How to make those Chinese fried crispy noodles even better than a restaurant! - Marion's Kitchen

Crispy noodle pancake topped with a super luscious stir-fry. This is my Hong Kong crispy noodles with pork and prawn. Alright, so first things first, let's do our crispy pancake. Now the important thing with this one is that we need to use the right noodle. Now what I've got here are some fresh Chinese egg noodles. You're looking for the noodles that are kind of a little crinkly when you pull them apart. They're coated in flour. Sometimes they're called wonton noodles or wonton mee. They're the noodles that you're looking for. I find that those noodles in the kind of wet package don't crisp up as well in this one. So you really need to go after these fresh ones. Now you just want to sort of pull them apart and shape them into an approximation of the size of pancake that you want. Now the restaurant version of this involves deep-frying this noodle pancake in a whole lot of oil. We're going to do it with a lot less oil. So I just want to heat my pan up and add in just enough oil to make the bottom of that pan glisten. Now slide those noodles into the pan. Now here's where you really want to keep a close eye on things. You want the oil to be hot enough that it's gently sizzling those noodles but not so hot that it's kind of scorching them. So be vigilant. Now after about a minute, I can see that I'm getting some really kind of dark golden colour on the bottom of that pancake there. So I'm going to add in a little bit of water. Just a bit to kind of steam the noodle pancake through. Now just let that water bubble away and evaporate a little bit. All the while keeping an eye on how brown the bottom of that noodle is getting. If I have a look underneath, I can see that that is reaching that kind of really beautiful golden tan colour that I'm after. So now comes the tricky part. We're going to do the flip. Now if you're not as confident with the pan, then what I would do is use a plate, slide the pancake off and then kind of flip it over and tip it back into the pan. I'm going to be a little danger mouse here and just flip it over. Wish me luck. Now look at that beautiful colour. Just lovely. That crispy noodle. Can you hear that? It's just what we want. Now I want to get some good colour on that second side. Now just lift your pancake out of the pan and onto your serving plate. I'm going to use the same pan to do my stir-fry sauce because I mean who needs to do unnecessary washing up. We'll get rid of about half of that oil though. Before we get to stir-frying though, I'm just going to mix up a little stir-fry sauce. Really simple, just some oyster sauce, soy sauce and a little dash of sugar. Now into my hot pan, I'm going to add some onion and some garlic. I'm using some carrot here and that's obviously going to take a little bit longer to cook than everything else. I'm going to add that in now too. In goes some very thinly sliced pork. Whenever you're stir-frying meat, make sure you spread the slices out so they're getting as much heat as quickly as possible so that they sear rather than stew. Then just let them sit for a few seconds, half a minute. Now my pork is almost cooked. I'm going to add in these beautiful prawns that I have. Lovely banana prawns. One of the reasons I really love making this dish at home is that a lot of the time when I order this from a Chinese restaurant, the prawns are those really small little not very nice ones. The pork is always too tough. I like that I can make it a little bit more special at home. Now add some little chunks of cabbage. I'm using Napa cabbage here or wombok depending on where you are or Chinese cabbage. It's also called Chinese cabbage. Some little baby bok choy as well. Any array of colourful veg is fine here. Now I'm going to deglaze the pan with some Chinese Shaoxing wine. That's an optional. You can leave it out if you'd like to keep it alcohol-free. In goes that stir-fry sauce we made earlier. To make our beautiful lush bucket sauce, we need to add some liquid. I'm going to add some chicken stock. The whole secret to this sauce is getting it just thick enough that it kind of coats the noodle pancake without making it too soggy. We'll see how we do that in a sec. Everything is bubbling away in here nicely. It's smelling beautiful. Now I'm going to add in our thickening agent which is some cornstarch, cornflour depending on where you are. Mix with a little bit of water. Just like magic, everything will turn glossy and beautifully thick. It sure does look luxurious. A little bit of white pepper here is going to finish everything off. A little dash of sesame oil at the end. Now we just spoon this glorious mixture on top of our crispy pancake. See how that sauce is just thick enough so it's not running away everywhere. It's just kind of seeping into the cracks of the noodle. Perfect. Now, of course, let's dig in and we'll see how well I've done to that crispy noodle. That combination... Do you know what's great about the crispy noodle? It adds a kind of toasty nuttiness, like an actual beautiful flavour as well as the texture. Then you have that beautiful, to me, one of the most comforting textures and flavours in that sauce. So much better than the restaurant version which, as I said, can often be full of inferior ingredients. This one is just perfect. Yum! If you've got any comments or questions, pop them below. If you enjoyed the video, why not hit that subscribe button plus the little bell one. That way you'll get notified every time I release a new video. Thanks guys!