How to Cook Authentic Cantonese Chow Mein (豉油皇炒面)

subheading: Basic Ingredients:

Cantonese Egg Noodles, 100g (蛋面). Take a look at the consistency in the video. What we’re using are fresh ones (which are generally much easier to work with), but dried ones could also work in a pinch. We’ll discuss the differences in cooking times and such when we go over the process. If you’re abroad, I’ve sometimes seen these called ‘Hong Kong Chow Mein Noodles’.

Jiucai, “Chinese Chives”, 50g (韭菜). Cut these up into 2 inch long sections. There’s going to be a harder portion right by the root, just toss that.

Bean Sprouts, 70g (芽菜). Something we like to do to prep bean sprouts is to prepare them into ‘silver sprouts’. To do so, you’re going to take your bean spout, and pull off the little mungbean at the top and the small root at the bottom. This is a little bit of a pain if you got a huge batch, but really improves the texture of the beansprout – instead of having the little chewy bits at the end, you’ll get a nice evenly crunchy beansprout. You don’t have to do this of course… most of the time, you’ll only see this in China in higher end restaurants or old Cantonese eateries that keep on with the older traditions. This yielded about 40g of ‘silver sprouts’ for us. Bean Sprouts, 70g (芽菜). Something we like to do to prep bean sprouts is to prepare them into ‘silver sprouts’. To do so, you’re going to take your bean spout, and pull off the little mungbean at the top and the small root at the bottom. This is a little bit of a pain if you got a huge batch, but really improves the texture of the beansprout - instead of having the little chewy bits at the end, you’ll get a nice evenly crunchy beansprout. You don’t have to do this of course… most of the time, you’ll only see this in China in higher end restaurants or old Cantonese eateries that keep on with the older traditions. This yielded about 40g of ‘silver sprouts’ for us.

Half of a Shallot (干葱). Dice this up. If you’re in China or elsewhere in Asia you might be only finding those small shallots on the string - if using those, use one whole one.

Quarter of a White Onion (洋葱). Sliced.

subheading: Ingredients for your Sauce:

Boiling Water, 5 TBSP. In the video, we just used the boiling water from the noodles.

Sugar, 1 TBSP. Take your sugar and dissolve it into the reserved hot boiling water, giving a healthy stir. We’re just using boiling water here to make the sugar dissolve easier.

Dark Soy Sauce, 1 TBSP (老抽). This is going to form the base of the sauce and the flavor of the dish.

Light Soy Sauce, 1 T (生抽). If you watch the video, no… your eyes aren’t deceiving you - we put a TBSP in originally. However, it was slightly on the salty side (I have a high tolerance for salinity so I personally was fine with it), so with a later run at it we reduced the light soy sauce a touch and it was perfect.

Sesame Oil, 1 tsp (香油). Toasted of course.

Thick Soy Sauce, ½ TBSP (酱油膏). This was one of two less conventional ingredients that Steph ended up using based off an interview that she read with a cook from one of our favorite restaurants in Hong Kong. It’s a thick, sweet, soy sauce that’s really popular in Taiwan, but you can find it in most large grocery stores in Mainland China. If you’re outside of China and can’t find this, the Indonesian Kecap Manis should also work great. And if all else fails, just sub in Oyster sauce. Thick Soy Sauce, ½ TBSP (酱油膏). This was one of two less conventional ingredients that Steph ended up using based off an interview that she read with a cook from one of our favorite restaurants in Hong Kong. It’s a thick, sweet, soy sauce that’s really popular in Taiwan, but you can find it in most large grocery stores in Mainland China. If you’re outside of China and can’t find this, the Indonesian Kecap Manis should also work great. And if all else fails, just sub in Oyster sauce.

Prep your veggies. Cut the jiucai (“Chinese Chives”) into sections, dice your shallot, slice the onion, and (if doing so) prepare your silver sprouts.

Cook the noodles. Before you toss your noodles in, take 5 TBSP boiling water for the sauce in step #4. Now, for fresh noodles like the ones in the video, we’re cooking them for exactly one minute in boiling water - move them around with chopsticks or tongs to make sure they don’t clump together. If you’re using dried, cook them according to the package (different dried noodles may use different times) until al dente - likely ~30 seconds before ‘done’ on the package. Chinese cooks will usually know dried noodles are al dente once the noodles start to loosen up and become individual ‘noodles’ (you can get a visual at 2:50 in the video), but if you know your pasta you can use the western method to figure out doneness as well.

Rinse, drain, and cover your noodles. Once it’s finished, in a colander rinse your noodles thoroughly under cold running water to stop the cooking process. Then, try to drain as much water out as you can. There’s still going to be a tiny amount of residual heat/steam from the noodles, so one trick is to take a paper towel and cover the noodles with it to make a nice little ‘lid’ of sorts. You can get a visual at 3:20 in the video. This is going to help the noodles cook evenly, as the residual heat is going to continue to cook any slightly undercooked noodles.

Prepare your sauce. Whisk in the sugar into those 5 TBSP of boiling water that you reserved. Then add in the rest of the ingredients for the sauce and give it a mix.

Sweat the jiucai and the bean sprouts. What we’re doing is lightly ‘toasting’ these ingredients over medium heat with zero oil. This technique is called baiguo honggan, and the idea is the quite similar to sweating vegetables in Western cooking - we want to get out some water content from the vegetables. For the jiucai, sweat for about two minutes until slightly wilted, being sure to move them around with chopsticks or tongs so that the jiucai doesn’t wilt into a big pile. For the bean sprouts, sweat for one to two minutes, until the edges of the bean sprout turn slightly brownish.

Oil your wok using the longyau technique. I’m separating this into a separate step, but we’re going to be doing this three times over the next three steps. The longyau technique is this: get your wok nice and hot over a high flame, pour some oil and swirl it around to coat the wok and get a nice non-stick surface, and then pour out any excess oil. The amount of oil that we drain will be different for each ingredient. We’re not going to drain any oil before frying the shallots, drain basically all the oil except for that coating when we fry the onions, and drain most of the oil - keeping about ½ TBSP in the pot - when frying the noodles. The visual for this is at 6:20 in the video.

Fry your shallots. Oil the wok using the longyau technique without draining out any oil, then add in your shallots. Fry for a couple minutes over medium heat, and take them out once they’re nice and brown. Drain the oil into a bowl and reserve for step #9.

Fry your onions. Oil the wok using the longyau technique and drain out all the oil except what’s lining the pan. Fry for a couple minutes over medium heat, then take them out.

Fry your noodles. Oil the pan using the longyau technique and drain out most of the oil, but keeping about a ½ TBSP in. Use the drained shallot oil here as it’ll lend a real nice flavor. So, you have a choice here - if you’re afraid of the noodles sticking to the wok, you can always leave a little more oil in… but you’ll end up getting an oilier end result. Fry the noodles for about 30 seconds on medium or even medium low heat (if on a Chinese range), then add your onions back in. Give them quick stir together.

Add your sauce and reduce it in the noodles. Take a look at 9:21 in the video for a visual. Move your noodles around to absorb some of the sauce as it reduces. After a minute or so, add back in the remainder of the ingredients - the jiucai, the beansprouts, and the shallots. Stir these around for a few minutes as the sauce reduces. Once you have no real visible liquid pool remaining at the bottom of the pot, it’s done and ready to eat.

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