What is behind the dish?
Families all over China cook soy sauce fried noodles as a quick everyday meal. In Hong Kong, the best-known version is called soy sauce chow mein (豉油皇炒麵). The cook fries thin egg noodles with bean sprouts, onions and scallions and seasons them with a mix of light and dark soy sauce. This recipe follows the same principle and gets by with ingredients from your pantry.
Which noodles work?
- Chinese egg noodles: Thin, dried nests from an Asian grocery store brown in the pan and keep their bite. You can read more about types and cooking times under mie noodles.
- Ramen noodles: For fried ramen, use fresh or dried ramen noodles and cook them one minute less than the package says. Instant noodles work too. Cook them for 2 minutes, rinse them cold and leave out the seasoning packet. More ideas are under upgrading instant noodles.
- Spaghetti: Spaghetti with soy sauce is a stopgap. Add half a teaspoon of baking soda to the cooking water. This makes the noodles firmer and more yellow, similar to ramen.
How to get the noodles crisp
- Draining: Rinse the cooked noodles cold, let them stand in the colander for 5 minutes and toss them with a teaspoon of oil. Wet noodles steam in the pan and stick together.
- Heat: Heat the wok or pan well before the oil goes in. A cast-iron pan or a seasoned wok holds heat longer than a thin nonstick pan.
- Leave them alone: Spread out the noodles and let them fry for 1 to 2 minutes without stirring, until the underside browns. Turn them with two spatulas or chopsticks and repeat once or twice.
- Sauce last: Mix the soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and sesame oil in a small bowl beforehand. Pour the mixture in along the edge of the wok. On the hot metal the sugar caramelizes, and the sauce picks up a toasted flavor.
The sauce
Light soy sauce brings salt, oyster sauce brings sweetness and body. For darker noodles like those in restaurants, replace one of the three tablespoons of soy sauce with dark soy sauce. The differences between the types are explained in light and dark soy sauce. For a vegetarian version, use a vegetarian oyster sauce made from mushrooms. Taste at the end before adding more salt: soy sauce and oyster sauce already bring enough.
Variations
Fry bean sprouts, strips of bell pepper or broccoli briefly before the noodles and then add them back in. For an egg, push the noodles to the side, scramble two eggs in the free spot and mix them in once they set. With meat, cook fried noodles with chicken and vegetables or fried noodles with beef. The Japanese cousin with sweetish Worcestershire sauce is called yakisoba, and with thick wheat noodles it becomes yaki udon. You can make the noodles hotter with a teaspoon of chili oil or sambal oelek, which goes into the wok with the sauce.
