December 5, 2024
While banana bread is the top-searched recipe overall, bamboo shoots have seen the biggest rise within the last month.
They have seen a 4,850% rise, highlighting how popular traditional home-cooked food has become in Asia.
Countries in the region top the world when it comes to all recipe and cooking-related searches, says Google.
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.
Popular dishes include stir-fried mushrooms and bamboo shoots, pork and bamboo shoots, and ramen (a Japanese noodle dish).
“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.”
Bamboo shoots are also easy to cook, making them an ideal choice for novice chefs.
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.
Asia leads the world when it comes to watching cooking tutorials online on YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Four of the top five places searching on YouTube for recipe-related videos come from the region – Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Singapore, and Bangladesh.
The figures come from publicly available Google Trends, which looked at the search history for the past 30 days.
Top trending recipes
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.
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.
“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 Dušan Farrington, search communications manager at Google Asia-Pacific.
