Beef Chow Fun

Wide rice noodles in a dry wok at the highest heat, turned with a spatula and never stirred, so they char instead of breaking.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef.

Ingredients

For the beef

• 250 g beef sirloin or flank, sliced thin across the grain
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon cornflour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 teaspoon flavourless oil

The rest

• 450 g fresh wide rice noodles
• 150 g beansprouts
• 4 spring onions, in 5 cm lengths
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 3 tablespoons flavourless oil
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Method

1. THE NOODLES ARE TURNED, NEVER STIRRED. A wide rice noodle is fragile and wet, and a spatula pushed through a hot wok of them shreds the lot in about four movements. They are lifted from underneath and folded over, slowly, perhaps six times in the whole dish. A pan of broken noodle fragments is the single commonest outcome and it is always this.
2. AND THEY MUST BE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE AND LOOSE BEFORE THEY GO IN. Fresh rice noodles come as a cold folded block that will not separate. Left out for an hour, or steamed for two minutes, they peel apart in the hands; cold from the fridge they break wherever you try to part them.
3. Beef sliced thin across the grain and mixed with the soy, cornflour, sugar, water and oil. Left 20 minutes.
4. Noodles separated by hand into individual strands. Take the time; any left stuck together will not come apart in the wok.
5. THE WOK AS HOT AS IT WILL GO and a window open. This is a dish that wants more heat than a domestic hob really has, so cook it in two batches rather than crowding it, and let the wok recover between them.
6. A tablespoon of oil, beef spread in a single layer and left 30 seconds without touching it. Turned once, 30 seconds more, then out while still pink in the middle.
7. Another tablespoon of oil, onion 30 seconds, then out with the beef.
8. Last of the oil, swirled round, and the noodles in. LEFT ALONE 45 seconds so the underside catches and chars in places. The smell changes when it happens.
9. Both soys and the sugar poured around the EDGE of the wok, not over the noodles -- they hit the hot metal, caramelise, and run in.
10. Fold the noodles over, once, from one side. Leave 20 seconds. Fold again. Three or four folds in all until the colour is even.
11. Beef, onion, beansprouts and spring onion back in, folded through twice only, 30 seconds -- the sprouts should still squeak.
12. Straight out of the wok onto the plate. It will not wait.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes