Noodles for a long life! It is a Chinese tradition at birthdays and other family celebrations to have a table full of food for your guests. One dish is never missing: noodles! Challenge: can we veganise this traditional family recipe too? Yes we can! Check it out!
Noodles for long life
The bami dish has a special role on my Chinese-Indonesian family's buffet table: this meal represents longevity. Therefore, on a birthday, everyone is supposed to eat a portion. Leave your knife in the kitchen, because noodles should absolutely not be sliced. You eat it gracefully with chopsticks or swirl it around your fork. Don't get into family traditions, but that noodles were not vegetarian. Let alone vegan. Pork, chicken, shrimp, beef and also oyster sauce are usually used to flavour this meal. Could that be different? I set to work on veganising our family recipe. And guess what? I succeeded in that!
Soya Chow Mein
Tjauw what? This bami recipe is a true classic and has gone around the world with Chinese settlers. Tjauw mien (or chow mein) means fried (tjauw) noodles (mein) and can be found all over the world: China, Thailand, Suriname, Indonesia, India, Europe, the US. In short: everywhere. Unlike many other noodle dishes, this noodle is crisply fried in the wok and only then gets the vegetables and sauce added. This gives this dish a great texture, with crispy and soft bits of noodles.
Chinese noodles (also on sale in the supermarket as egg noodles), vegan oyster sauce and the crispy noodles.
Vegan oyster sauce!
Oyster sauce is obviously not vegetarian, let alone vegan. But you can substitute oyster sauce for a vegan variant perfectly well. Just ask at the toko for mushroom stir-fry sauce or shiitake stir-fry sauce.
Don't sulk, nice wok
This delicious Chinese side dish is a wok dish. You can make it easier on yourself and prepare it earlier, so you can wok the dish on the spur of the moment in 15 minutes. For all my Asian wok dishes, I use the Macao wok from the WMF brand. If you are still looking for good eco-friendly pans, this is a tip. Saskia wrote an article about our pan search. The short version: we had pans with PFAS (not a pleasant observation). We wanted to get rid of those. And so we went in search of a new set.
Recipe: vegan noodles for a birthday party
Of course, this noodles is also top to prepare on a ‘normal’ day. Would do: make extra much, so you can eat it for several days. If you make a large portion for a birthday, it is handy to make part of the dish earlier in the day. Then at the last minute - when your guests are there - all you have to do is wok it. Less stressful.
Vegan noodles according to Chinese family recipe
Kitchenware
- large pan for cooking noodles
- cutting board
- knife
- colander
- wok
- optional trays for storing sliced vegetables
Ingredients
- 200 gr thin noodles 'wok noodles', noodles, egg noodles, vegan noodles, all fine
- 1 el light soy sauce
- 1 el dark soy sauce
- 1 el (vegan) oyster sauce
- 1 fluorescent sugar cane, palm, soft sugar or white sugar
- 1 fluorescent sesame oil
- 2 spring onions
- 1 onion
- 125 gr bean sprouts
- 1 el water
Instructions
Preparation
Cutting vegetables
- Shred the onion and place in a bowl.
- Cut a small piece off the bottom of the spring onions. Cut the spring onions into 5 equal parts. Place the white and white-green parts with the shredded onion in the bowl. And set the green parts aside. Fun fact: put the butt of the spring onion in a cup of water or stick it in the ground. A new spring onion will grow from this again!
Cooking noodles
- Bring a large pan of water to the boil.
- Cook the noodles for 2 minutes until tender, so that you can easily pull it off with two forks and it is al dente.
- Drain the noodles in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
- Carefully pull the noodles apart with forks.
- Set the noodles aside in a colander to drain.
Sauce preparation
- In a bowl, mix the light & dark soya sauce, (vegan) oyster sauce, sugar and water.
- Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Wokken
- In a wok, or large pan, bring oil to a high temperature.
- Fry the onion and white spring onion parts for a minute, remove from the wok and set aside again.
- Bring some new oil to high temperature.
- Spread the noodles over the wok, making as much contact with the pan as possible.
- Fry the noodles hard in the wok for 4 minutes. Some pieces of noodles may turn (golden) brown, this is the intention!
- Carefully check that the underside is nicely crisped.
- Now carefully turn the noodles over in the wok with two spatulas.
- Add some extra oil by going along the edge of the wok.
- Let the noodles fry for another 4 minutes.
- Add the bean sprouts to the wok and slide under the noodles for 60 seconds.
- Add the onion, white spring onion pieces, green spring onion and sauce to the wok.
- Fry everything on high heat for another 1 minute.
- Add the sesame oil.
- Serve and eat immediately, so the fried noodles are still nice and crispy.
More food tips from thegreenlist.nl
- Yummy yummy yummy: vegan rendang with jackfruit according to traditional family law.
- Handy: must-have herbs: these herbs belong in every kitchen (including shopping list).
- Easy and very tasty: this recipe for spicy tofu.
- Also see: The tastiest recipe for vegan peanut sauce.
- Looking for a tasty dessert to go with it? Sticky rice mango is delicious AND vegan!
Photo credits: thegreenlist.nl.
