Lo Mein Noodles
Slippery Lo Mein Noodles tossed in a Lo Mein Sauce with tons of veggies and protein of your choice. This takeout mainstay comes down to the right sauce and the right noodles – then you’re just 6 minutes away from noodle heaven!If you want lip smackingly delicious Lo Mein noodles just like takeout, you just need to get the SAUCE right! The noodle part is easy – you can literally use any noodles, even pasta (yep, seriously). Also, switch out the vegetables with 5 cups (packed) of any chopped vegetables of choice.
Servings: 3
Ingredients
- 1½ tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
- 2 garlic cloves finely minced (Note 1)
- ½ onion finely sliced
- 10 oz (300g) chicken or other protein sliced 0.5cm / 1/5″ thick (Note 2)
- 2 medium carrots peeled and cut into 4 x 0.75cm / 1.75 x 1/3″ batons
- 1 large red capsicum / bell pepper sliced (or 2 small)
- 6 green onions (scallions) cut into 5 cm/2” lengths
- 1 lb (500g) Lo Mein Hokkien or other medium thickness egg noodles, fresh, , prepared per packet (Note 3 for dried)
- ¼ cup (65ml) water
SAUCE:
- 4 tsp cornflour / cornstarch
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce (Note 4)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce or light soy sauce (Note 4)
- 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or Mirin (Note 5 subs)
- 1 tsp white sugar (omit if using Mirin)
- ½ tsp sesame oil toasted, optional (Note 6)
- ¼ tsp white pepper (sub black pepper)
GARNISH (OPTIONAL):
- Green onion (scallions) finely sliced
Instructions
- Sauce: Mix cornflour and dark soy until lump free, then add remaining Sauce ingredients.
- Season Chicken: Transfer 2 tsp Sauce into bowl with chicken. Toss to coat.
- Heat oil in a wok or large heavy based skillet over high heat until smoking.
- Add onion and garlic, stir 30 seconds.
- Add chicken, stir until white on the outside, still raw inside – 1 minute.
- Add carrot and capsicum/bell peppers, cook 2 minutes or until chicken is cooked.
- Add noodles, Sauce and water. Use 2 wooden spoons and toss for 30 seconds.
- Add green onions, toss for another 1 minute until all the noodles are slick with sauce.
- Serve immediately, garnished with extra green onions if using.
Notes
- Garlic – don’t use jar paste or a garlic press, makes garlic watery = spits & burns when it hits the oil. Finely chop it – even sliced is enough.
- Proteins – how to cook & cut:
- Beef, pork, turkey – slice and cook per recipe
- Ground / mince meat – cook garlic and onion per recipe, then cook ground / mince. Once cooked, add 1 tbsp sauce, stir, then proceed with next steps in recipe.
- Hard tofu – cut into 1 x 4cm / 1/3 x 1.5″ batons, cook per recipe.
- Prawns/shrimp – use small peeled, cook per recipe.
- More veggies – use another 2 1/2 cups chopped veggies.
- Lo Mein noodles are fresh yellow noodles (usually labelled “egg noodles”) that are about 3mm / 1/8″ thick, sold in the fridge section of grocery stores.
Dried noodles – use 200g/8oz uncooked ramen noodles or other dried noodles. They will increase in volume and weight once cooked per packet. Note – Lo Mein is still delicious made with ANY type of noodles – thick, thin, fresh, dried, egg or rice – or ramen noodles, or even spaghetti or other long pasta (trust me, no one will know!). - Soy Sauces:
- Dark soy sauce is labelled as such, provides colour and gives more flavour to the sauce than other soy sauces. Sold at Aussie grocery stores nowadays. Fallback: sub with more ordinary or light soy (below)
- Soy Sauce – ordinary all purpose soy sauce, they just say “soy sauce” on the label (eg. Kikkoman). Can also use Light soy sauce – bottle is labelled as such.
- Chinese cooking wine (“Shaoxing wine”) is an essential ingredient for making truly “restaurant standard” Asian noodles. Substitute with Mirin, cooking sake or dry sherry. Non alcoholic sub – sub both the cooking wine AND water with low sodium chicken broth/stock + reduce light soy sauce to 1.5 tbsp.
- Sesame oil – toasted sesame oil is brown and has more flavour than untoasted (which is yellow). Default sesame oil sold in Australia is toasted, untoasted is harder to find.
