The Perfect Side For Chicken!

We made our Sweet and Spicy Chicken for company the other day and thought it would be nice to try a new recipe as the side dish.  It seems weird that after all the cooking we’ve done that we have never prepared Chow Mein Noddles at home. It’s particularly strange since we love eating them when we go out of Asian food.  That being said, we bought a bag of the dried Chow Mein Noodles last time we were at BlueSky so we went for it.

We opted to create a recipe that flavor the noodles to compliment our Sweet and Spicy Chicken. It turns out you could really serve them with anything that has an Asian twist.

Look for Chow Mein Noodles in any Asian store and most supermarkets in the specialty isle. Add some awesome crisp vegetables and complete them with a light sauce.

This can be a main dish by stir frying chicken breast pieces, shrimp or beef strips before adding the the vegetables.

Here’s how we do Chow Mein Noodles:

serves 6

For the Sauce:

• 1/4 cup Soya sauce
• 1/2 tsp Sesame oil (this is very pungent)
• 2 Tablespoon freshly grated Ginger
• 2 large Garlic cloves minced
• 1 Tbsp Fish Sauce
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar or Palm Sugar
•  3 green onions thinly sliced and sesame seeds to garnish

All of these ingredients can be bought at a supermarket now a days.

For the Noodles:

•  1 package dried Chow Mein Noodles
• Salt for boiling the noodles
• 2 cups of sliced vegetables of your choice
• 3 Tbsp oil for stir frying

We used mushrooms, yellow carrot, sweet red peppers,  snow peas and garlic.   We fried the mushrooms separately first.

Boil the noodles in salted water until just tender. Drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking process.  Place a clean tea towel in a large bowl and allow the noodles to dry off before stir frying.  The noodles now take just minutes to prepare. When your meat dish is ready to serve, heat a Wok or large skillet.

When the Wok is hot, pour in the oil and the vegetables. Stir for just 1 minute.  You want the vegetable to remain crisp but heated through. Now add the noodles and the sauce to the wok and with two wooden spoons begin to toss the veggies with the noodles. You are not trying to brown the noodles. You simply want everything to be hot all through.

It’s time to plate up your creation! Sprinkle the green onions and a few sesame seeds over the noodles and faster then you can say Karate Kid dinner’s ready.