While banana bread is the top-searched recipe overall, bamboo shoots have seen the biggest rise within the last month.<\/p>\n
They have seen a 4,850% rise, highlighting how popular traditional home-cooked food has become in Asia.<\/p>\n
Countries in the region top the world when it comes to all recipe and cooking-related searches, says Google.<\/p>\n
Bamboo shoots are picked when they are about 15cm (6in) long, have a mild flavor and crunchy texture, and are added to dishes such as soups and stir-fries to bulk them up.<\/p>\n
Popular dishes include stir-fried mushrooms and bamboo shoots, pork and bamboo shoots, and ramen (a Japanese noodle dish).<\/p>\n
“I really like bamboo shoots and have them a lot with ramen,” sais Leslie Koh, a Singapore-based food blogger. “I spend a lot of time online trying to recreate comfort dishes as we currently have no food stalls at night markets. The dishes bring back good memories.”<\/p>\n
Bamboo shoots are also easy to cook, making them an ideal choice for novice chefs.<\/p>\n
With widespread social-distancing rules in place, millions are stuck at home and going online to watch movies, learn new skills, hold meetings – and delve into new recipes.<\/p>\n
Asia leads the world when it comes to watching cooking tutorials online on YouTube, which is owned by Google.<\/p>\n
Four of the top five places searching on YouTube for recipe-related videos come from the region – Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Singapore, and Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
The figures come from publicly available Google Trends, which looked at the search history for the past 30 days.<\/p>\n
Top trending recipes<\/p>\n
Asian dishes are also dominating “homemade” cooking trends, with search interest for “homemade momos”, “homemade egg rolls” and “homemade pani puri” all spiking more than 5,000% in the past month.<\/p>\n
Momos are a type of steamed dumpling, while pan puri is a deep-fried Indian snack. The trend seems to be for easy-to-cook and filling comfort foods.<\/p>\n
“People in the Asia-Pacific region are heading online for tasty ideas more often than in other parts of the world. The top four places for cooking-related searches over the past month are from the region. At the same time, Asian-inspired recipes are going global,” said Du\u0161an Farrington, search communications manager at Google Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n
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