Taiwanese Fried Rice Noodles // 台灣炒米粉 (Táiwān chǎo mǐfěn)

Hey guys, it's Angel. Today we're going to be making Taiwanese fried rice noodles. In Mandarin, we call this mì fēn and in Taiwanese, we call this bì huàn. And my grandpa always said that bì huàn was my grandma's most signature dish because she was amazing at it. Everybody always said she made the best bì huàn. And so these are the ingredients that we're going to be using today for this recipe. For the master list and the master grocery list, I'll put that in the video description link below. And this is actually a really great dish for potlucks or large get-togethers because the rice noodles are fairly inexpensive and you can make big batches of this fairly easily. So if you guys are interested, keep watching. The first thing we'll want to do is take our rice noodles. Now these are the rice noodles that I got. These are bì huàn. And be careful guys because once grandma told me to get a bag of rice noodles for her and I brought back a different type of noodle. It was actually like a mung bean noodle instead, but it looks really similar. So don't make the same mistake. So we'll take our rice noodles and we just want to soak them in water for about 10 minutes until they're soft. Warm water is fine. We don't need to do anything fancy with it, but just soak them until they're soft. Put that over there. Make sure all the noodles are fully submerged and we'll let that sit. We will also need some dried shiitake mushrooms and some dried shrimp. So I have those here and I just took a handful of them. I've got about five pieces of the shiitake mushroom and a small handful, about one tablespoon, of the dried shrimp. I'm going to reconstitute that in water, which I did a couple hours earlier. You could probably do this about 20 to 30 minutes beforehand, but I've just gone ahead in the morning. I put this in some warm water and now the mushrooms and the shrimp are soft. Make sure to reserve the liquid that you have from the mushrooms and the dried shrimp because we're going to use that when we cook our noodles. All right, now let's go ahead and marinate the pork. So you can use your meat of choice, even leftover Costco chicken, but today I'm using some Berkshire pork. I've got about a little over half a pound and we're just going to slice this into thin strips. So small, thin, almost matchstick-like strips like this. I kind of like how it's a little bit fatty. You could also use pork belly. That's my grandpa's favorite. Pork belly is also really nice. But once you're done slicing these into small strips, then we put those into a bowl and let that marinate. So that's my pork. I've gone ahead to cut that up and I'm just going to wash my hands with soap and water so we don't cross contaminate. Now what we'll want to do is velvet and marinate the meat. So I'm going to use a velveting technique and velveting just helps whatever meat that we're cooking with stand up to the stir-fry a little bit better and it'll also have a texture of velvet and that's why they kind of call it velveting. So I'm going to start with one teaspoon of cornstarch. It's okay to eyeball it here. One teaspoon of a cooking oil and one teaspoon of soy sauce. Now we'll just marinate that. Give that a good mix and we'll let that marinate for about 15 minutes. Perfect. So now I'm going to set that aside and we'll prepare our vegetables. Now bee hoon typically has carrots in it and I actually I really like carrots but not in this dish. So instead I like to use Taiwanese cabbage and this is Taiwanese cabbage right here. You can find this at your local Asian grocery store. It's not regular cabbage. It's actually denser and I think it stands up to high heat cooking really well. So we'll just need a little sliver of Taiwanese cabbage here but feel free to put more if you like cabbage. And I actually might want a little bit more so we'll do just a little bit more here. Next we'll want some green onions. I'm using about two stalks of green onions here. I also have some cilantro as well that we'll use for garnish. Next up I have the mushrooms and dried shrimp. We've reconstituted these so I will just give them a gentle squeeze, remove some excess liquid, and slice those up. So these are the dried shiitake mushrooms. I like to slice them up like this. Set these aside. Now we have our dried shrimp. I like to just give these a nice mince and a coarse mince is fine. And last but not least, if you like eggs in your rice noodles you can add those as well. I'm using two eggs. Now we're ready to cook. So the noodles are pretty much done. They're really soft. I'm just going to drain the water right now. This is what it looks like. All right now let's get our wok out. I like using a wok for stir-frying my noodles. Preheat our wok a little bit. I'm using a medium-high heat right now. Now what we're going to be doing is cooking each of the ingredients separately. So I'm going to start with the eggs and then the mushroom and vegetables, finally the pork, then the noodles, and then we'll mix everything together. So I'll start with the egg. Next I'll break this up. That's perfect. So I'll remove the egg and we can start cooking the other ingredients. Next up, the vegetables. So here I'll start with the mushrooms and dried shrimp and then the cabbage. We will leave the green onions for a little bit later. Here's where you want to use some of that mushroom and dried shrimp water and this just helps soften the vegetables. We're looking to stir-fry this for about one to two minutes just until the Taiwanese lettuce is soft. Okay that looks like it's soft now. Transfer that to a bowl. Next we'll do the pork. So make sure here to use a generous amount of oil. Once you put the pork in, resist the urge to stir-fry just until the crust develops and that way it won't stick to the pan. It'll probably be about 30 seconds. Now that I've flipped it, you can see it has a nice crust because we let that sit for 30 seconds and I'll just wait another 30 seconds before I stir-fry it again. Depending on the thickness of your pork, it should take about three to five minutes to cook. Now that the pork is almost done, it's time to add our noodles. I'm also going to add in our remaining vegetables and the green onion. Sometimes a pair of tongs might help here. And just so you know, these noodles may seem a bit dry and that's why we are going to add a little bit of the mushroom shrimp water. How much you add is really up to you, but I typically like to do at least half a cup. You can do a little at a time and then see how that goes. I'm just going to add a little bit more of the liquid and finally the soy sauce. I'm using about a little over two tablespoons, but totally up to you guys. And that'll start giving this noodle dish a nice brown. Feel free to add a little bit of salt and pepper if you need to. I'm just going to add a few pinches of salt. Give that one last stir-fry and this looks just about done. And if you guys are wondering, this is like a really great arm workout because these noodles are heavy. Okay, and now we're ready to serve. So as I mentioned before, we're ready to plate and this makes a huge serving of noodles. So I've got a large serving plate here and we're just going to transfer the noodles over to this plate. Lots of goodies on top. And we can also garnish this with some cilantro off to the side and on the top. And that, guys, is how you make Taiwanese bee hoon or mee hoon. This is a big, big portion, so definitely great for potlucks, but let's do the taste test. A little bit of mushroom and some egg as well. So that was really delicious. I love the flavors of the soy, the noodles, and especially that cilantro garnish on the top. And one more thing, guys. Typically in Taiwan, the Taiwanese people will add a little splash of black vinegar to their noodles. So if you'd like to do that, you can do that when you serve it and as you're eating it. I just like to do a tiny bit because I'm not a huge fan of vinegar, but I'll just go ahead and do a little bit here to see how it tastes. Give this a quick toss. So the black vinegar, I feel like, enhances the taste of the pork. It's a little bit tart, kind of almost like you're eating xiaolongbao, that type of flavor. Super delicious and very kind of like a home-style meal. I'm Angel. I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did, don't forget to give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. And as my grandpa would say, sharing a meal with a fascinating stranger is one of life's true delights. So until we can share some Taiwanese fried rice noodle together, take care, I love you, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye!