables from Thailand

Nor-mai-dorng (Thai fermented bamboo shoot)หน่อไม้ดอง

Nor-mai-dorng is thin-sliced bamboo shoot packed tight in an earthen jar under brine and left in the shade until sour, about a month, or about a week when rice-wash water is used. Thailand's community product standard requires the finished pickle to be pH 4.0 or below. It is cooked in soups or fried with meat.

Fully documentedVegetables7 days – 30 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceSmall-scale industry method from the JIRCAS Thai fermented-food card, with salt as a share of the shoot weight. The community standard sets limits for the product, not a recipe.
Bamboo shoots, woody parts trimmedPai-paa, pai-see-sook, pai-dtong or pai-ruak shoots[jircas]
SaltAbout 10 % of the sliced shoot weightDissolved in water or rice-wash water; some makers add dry salt only[jircas]
Water or rice-wash water (nam-sao-kaao)Enough to cover[jircas][tcps1166]

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days – 30 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Bamboo shoots are trimmed and cut into thin slices

Step 1 of 4
Trim and slice the shoots
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactobacillus plantarum
Lactobacillus
Levilactobacillus brevis
Pediococcus acidilactici
Lactic acid bacteria
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

Nor-mai-dorng is thin-sliced bamboo shoot packed tight in an earthen jar under brine and left in the shade until sour, about a month, or about a week when rice-wash water is used. Thailand's community product standard requires the finished pickle to be pH 4.0 or below. It is cooked in soups or fried with meat. Made in 4 steps over 7 days – 30 days. The longest step, close the jar and ferment in the shade, takes 7–30 days (JIRCAS 1995). Salt is 10 % (JIRCAS 1995). Lactobacillus plantarum and other Lactobacillus species and Levilactobacillus brevis, Pediococcus acidilactici, P. pentosaceus, Lactococcus lactis and Limosilactobacillus fermentum, among xylooligosaccharide-fermenting strains isolated from 24 northern Thai Naw Mai Dong samples do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7–30 daysReported[jircas]Close the jar and ferment in the shade
Salt10 %Reported[jircas]Cover with brine
AciditypH up to 4Set[tcps1166]Close the jar and ferment in the shade

What makes this one different

Nor-mai-dorng is the Thai bamboo-shoot pickle made in brine. Rice-wash water cuts the fermentation from about a month to about a week.

Related ferments

Safety

Thailand's community standard for pickled bamboo shoots requires pH 4.0 or below, and limits Staphylococcus aureus to under 200 per gram, E. coli to under 50 per gram (MPN) and yeasts and moulds to no more than 500 per gram. The brine must show no white film or foam arising from the pickling. Fresh bamboo shoots hold cyanogenic glycosides, which release hydrogen cyanide. Food Standards Australia New Zealand says bamboo shoots must be fully cooked and the cooking water thrown away. We found no measure of how much of this the pickle removes, so the cautious choice is to boil it before eating, though no source tests that on the pickle. The sealed jar also depends on acid to hold back Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism. At the least, discard a ferment that does not reach below pH 4.6, the limit used for vegetable ferments; the related northern product can end as high as pH 5.5.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus; Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli (the standard sets limits for both).

History and sources

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

Kanpiengjai and colleagues (2022) describe naw mai dong, the northern Thai bamboo-shoot pickle, as popular in upper northern Thailand. They say the annual mass production period is the early rainy season (May to July), when bamboo shoots are generally abundant. The shoots are collected from the edges of rice fields, around people's homes, in the woods and up on hills [kanpiengjai2022].

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [jircas] JIRCAS, Database of Fermented Foods of Thailand: Nor-mai-dorng (fermented bamboo shoot); microbes cite The traditional fermented foods of Thailand (1995) and a 2023 Food Bioscience paper; read 2026-10-23gov
  2. [tcps1166] Thai Industrial Standards Institute 2006, Thai Community Product Standard มผช.1166/2549, Pickled bamboo shoots (nor-mai dorng) (copy on archive.org)spec
  3. [kanpiengjai2022] Kanpiengjai A., Nuntikaew N., Wongsanittayarak S., Leangnim N., Khanongnuch C. 2022, Isolation of efficient xylooligosaccharides-fermenting probiotic lactic acid bacteria from ethnic pickled bamboo shoot products, Biology 11(5):638, doi:10.3390/biology11050638paper
  4. [fsanz-cassava] Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Cassava and bamboo shoots (general safety text only)gov
  5. [snyder2020] Snyder A., Breidt F., Andress E.L. and Ingham B.H. 2020, Manufacture of traditionally fermented vegetable products, best practice for small businesses and retail food establishments, Food Protection Trends 40(4), 251–263 (general safety text only)paper