A healthy and flavorful stir fry of tofu skin (yuba), wood ear mushrooms, and cucumber! Wood Ear Mushroom Stir Fry is a simple dish full of different textures. It's seasoned with garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Pair with a big bowl of rice for a tasty meal ^_^
We love to eat wood ear mushrooms!
From making chilled wood ear mushroom salads to a simple stir fry like this, wood ear mushrooms are versatile and delicious.
Today's recipe is packed with vegetables and wonderful ingredients. Wood ear mushrooms, cucumbers, yuba / tofu skin, lots of garlic!
Stir fry it all together and season with garlic and pantry ingredients like oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. We mix in a bunch of chopped green onions at the end to bring it all together.
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Ingredients
Here's what you'll need:
- Wood ear mushrooms, rehydrated - See below "Top Tip" section on how to rehydrate wood ear mushrooms. You can also substitute wood ear mushrooms with black fungus.
- Yuba / tofu skin (fresh, frozen, or dried) - Fresh yuba is the best if you can find it. We love the fresh yuba sheets from Hodo. We like to keep packages of frozen yuba in the freezer. The frozen version is good to have on hand (can buy this in the freezer section of Chinese markets). Dried yuba is also great because they keep in the pantry for a long time. You just need to rehydrate them before using. Purchase dried yuba / tofu skin / beancurd sticks online or at Chinese markets. The dried versions are much cheaper in the store, so purchase them in person if you can. Note: fresh yuba is delicate so handle with care. Dried yuba is more hardy. Frozen yuba is in the middle. Three different textures, and all delicious.
- Cucumber
- Garlic - Feel free to double or triple the garlic if you'd like!
- Soy sauce
- Oyster sauce - Use a vegetarian oyster sauce if you want to make the recipe vegetarian.
- Sesame oil
- Green onion
See recipe card for quantities.
Instructions
Let's get cooking!
Cut yuba into 1-2 inch pieces. Blanch the yuba for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.
Blanch the rehydrated wood ear mushrooms for 1 minute (see below "Top Tip" section for instructions on how to rehydrate the mushrooms). Drain and set aside.
In a large saucepan over medium high heat, saute the garlic for 2 minutes. You don't need the garlic to completely brown, just to have a little color.
Then add the wood ear mushrooms and...
...add the yuba. Stir fry for a minute.
Add the sliced cucumber and cook for another minute.
Add the soy sauce and cook for another 2 minutes. Then add the green onions.
Finally, drizzle in sesame oil. Gently mix and serve. Pair with a big bowl of rice! Eat and enjoy ^_^
Substitutions and Variations
Here are a few popular ideas to get you started:
- Make it vegetarian - Replace the regular oyster sauce with vegetarian oyster sauce. It's not a perfect substitute but comes pretty close, especially if making this vegetarian is important to you.
- Black fungus - Replace the wood ear mushrooms with black fungus.
- Add pork - Use thinly sliced pork and marinate the meat with cornstarch, water, and soy sauce. Quickly stir fry the pork for a few minutes. Then remove the pork from the pan. Make the recipe as is. And the pork back into the pan right after adding in the soy sauce (Step 6 in the recipe card below).
- Tofu - Can't find yuba or tofu skin? No worries, you can substitute it with firm tofu. Dice it into medium sized pieces. It's most delicious with yuba or tofu skin though, worth the extra effort to seek it out.
- Change the proportions - Feel free to use more or less of any of the main ingredients. Love cucumber? Double it! Have extra yuba on hand? Add more! It's a very flexible recipe.
Enjoy!
Storage
Leftovers will keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. Store in a sealed container. To reheat, microwave in 30 second increments.
Top Tip
Don't forget to budget time to rehydrate the wood ear mushrooms. The actual cooking time for this recipe is short, but the main ingredient is rehydrated wood ear mushrooms.
How to rehydrate wood ear mushrooms? Easy!
Rinse the dried mushrooms a few times to clean them. Then place the mushrooms in a large bowl and cover it with room temperature water.
Let soak at room temperature for 1 hour until the mushrooms are soft and bendy. The mushrooms should triple in size. That's it! The mushrooms are now rehydrated.
After they're rehydrated, they're ready for cooking. Popular cooking methods for wood ear mushrooms include boiling, steaming, or stir frying. Use the mushrooms whole or slice them into thin strips.
For this recipe we boil the mushrooms for a minute and then quickly stir fry them.
FAQ
Try our Wood Ear Mushroom Salad!
Yes. Black fungus and wood ear mushrooms are interchangeable for most home cooking recipes (and any recipe on this blog that calls for either).
First you definitely need a big bowl of rice! And since this is a vegetable dish, we like to pair with a simply and tasty protein like Shoyu Chicken and Steamed Ginger Chicken.
Wood Ear Mushroom Stir Fry Recipe
Wood Ear Mushroom Stir Fry
Ingredients
- 2 cups wood ear mushrooms rehydrated
- 1 cup yuba / tofu skin / beancurd sticks fresh, frozen, or dried and rehydrated
- 1 small cucumber thinly sliced
- 6 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 stalk green onion chopped
Instructions
- Cut yuba into 1-2 inch pieces. Blanch the yuba for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.
- Blanch the wood ear mushrooms for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.
- In a large saucepan over medium high heat, saute the garlic for 2 minutes.
- Then add the wood ear mushrooms and yuba. Stir fry for a minute.
- Add the cucumber and cook for another minute.
- Add the soy sauce and cook for another 2 minutes. Then add the green onions.
- Finally, drizzle in sesame oil. Gently mix and serve. Eat and enjoy ^_^
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Haven't had these in a long time; at least 12+ years since my late wife passed away. She was Chinese and we used to eat a lot of Chinese types of food back then. My current wife is a haole girl from Iowa and not into that kind of stuff so we never make stuff like this. In the old days back when I was a kid, we used to harvest something similar that grew of dead tree stumps in the forest back on Maui. We used to call them "pepeiao", which is Hawaiian for ear. I think they were, or are similar, to wood ear mushrooms, but they are crunchy and almost tasteless. They were added to various dishes to give more texture than flavor as I recall.
Hi Alan! If I'm not mistaken, I think pepeiao is the same as black fungus. Super similar to wood ear and mainly enjoyed for the texture. I've never seen them "in the wild" before...so amazing you we able to harvest them as a kid!
- Kathy
Thanks for the info. I used to harvest those from the forest all the time as a kid. Our parents used them in a variety of ways when cooking. But I don't think I will ever see them again "in the wild".