Dried Lily Flowers substitute

Best substitute

Extra Wood Ear Mushrooms

Use the same amount by soaked weight as the dried lily flowers you are replacing

Best for cha gio and spring roll filling

Different texture

The companion ingredient in almost every dish that uses lily buds, so doubling it is the natural move. Wood ear is crunchier and snappier where lily buds are softer and more fibrous, and it is even more neutral in flavour. Sliced into thin strips it looks similar in a filling or a soup and behaves the same way.

Other dried lily flowers substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Rehydrated Dried Shiitake, Sliced Thin
Different taste
Use the same amount by soaked weight
The right shape once sliced into matchsticks and much easier to buy.
What changes
What changes is flavour rather than texture: shiitake is emphatically savoury and a little smoky, so a delicate clear soup made with it turns brown and deeply mushroomy instead of light. In a rich pork filling that is an improvement, in a clear chicken soup it is a different dish.
Best for
cha gio and dumpling fillings, braises, hot and sour soup, when you want more flavour, not less
Save the soaking liquid and use it in the dish. If you want to keep a clear soup clear, use fresh shiitake instead, which is far milder.
3Enoki Mushrooms
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
The closest visual and structural match on the list: long, pale, slim strands with a mild flavour and a slippery-springy bite.
What changes
They are wetter and much more delicate than lily buds and they go soft in a long simmer, so add them in the last five minutes rather than at the start.
Best for
clear soups, hot pot, steamed dishes, garnishing
Trim the root end and separate the bundle. Enoki should always be cooked rather than eaten raw, and it needs only a couple of minutes.
4Thin-Cut Green Beans or Asparagus Tips
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume
A non-traditional swap that works better than it sounds when the lily buds were mainly adding slender bite to a filling.
What changes
Cut lengthways into thin strips, green beans give a firmer, snappier, distinctly vegetal bite and they add green colour that lily buds do not. Fine in a spring roll, visibly wrong in a pale clear soup.
Best for
cha gio and spring rolls, stir-fries, when there are no dried goods in the house
Blanch for a minute and drain very dry before adding to a fried spring roll filling. Any extra water in the filling makes the rolls burst in the oil.
5Bean Thread Noodles, Cut Short
Taste and texture differ
½ : 1 by soaked volume
In a spring roll filling, glass noodles occupy the same slot: pale, slippery strands binding everything together.
What changes
They have no flavour at all and they go softer than lily buds, and they absorb a lot of liquid, so use about half as much or the filling turns pasty.
Best for
cha gio and spring roll filling, steamed dishes, when they are already in the recipe anyway
Soak in warm water rather than boiling, then cut them into inch lengths with scissors. Uncut they wrap around everything and make the filling impossible to portion.
6Leave Them Out
Different texture
omit
Genuinely the right answer more often than not.
What changes
Lily buds are a background texture in dishes that already have several textures, and unlike wood ear they are not even providing a distinctive crunch. Omit them, add a little more of whatever else is in the pot, and the dish is complete. This is the one ingredient on a Vietnamese soup list you can drop without apology.
Best for
hot and sour soup, cha gio, clear soups, avoiding a special shopping trip
If the dish has no wood ear either, add a handful of thinly sliced mushrooms of any kind, so the texture is not entirely soft.

What is Dried Lily Flowers?

Dried Lily Flowers is Dried lily flowers, sold as golden needles, lily buds, kim cham or dried daylily buds, are the unopened flower buds of the daylily dried into slim tan strands that are soaked and knotted before cooking.

Cooking tips

Soak dried lily buds in warm water for twenty to thirty minutes until pliable, then pinch off the hard pale stem end at the base of each bud. That tip stays woody however long you cook it and it is the usual reason people find them unpleasant.
Tie each soaked bud in a loose knot before it goes into the pot. This is not decoration: it keeps them from unravelling into shreds and floating everywhere in a soup.
Only daylily buds sold as food are edible. Do not pick buds from ornamental garden lilies, which are a different plant entirely and are not food, and keep any lily material away from cats, which are seriously harmed by true lilies.
Lily buds should always be cooked, not eaten raw or barely warmed, and a few minutes of simmering is enough once they are soaked.
Buy the paler golden ones rather than the dark brown ones if you get a choice. Very dark buds are older and taste flat and slightly sour.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave dried lily flowers out?

Yes, and this is the most common answer. They add a mild musky sweetness and a slender chewy strand, both of which are background details in dishes that already have plenty going on. Add a little extra wood ear or sliced mushroom so the dish keeps some texture, and nobody at the table will identify anything as missing.

What do dried lily flowers taste like?

Faintly sweet and musky, a bit like a very mild dried squash or the tail end of a dried apricot, with an earthy edge. They are subtle enough that in a strongly seasoned soup you mostly register the texture rather than the taste. That is precisely why substituting is easy and why leaving them out is defensible.

Are golden needles the same as dried lily flowers?

Yes. Golden needles, lily buds, kim cham in Vietnamese, jin zhen in Chinese and dried daylily buds are all the same ingredient. Packets sometimes say dried lily flower even though the buds are picked before they open. If a recipe calls for any of those names, one bag covers all of them.

Are lily buds and lily bulbs the same thing?

No, and they are not interchangeable. Lily buds are dried unopened daylily flowers, used as a chewy strand in soups. Lily bulbs are fresh or dried scale-like segments, starchy and slightly bitter, used mostly in Chinese sweet soups and tonic dishes. Substituting one for the other gives you the wrong texture in the wrong dish.

Where do I buy dried lily flowers?

Any Chinese or Vietnamese grocery, usually in the dried goods aisle near the wood ear mushrooms and dried shiitake, sold in cellophane bags labelled golden needles or dried lily flower. They are inexpensive and keep for a year or more in a sealed jar in a dark cupboard, so a single bag lasts a very long time.

Related substitutes

More vegetables & aromatics substitutes

Dried Lily Flowers substitute

Other dried lily flowers substitutes

2Rehydrated Dried Shiitake, Sliced Thin

3Enoki Mushrooms

4Thin-Cut Green Beans or Asparagus Tips

5Bean Thread Noodles, Cut Short

6Leave Them Out