This Moo Shu Vegetables recipe is healthy and vegan, but it’s also just plain delicious. We’re pretty confident that anyone will enjoy this dish—not just vegans and vegetarians!
It’s one of those dishes that makes us happy to eat less meat and more vegetables at a meal.
The Complete Moo Shu Experience, with pancakes!
This vegetable moo shu recipe comes complete with mandarin pancakes. The combination of the chewy texture of the pancakes, the crunchy fresh vegetables, and meaty tofu is so satisfying and delicious.
A great mandarin pancake is key to a good moo shu experience. We perfected it with our Moo Shu Chicken recipe and our Easy Peking Duck.
You may be able to find store-bought mandarin pancakes in the freezer section of your local Chinese grocery, but they are easy to make yourself. The pancakes get cooked in a hot pan two at a time. For the best results, remember to reheat the pancakes in a steamer right before serving.
Alternatively, you can make a shortcut mandarin pancake using dumpling wrappers! They are quite a bit thinner and not as robust as traditional mandarin pancakes, but you can cook a batch of 10 pancakes at once, and you don’t have to make dough!
Get that shortcut mandarin pancake recipe here.
A final option would be small flour tortillas as a substitute. You can warm them in a stack wrapped in foil in the oven. Warm at 300°F/150°C for 15 minutes. We find flour tortillas to be a bit too thick for moo shu, but it’s not bad in a pinch!
Accessible Ingredients
We intentionally made this vegetable moo shu recipe quick and easy, with more accessible ingredients, like bell peppers, carrots, celery, leek, and fresh shiitake mushrooms.
If you can’t find spiced pressed tofu, you can make your own starting with regular firm tofu, which you can find in many regular supermarkets these days. See our pressed tofu recipe!
That said, feel free to use dried shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, and dried lily flowers, which are more traditional ingredients.
We used some of these Chinese ingredients in our Moo Shu Chicken. You’ll also find wood ears in Judy’s more authentic mainland China version of Chinese Moo Shu Pork.
Tip!
The pressed tofu provides the protein in this dish, but if you’d like more protein while still keeping the dish vegetarian, you can add egg to the veggies. Separately cook scrambled eggs, or a flat egg omelet, and then slice it into thin strips.
Why Cook the Ingredients Separately
This vegan moo shu comes together quickly once you have separately stir-fried the celery, peppers, five-spiced tofu, mushrooms, and carrots.
This gives an extra richness to the moo shu vegetables. It also keeps the dish from getting too wet from cooking all of the different vegetables at once.
This method also helps maintain high heat for cooking with a wok on most average home stovetops.
Ok, on to the recipe!
Moo Shu Vegetables Recipe Instructions
For the Pancakes:
Mix the flour and salt in a heatproof bowl. Pour the boiling hot water into the flour mixture and use chopsticks or a spatula to mix until a dough ball forms. Once it is cool enough to handle, knead the dough for 8 minutes until smooth, adding flour if the dough is too sticky. Cover with plastic and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour.
Roll the dough into a cylinder and cut into 12 equal pieces.
Form each piece into a dough ball, then flatten them out into a small disc about 2 inches in diameter. Lightly brush 6 of the discs with oil, ensuring the sides of the discs are also brushed with oil.
Layer the remaining 6 discs over the 6 oiled discs so you have 6 pieces, each comprised of 2 discs.
Use a rolling pin to roll the discs into 7-inch circles, flipping the pancakes frequently so both discs get rolled to the same size.
Heat a wok or frying pan over medium low heat, and place one pancake into the pan. After 30 to 45 seconds, you should see air pockets begin to form between the two pancakes. Flip the pancake; it should be white with just a couple of faint brown patches. Any darker than that, and they’ll be too crispy/overcooked.
After another 30 seconds, the air pockets should be large enough to separate the two pancakes.
Remove the pancake to a plate, and let it cool for another 30 seconds. Now carefully pull apart the two pancakes at the seams. Place finished pancakes onto a plate and cover with a warm kitchen towel. Repeat until you’ve cooked all the pancakes.
You can reheat the pancakes in a steamer for about a minute when ready to serve. They also keep in the freezer for up to 3 weeks if you decide to make a larger batch.
For the Moo Shu Vegetables:
Stir together the light soy sauce, sesame oil, hoisin sauce, fresh ground white pepper, and salt, and set aside.
Heat your wok over high heat with ½ tablespoon oil, and stir-fry the julienned carrots for 90 seconds. Remove and set aside.
Using the same method, with ½ tablespoon oil each, cook the five-spice tofu, celery, red bell pepper, and fresh Shiitake mushrooms separately, and set those aside.
Be careful not to overcook the vegetables. 90 seconds is really all you need, or you’ll have a mushy moo shu filling!
Next, heat the wok over high heat with the remaining tablespoon of oil, and add the minced garlic and leeks.
Stir fry until the leeks are just wilted (about 2 minutes). Then add the carrots, spiced tofu, celery, bell pepper, and mushrooms back to the wok.
Spread the Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok, and add the sauce mixture you prepared earlier. Stir fry everything together for another minute.
Serve immediately with steamed Mandarin pancakes and hoisin sauce on the side!
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Recipe
Vegetable Moo Shu
Ingredients
For the pancakes:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 2/3 cup boiling water
- 1 teaspoon oil (any neutral oil, such as vegetable, canola, or avocado oil)
For the vegetables:
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce (plus extra for serving)
- ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 3 ½ tablespoons neutral oil (divided)
- 1 1/2 cups carrot (julienned, about 1 to 2 small/medium carrots)
- 4 ounces spiced pressed tofu (julienned)
- 1½ cups celery (julienned)
- 1 red bell pepper (thinly sliced)
- 6 fresh Shiitake mushrooms (thinly sliced)
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- 1 leek (julienned, about 3 cups)
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
Instructions
For the pancakes:
- Mix the flour and salt in a heatproof bowl. Pour the boiling hot water into the flour mixture and use chopsticks or a spatula to mix until a dough ball forms. Once it is cool enough to handle, knead the dough for 8 minutes until smooth, adding flour if the dough is too sticky. Cover with plastic and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour.
- Roll the dough into a cylinder and cut into 12 equal pieces. Form each piece into a dough ball, then flatten them out into a small disc about 2 inches in diameter. Lightly brush 6 of the discs with oil, ensuring the sides of the discs are also brushed with oil. Layer the remaining 6 discs over the 6 oiled discs so you have 6 pieces, each comprised of 2 discs.
- Use a rolling pin to roll the discs into 7-inch circles, flipping the pancakes frequently so both of the dough discs are rolled into the same size.
- Heat a wok or frying pan over medium low heat, and place one pancake into the pan. After 30 to 45 seconds, you should see air pockets begin to form between the two pancakes. Flip the pancake; it should be white with just a couple of faint brown patches. Any more than that, and they are overcooked. After another 30 seconds, the air pockets should be large enough to separate the two pancakes.
- Remove the pancake to a plate, and let it cool for another 30 seconds. Now carefully pull apart the two pancakes at the seams. Place finished pancakes onto a plate and cover with a warm kitchen towel. Repeat until all pancakes are done. The pancakes can be reheated in a steamer for about a minute when ready to serve.
For the vegetables:
- Stir together the light soy sauce, sesame oil, hoisin sauce, white pepper, and salt, and set aside.
- Heat your wok over high heat with ½ tablespoon oil. Stir-fry the julienned carrots for 90 seconds, remove, and set aside. Using the same method, with ½ tablespoon oil each–cook the spiced tofu, celery, red bell pepper, and shiitake mushrooms separately, and set those aside.
- Next, heat the wok over high heat with the remaining tablespoon of oil, and add the minced garlic and leeks. Stir fry the vegetables until the leeks are just wilted (about 2 minutes), and add the carrots, five-spiced tofu, celery, bell pepper, and mushrooms back to the wok.
- Spread the Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok, and add the sauce mixture we prepared earlier. Stir-fry everything together for another minute.
- Serve immediately with steamed Mandarin pancakes and hoisin sauce on the side!
Tips & Notes:
Nutrition Facts
Note:
We originally published this recipe in September 2017. We have since updated it with clearer photos and metric measurements! The recipe remains the same as before—enjoy!
