MUZIChinese Matrix
Shandong Cuisine · FFET10311
Thin slices of pork, scrambled egg and wood ear stir-fried together; the home version has no pancakes.
A white porcelain plate holds thin pork tenderloin slices, yellow scrambled egg, dark wood ear, lily buds, bamboo shoots, scallion and ginger, coated in glossy brown sauce, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
Represented by the cooking of Jinan and the Jiaodong coast, strong in quick-fire and braising methods, with stock-making as its hallmark.
Mu xu rou (also written with the characters mu xi rou) is a stir-fry of thin slices of pork, scrambled egg and wood ear, and cooks add cucumber, lily buds or bamboo shoots. It belongs to Shandong cuisine, with versions from the Confucian family kitchen, Beijing and Hebei; the accounts give no further city details. In American Chinese restaurants it is served with pancakes and hoisin sauce, which differs from the home dish in China. No dated Chinese text was found, so this entry gives no year.
Mu xu rou is a stir-fry of thin slices of pork, scrambled egg and wood ear; cooks add cucumber, lily buds or bamboo shoots, and the name is also written with the characters mu xi rou.1,2,3,5
No dated Chinese text was found. Its arrival in American Chinese restaurants is placed in the mid-1960s, but the cited reports remain unchecked, and another account's year conflicts with its cited report's date, so this entry gives no definitive year.1,2
Mu xu rou belongs to Shandong cuisine, with bamboo shoots in the original Confucian family kitchen version and variants from Beijing and Hebei; the accounts give no further city details. The American restaurant version comes with pancakes and hoisin sauce.1,2,4
One home version marinates thin slices of pork in soy sauce, cooking wine, starch, sesame oil and ginger for 20 to 30 minutes, scrambles the eggs separately and sets them aside, sears the pork, adds scallions, cucumber and soaked wood ear, seasons with wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce and water, and returns the eggs, with no pancakes. Another home version leaves out the cucumber and uses lily buds and bamboo shoots, again cooking the eggs and pork separately before tossing them together.3,5
No text was found that explains why the dish is made this way; 2 accounts of the name are given in the legend below.1,2
By the mid-1960s, American Chinese restaurants were serving a version with pancakes and hoisin sauce, though the reports supporting this timing remain unchecked. Home and restaurant versions differ; the restaurant version has cabbage, carrots, shiitake mushrooms and wood ear and comes with homemade pancakes.2,3,4
Legend has it that the scrambled egg looks like the blossoms of the osmanthus tree, called mu xi, so the dish was named mu xi rou. Another account says people avoided the plain words for fried egg and said mu xi rou instead, and the name was later also written mu xu rou.
Told in: Two accounts of the name recorded in Chinese and English Wikipedia, both tied to Shandong cooking; this entry has not checked the sources those entries cite.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the mu xu rou I make at home in the Chinese home style: thin slices of pork, scrambled egg, wood ear, lily buds and bamboo shoots stir-fried together, with no pancakes. The amounts follow one signed recipe: 150 g of pork tenderloin, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of dried wood ear, 10 to 15 lily buds, 1/2 cup of bamboo shoots and 3 tablespoons of oil, plus its amounts for the marinade and seasoning. The marinating time and the cooking of the eggs and pork separately follow another signed recipe, whose version also adds cucumber, which mine does not. I did not make the American restaurant version with pancakes and hoisin sauce. The cups and spoonfuls are the recipe's own and I did not convert them to grams.
Allergens: egg, soy, sesame, shellfish, wheat
