We've been cooking and eating our bamboo shoots for years and really like them and very much recommend them. They're really a treat to us, especially at this time of year when there aren't many fresh vegetables coming out of the garden besides greens. We use them in more or less traditional Asian-type stir-fries together with vegetables and/or meat, but we've also enjoyed them with fried eggs for breakfast or simply as a side dish sauteed in butter, also sometimes in soup. Most of you have probably eaten bamboo shoots in Chinese food, but we've enjoyed fresh bamboo shoots so much more than canned bamboo shoots or however restaurant shoots are preserved. Even after boiling they remain firm, almost crunchy, very roughly like a carrot that's been sauteed without being boiled. So the texture is very nice together with softer vegetables or with meat. The taste is comparable to fairly mild starchy foods like rice or Irish potatoes or bread, and it somewhat fills the role of a starch for us, even though they're nutritionally closer to asparagus (which is also a shoot vegetable.) If any of you are eating anything like the keto diet, which seems to be popular recently, you might especially appreciate a vegetable that can substitute well for actual starchy vegetables. Because the taste is fairly mild bamboo shoots are often used together with stronger flavored vegetables and sauces, but we've definitely enjoyed them in very simple ways, too, like just sauteeing in butter.
Although we've been eating and enjoying bamboo shoots for years, we're still experimenting and figuring out whether it's better to soak the shoots in water before boiling and how long is best to boil them, so we don't feel ready to advise others on those details. For that you can probably find better recommendations online from people with more knowledge and years of eating bamboo shoots than we have. As we understand it, bamboo shoots (at least of the species we have) shouldn't be eaten raw but should definitely be boiled as at least a first step. If you have any experience doing anything with fresh bamboo shoots (from harvesting to cooking to preserving for later consumption), we'd love to hear about experience and recommendations. One thing we haven't seen online but that seems to be working very well for us is to cut the shoot in half lengthwise as the first processing step. That seems to make it a lot easier to separate the outer leaves and remove the shoot inside.
The shoots we're harvesting now are from a species called moso. We've read that moso provides about 80% of the bamboo shoots eaten in China, and if you've had Chinese food in America, it's probably the species of bamboo you've already eaten. We'll have shoots from another type called vivax that shoots later this month and into May. There's a small but noticeable difference in taste. Our family is basically undecided on which we like better. Try them both! They're both about the same size. A single shoot can weigh up to around 2 pounds before processing, but the shoot is inside a leafy, shuck-like portion that isn't edible, and similar to asparagus, we discard the lower portion of the actual shoot because it's tougher and more fibrous than the top portion. So there's a large amount of what you'll get that you won't eat. If you're going to use the shoots as just a small part of a stir-fry with lots of other vegetables you might use as little as half of a shoot per portion, but if you want the bamboo shoots as a larger part of a meal you might want more like one or two shoots per person. We haven't weighed and calculated an average shoot weight yet, but we're guessing it will be around 1-1/2 pounds per shoot, so if you're ordering under 3 pounds we'd recommend ordering by the shoot, but for larger orders feel free to order by the pound or by the shoot count. As vegetables go bamboo shoots seem to have a relatively short storage life (which is probably why most Americans have never seen a fresh edible bamboo shoot in a store or anywhere else), so we'd recommend boiling them very soon, after which point it seems like they'll keep fine for a few days in the fridge until you stir-fry them or do whatever else you're going to do with them.
