Bean Sprouts and Shirasu Stir Fry

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3 ingredient dish! Bean Sprouts and Shirasu Stir Fry is easy and delicious. Stir fry bean sprouts with fish sauce and shirasu (tiny salted and dried fish). Simple to make and packed with flavor. Enjoy with rice ^_^

We love cooking with bean sprouts (so healthy! so tasty!) at home. Usually we make a simple Bean Sprouts Stir Fry...

...but when we want things a notch fancier but still keep it easy, we make Bean Sprouts and Shirasu Stir Fry!

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Ingredients
What Is Shirasu?
Instructions
Substitutions and Variations
Storage
Top Tip
FAQ
Bean Sprouts and Shirasu Stir Fry
Bean Sprouts and Shirasu Stir Fry
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Ingredients

Here's what you'll need:

Bean sprouts
Shirasu (tiny salted and dried fish)
Fish sauce

See recipe card for quantities.

What Is Shirasu?

Shirasu is very tiny whitebait / immature fish. It's usually sardines, but can be many other types of fish as well.

You can purchase shirasu in different forms: raw, blanched, dried, and very dried.

The one that we usually see at the Japanese market is dried shirasu (pictured above). Find them in the refrigerated section.

Shirasu is a versatile ingredient and makes everything a little more tasty ^_^

Instructions

Let's get cooking!

Prepare the bean sprouts.
Soak the bean sprouts in a big bowl of cold water for a few minutes to clean. Remove and rinse a few times in a colander. Set aside.

Crisp the shirasu.
In a large pan over medium-high heat, add a little oil and the shirasu. Pan fry for 3-5 minutes, until the shirasu is crisp and slightly golden. Pour onto a plate.

Cook the bean sprouts.
In the same pan, add little more oil and the bean sprouts. Season with the fish sauce. Stir fry until just cooked through. This should only take a few minutes.

Add back half the shirasu.
Add half of the shirasu back into the pan and gently mix. Then pour everything onto a plate (or shallow bowl).

Top with the other half of the shirasu.
Sprinkle the other half of the shirasu on top.

Eat hot and enjoy! Best with a big bowl of rice. ^_^

Substitutions and Variations

Here are a few tasty ideas:

Spicy - Fold finely chopped chili peppers into the stir fry. We like to use Thai chili pepper or Hawaiian chili pepper (or you can even add a splash of Chili Pepper Water)
Meat - For double protein add in some ground pork. Stir fry the ground pork with a pinch of salt (or splash of soy sauce) right before you add the bean sprouts (Step 3 of the recipe below).
Green Onions - We love green onions. Chop two stalks of green onions. Separate the white and the green parts. Stir fry the white parts for 1 minute right before adding in the bean sprouts (Step 3 of the recipe below). Then fold in the green parts right after the bean sprouts are done cooking.

Enjoy!

Storage

The dish is best fresh when the shirasu is crisp! But if you have leftovers, they will keep in the refrigerator for 1-2 days. Reheat in the microwave in 30 second increments. Store in a sealed container.

Top Tip

A big part of what makes this dish tasty is not just the shirasu, but that it's crispy shirasu.

That makes pan frying the shirasu (Step 2 of the recipe below) important. Don't skip that skip and make sure you fry the shirasu until it's very, very crisp but not burnt.

We mix half of the crispy shirasu back into the bean sprouts and top with the other half. But if you like it to be all crispy shirasu, then you can top the dish with all of the crispy shirasu right before serving (no need to mix half into the bean sprouts).

FAQ

What dish to pair with this recipe?

You need rice! This can be a simple stand alone meal with rice.

If you want to round it out with another dish or two, we pair this with simple but wonderful classics like Shoyu Chicken, Hot Sesame Oil Tofu, or Rafute (Okinawan Shoyu Pork).

Looking for other bean sprout recipes?

Hooray! Try this very easy and good Bean Sprouts Stir Fry or make Korean Bean Sprouts (it's one of the most popular side dish selections when you order a Korean Plate Lunch in Hawaii).

We also incorporate bean sprouts into Banh Uot (Vietnamese Rice Noodles / Sheets) and Turkey Jook.

Do you have to trim the ends of the bean sprouts?

Only if you have time ^_^

My grandma cooked many wonderful meals for us growing up. She was always diligent about make sure every single bean sprout was nicely picked/trimmed at the ends (none of those stringy bean sprout tails!)

We don't have as much time to cook these days. Usually we're just trying to make a simple but healthy meal. We don't pick through every individual bean sprout but we make an effort to snap off the extra long stringy tails.