Woo Can Cook (live) | Moo Shu Pork (Hecai Daimao)
hello hi everyone! Tonight we're making Chinese Moo Shu Pork or Chinese tacos as some folks know them. The version we are making today is based off of the way my mom makes it, which is known as Hecai Daimao, or mixed veggies with a hat (referring to the egg topping finish). It looks a little bit different from the Moo Shu pork that you are more familiar with, as it prominently features vermicelli rice noodles. There is no recipe for tonight's dinner, but if you have vermicelli noodles, veggies, and flour tortillas, you should be able to follow along with no problem.
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Moo shu Pork is Quick! | Kenji's (quick) Cooking Show
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The classic chinese version of this dish is served as a simple stir fry, but the Chinese-American dish that I make at home originates in 1958 from Joyce Chen's restaurant in Cambridge, MA. The main difference is that the Chinese-American version is served with thin Mandarin pancakes and hoisin sauce. (Some versions of the dish at even more Americanized chain restaurants may include ingredients like cabbage or carrots in place of the day lily and woodear).
I like to add a lot of fresh mushrooms. Sometimes I replace the pork entirely with mushrooms (I also like the aliteration of Moo Shu Mushroom).
There's a version of this dish in my book The Wok ( there's a version I published in The New York Times ( and I have a first-person video on the dish in which a long-haired version of me makes it (
Here's a video on how to make mandarin pancakes (
I also have a recipe in my book), though you can also buy them frozen or just use thin flour tortillas instead.
Woo Can Cook | Mu Shu Pork (PF Chang's)
hello hi hello everyone! Wesley here, this is a recipe adding to our series on Chinese American food hacks, based on the mu shu pork from PF Chang's. This was a fun one to deconstruct cause PF Chang's mu shu pork makes a lot of the decisions in their recipe that you will find in a typical americanized mu shu pork, so it was super fun to take apart and identify the American qualities that come up.
As always, I also took a shot at my own version of mu shu pork, which is loosely based off of my mom's recipe from when I was a kid. As it turns out after discussing this further with my parents, what we were eating was not mu shu pork at all, but a similar dish called hecai daimo, which loosely translates to mixed veggies with an (egg) hat. In addition to the differences in plating, it also prominently features the use of vermicelli rice noodles, which I've never seen anywhere outside of my parent's house. Hope you try it.
Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.
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PF Chang's Version
INGREDIENTS
- 1 boneless pork loin
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 tbsp ginger
- 1/4 head white cabbage
- 2 green onions
- 2 carrots
- 1/4 cup cucumber (about 1 1/2 inches of cucumber)
- 1/2 cup bean sprouts
- 8 oz can bamboo shoots
- 2 wood ear mushrooms
- 2 eggs
- 1 tbsp shaoxing wine
- 1 tsp corn starch
- vegetable oil
- mu shu skins (or flour tortillas)
INGREDIENTS (marinade)
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp shaoxing wine
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
INGREDIENTS (sauce)
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp doubanjiang
- 2 tbsp shaoxing wine
- kosher salt
- hoisin sauce
PREP
- CRUSH and MINCE garlic, set aside
- FINE MINCE ginger, set aside
- THINLY SLICE pork loin, set aside
- SLICE cabbage, set aside
- SEPARATE greens and whites of green onions and slice, set aside
- JULIENNE carrots and cucumbers, set aside
- REHYDRATE wood ear mushrooms in boiling water for 10 minutes, then slice, set aside
- WHISK eggs, then add 1 tbsp corn starch and 1 tsp of corn starch, set aside
- COMBINE pork with all marinade ingredients, and marinate for 30 minutes or up to an hour
- COMBINE all sauce ingredients except hoisin, and set aside
ON THE STOVE
- HEAT wok as hot as possible, then add 4 tbsp vegetable oil, long yao
- ADD pork, reserving the liquid of the marinade, toss until 90% cooked (about 2 minutes), then remove
- WIPE down wok, reheat, add 4 more tbsp vegetable oil, and long yao
- ADD garlic, ginger, and whites of green onions, and sauté until fragrant (about 15 seconds)
- ADD cabbage and carrots, toss and sauté for 1-2 minutes until slightly tender
- ADD mushrooms, bean sprouts, and bamboo shoots, and toss with 3 tbsp of sauce mixture, saute for 1-2 minutes
- ADD pork back to the wok, followed by cucumbers and remaining sauce mixture
- TOSS until combined, and remove
- WIPE down wok, reheat, add 4 more tbsp vegetable oil, and long yao
- ADD egg mixture to the wok, and rotate the wok until as much of the egg makes contact with the wok as possible
- FLIP the egg, then remove onto a cutting board
- SLICE the egg into strips, then add to the stir fry off heat
- SERVE over mu shu skins (or flour tortillas), and finish with greens of green onions and hoisin sauce