Stir-Fried Spoon Worms 炒海肠

Stir-Fried Spoon Worms (炒海肠) is a seafood dish made from the spoon worm Urechis unicinctus, a marine worm known in Chinese as haichang (海肠, 'sea intestine'). Chinese Wikipedia names the version stir-fried plainly with Chinese chives, jiucai haichang (韭菜海肠), as a well-known dish of Yantai (烟台) and Dalian (大连).

Ingredients

The spoon worm lives in muddy intertidal flats and burrows more than 40 centimetres into the sediment, where it digs a U-shaped burrow and feeds on detritus caught in a mucus net. It is found in the Bohai Gulf (渤海湾) and in the seas off Japan, Korea and the Russian Far East. It is a seasonal catch: in China it is usually taken in spring. On the Jiaodong Peninsula (胶东半岛) it is also called haijizi (海鸡子) or hainiuzi (海牛子).

Flavour and texture

The flesh is crisp and tender, and Chinese Wikipedia records the nickname "naked sea cucumber" (裸体的海参). In Chinese cooking the worm is stir-fried with vegetables; it is also dried and ground into a powder that is used to add savoury depth to other food. In Korea it is often eaten raw.

How it is eaten

In Dalian the worm also appears in spoon worm over rice (海肠捞饭). When Dalian's fishing season reopened on 1 September 2024 after a moratorium of more than four months, China National Radio listed that dish among the seafood on the city's tables, and a 2025 spring tourism report on Beiguo (北国网) named it with seaweed buns and scallion-braised sea cucumber as Dalian fare.