The 25 Minute Noodles I'd Choose Over Pad Thai

Today, I'm going to show you my well-tested recipe for drunken noodles, which is a Thai noodle dish that's spicy, salty, a little bit sweet, and perfumed with tons of Thai chili and fresh basil. It only takes 20 minutes start to finish, and it hits right whether you're drunk, hung over, or just in need of a weeknight dinner. To make this thing, I'm going to drop roughly three quarts of water on my stove and bring it up to a ripping bowl. Then I'm going to grab two large chicken thighs, which is about a half pound or 225 grams. Then I'm going to prep those up for the stir fry. To do that, I'm going to cut the chicken thigh in half right down the middle. Then I'll cut that half in half, turn it 90 degrees, and then come back and cut this down into quarter-inch thick slices that are about one inch long, top to bottom. If you don't like chicken thigh and you want something a little bit leaner, chicken breast definitely can work for this. You just got to keep in mind that it doesn't have enough fat, and it just gets dry a little bit easier, so you're not going to have as good of results, in my opinion. Or if you don't want to eat chicken at all, I think little 16, 20-count shrimp that are cut in half would also be a good sub here. You just want a protein that can get cooked in about two minutes. I would avoid steak for this because it's honestly kind of tricky to make tender when you cook it with high heat without doing some sort of Chinese restaurant technique where you velvet it, and we're not doing that here. This recipe is designed to be as weeknight and as easy as possible. Once I've got both chicken thighs cut down, I'm going to grab roughly two to three grams of salt, and I'm going to season this chicken right on the cutting board to save a dish. Then I'll just toss it to get the salt evenly combined. The way that I would do this in a restaurant is throw this chicken into a bowl, but this is a very rapid-fire recipe, and tossing it on the board here saves me a dish. I've pre-salted that. I'm going to set this aside. Then I'm going to grab some noodles. For this dish, I've got 175 grams of XL, or wide, rice noodles. My water's up to a boil, ripping bowl. I'm just going to carefully pour that over the noodles, and soak them for about 15 minutes. By the way, if you're wondering about where to get these noodles, you can get them at the international grocery store. I don't think they're going to be widely available at regular grocery stores. You can definitely use store-bought, regular pad-thai noodles, but they're about half as thick, so you're going to need to use hot tap water instead of boiling water, and the process should be basically the same. Also, notice I'm coming back and fluffing these as soon as the boiling water's in there, just so that the noodles don't stick together. Once they sit for about three or four minutes, the starch will have started to cook. If you don't fluff them right away, they're going to get really, really well fused together, and it's going to make getting them apart basically impossible later on. Then once they're kind of fluffed, I'm just going to take some scissors and cut them in half right down the middle. This is just going to make them a little bit easier to toss in the wok later on. Then one more fluff for good measure, just to make sure no stickage. If you're wondering why I'm soaking these in boiling water instead of cooking them in water, it's just that having them at really high temperatures for a long period of time makes them really sticky, and the noodles get gummy and really stuck together, and it just doesn't work in the context of a stir fry. In Thailand, this dish is usually made with a fresh rice noodle called sen yai, which is a wide, flat rice noodle that's really silky, floppy, and it has a nice luxurious texture that's beautiful, but it's hard to get in the US, and it's very hard to work with because it's super delicate. What I'm trying to do with these XL dried noodles here is approximate that silkiness while using something that most people can have access to that isn't going to fall apart in the same way. Those sen yai noodles, you can get at the international grocery store in the refrigerator section, but my hunch is that they've been frozen and then shipped across the ocean. In that transit time, they've probably been thawed and then refrozen just a tiny bit, and that just kind of gets them fused together in the package, and it's really hard to get them peeled apart. Then you end basically just to have shredded noodles in your final dish, which tastes good, but they really don't have any texture. From here, I'm going to move my bowl of hot water noodles off to the side here, and again, let that soak for about 15 minutes in total. Then I'm going to grab 175 grams of gai lan, which is also known as Chinese broccoli, and then I'm going to cut it down. To do that, there's a bit of a woody stem end here that I don't quite love because it's fibrous, and when it gets cooked, it lets out all this soapy wateriness that kind of steams things up in a way that I don't like, so I'm going to get rid of that. Then I'm going to cut the whole thing in half from a top to a bottom. Then I'll take the top part and just chop it down into a few pieces. That's pretty tender and is going to wilt down almost like spinach. For the other end where it's a little bit more fibrous, I'm going to cut it in half, and then I'm going to cut it on a bias into thin coins. This is going to help it saute into something that's a little bit more tender more quickly. I just don't really love a stir fry where you have large chunks of things that aren't barely cooked. It kind of reminds me of just low-quality strip mall Chinese food. This form factor is just going to help us hit that textural sweet spot where it has just a little bit of crunch or maybe just a touch of snappiness, but it's also tender and it's going to blend into the background with the noodles and not stand out as raw vegetable. There's going to be a certain percentage of people out there who can't get gai lan, though, and that's totally fine. Just sub in broccolini because it's going to cook in roughly the same amount of time and it has pretty much the same flavor, but I love gai lan because it has a moistness to it that regular broccoli doesn't have or broccolini. It's just very fresh, very juicy. That's the word that I'm looking for. When you saute it, it releases quite a bit of steam and that just helps it cook more evenly and more quickly and it just gives you just such a good result. Once I got 175 grams of gai lan chopped up nice and clean, I'm going to get back to my noodles which have been soaking for about 15 minutes. Normally, if I was also cooking this for dinner, I did cut a little bit of aromatics in that 15-minute window, but I don't want to bog this video down with very simple knife skills that aren't going to teach you anything, so we'll talk about those in a second. For now, the noodles are nice and hydrated, they're tender, and they're ready to stir fry. I'm going to move over to the sink and drain off my noodles. Then I'll hit them with cold water for about 15 to 20 seconds to get them down to room temperature and just stop the cooking. Don't over agitate them here, too. Just spray them top down because they're pretty brittle and they can pretty easily get broken down. The end state of these noodles, by the way, is going to be broken. I just think that it gives you a better result when you break them at the right time. If they were all crumbled down at this point, it just would lead to a super, super broken down noodle in the final dish, and that's not what we're looking for. Anyways, I'm just going to set these aside and then get my wok ripping over high heat. Before I do that, I want to take a quick second to thank David for sponsoring this vid. I love to snack. It's actually one of my favorite hobbies, but the reality is most snacks are high calorie, low protein. When you eat them, you don't really feel full, so later on, you got to eat a bunch more to fill that void inside of you. That's where David comes in. David makes protein bars, but they're not just any protein bars. David's Gold Bars have 28 grams of protein for only 150 calories and they have zero grams of sugar. If you haven't tracked calories or macros before, let me just emphasize that this is a crazy amount of protein for that amount of calories. To put this into perspective, you'd have to eat seven tablespoons of peanut butter at 650 calories to get that much protein or two and a half cups of Greek yogurt for about 350 to 400 calories. Lately, I've been keeping David protein bars handy so that I can enjoy a little snack in the afternoon while also getting enough protein to feel sated afterwards. It kind of feels like cheating. If you want to be a little bit more naughty, David makes these bronze bars, which tastes like a chocolate covered dessert. Shout out to the peanut butter chocolate crunch flavor, which still has 20 grams of protein for only 150 calories. If you want to try David right now, you can buy four cartons and get the fifth free using my link below or the QR code on the screen right here. Or if you don't want to wait for shipping, you can go ahead and pick them up at your local Target or Walmart. Thank you, David. If you don't have a wok, guys, a 12-inch nonstick pan would also work. You just got to know that you're going to be missing out on the upper 10% of quality here. This type of thing gets really, really hot and it cooks things in a specific way that just give you these very dynamic, interesting flavors that are very fresh, very bright. Since you're going to have to use lower heat with a nonstick pan, you're just not going to be able to get it. That being said, I truly think all home cooks who really enjoy the process of cooking would benefit from getting a wok, not only because it allows you to cook certain types of Asian dishes at a high level, but also it's just a useful tool. It's not very expensive and it gives you access to types of heat that aren't possible with any other cooking device. I'll link to the one that I've got here down in the description. Ooh, that thing is hot, dude. Don't lift that by your face. Once this thing is red hot, I'm going to add in 10 grams of oil. Then I'm going to drop in my gaiwan. The wok was a little hot. Then just a very small pinch of salt. This dish has fish sauce and soy sauce in it, so we don't need to go crazy here. Just enough to bring out a little bit of the moisture. Then I'm going to jump in, give it a toss, and saute it for about two and a half minutes. During this time, you basically just want to keep this veggie moving constantly. As the vegetables are exposed to the higher sides of the wok, they get super heated, which instantly steams them. Once that water is cooked off, it gets a little bit of a sear on the outside. That combination of oil, steam, and sear is what gives wok its very unique flavor. It's got a smokiness to it. You don't want to go too far here, though. We're not trying to get these fully tender. We're just trying to take off the raw edge, lose some of the moisture, and get it into that sweet spot, like I said earlier, where it's got some snap to it, but it's not crunchy. After about two minutes or so, I think we're right in that sweet spot. You can see we've got some searing in certain places. The greens of the gaiwan have cooked down. I'm just going to give this a quick bite. It's perfect. It's so juicy. I'm just going to set that aside. Then the wok goes back down over high heat. Then I'm going to wipe it out with a paper towel to get rid of any little veggie bits that are going to burn during the next round. If you're wondering why I cooked the gaiwan first by itself, it's just that I really, really like wok fried vegetables. I think that they have the best flavor. There's just something about the vegetable being in the pan by itself that makes it taste as good as it can. If you cook it along with the chicken or the aromatics and stuff, it's just not going to get that thing that I said where it's searing and steaming at the same time. I really like to put the effort in to get the gaiwan dialed because I really think it makes the final dish really special. My wok is nice and hot again, but not as hot as the first time. I talked a little bit too long and lost track here, but now we're at an 8 out of 10 instead of a million out of 10, which is where it was the first time around. Once the oil is in, I'm going to drop in my salted chicken. Then I just want to spread out the chicken so that as much of it is touching the hot wok as possible. This just gives us more surface area to catch a little bit more browning. That's going to keep the chicken from steaming. When you're cooking with a wok, you just want to make sure you're not getting too much stuff concentrated in the middle because it's really going to cool down that section of the wok and you're not going to get the flavor developed that you want. After about 60 seconds, I'm just going to come back and give everything a quick toss here. You can see in that very short amount of time, we got some really good browning. It's already smelling amazing too. At this point, if your chicken got stuck, it's probably just because either your wok was too cold or your wok itself isn't seasoned properly. To rebuild that seasoning, by the way, all you have to do is take a stainless steel scrubber with a little bit of soap and scratch out any of the food that might be left in there from previous batches or any of the seasoning that is on there. Then get that wok brought up to really high heat, add in some neutral oil and then wipe it around with paper towels. Let it cool down and repeat that two or three times and that will rebuild the seasoning and create a really nice nonstick coating. After about two minutes of cooking, the chicken has taken on some really, really nice color. It's smelling amazing. From here, I'm going to add in 30 grams of minced garlic, 75 grams of chopped shallots or red onion would also work, and then five to eight grams of Thai bird's eye chili. Then I'll jump in, stir to combine, and now since there's garlic in the pan here, we really got to babysit it and keep our eye. The Thai chilies just gave me a headshot, but after about 30 to 45 seconds, the shallots will be broken down enough to release some moisture that will deglaze the wok, steam things up and lower the temp a little bit, which will help keep the garlic from getting burnt. Oh man, this smells just insanely good, dude. You could stop right here and have a very tasty dinner. You could add in the stir fry sauce, deglaze it a little bit and just serve this on top of rice and it would be a banger, 10 of 10 S tier dinner. Also, if you're wondering about Thai bird's eye chilies, you're going to want to pick those up on your trip to the international grocery store, or you could use a serrano, which isn't as hot, but it has plenty of chili flavor, or if you don't want to do either of those things, a strong pinch of chili flakes will kind of approximate that heat, which this dish needs to have, in my opinion, it needs to be pretty spicy. Okay, and after about two minutes of constant stirring, the garlic is at the point where it's really starting to take on color and we don't want to go much further than that. You can see the shallots have melted too, and obviously the Thai chili flavors have opened up, so we're ready to move on. The next thing in is going to be my gai lan, then I'll jump in and stir that. The moisture from that broccoli is going to deglaze any of the aromatic stuff that might have gotten stuck to the bottom of the wok. So from here, I'm just going to give that a quick saute for another 20 seconds or so to get anything off the bottom. Then I'm going to add in my rice noodles, and then take my stir fry sauce and pour it around the edge of the wok to get a little bit of caramelization. By the way, to make this stir fry sauce, I just combined 75 grams of oyster sauce with 10 grams of brown sugar, 50 grams of water, and 20 grams each of fish sauce and soy sauce. Once the stir fry sauce is in, I'm just going to come back and give everything a scrape on the bottom here. Again, to release anything that might have gotten stuck from the last phase of cooking. And then I'm just going to let this come up to a boil and simmer for about 30 seconds or so to reduce it down into a nice inky glaze. I don't want to toss the noodles too much here, I'm kind of just giving them enough to combine. At the end, I am going to break them down a little bit, but we don't want to go there just yet. And once the sauce has reduced into a nice sticky glaze on the bottom of the wok here, I'm going to call it good. Then I'll kill the heat and add in 10 grams of basil. I'm using Thai basil here, but regular old Genovese style Italian basil would be fine. And then 15 grams of scallion tops. Now scallions are in the recipe, and if you don't have those in your fridge, don't worry about it. There's kind of a nice green thing to add at the end. Then I'm going to come back and give this some agitation to not only wilt in the basil and the scallions, but also I kind of want to break these noodles a little bit so that it becomes this unified slop. Now I am trying to kind of break these noodles down into pieces that are about this long more or less. What is that? Two or three inches. I think that that gives you a final dish that eats more like drunk food. I've tried a few times to get these noodles perfect, where they were long and ribbony and it would eat more like a pad Thai or something, and you just lose the spirit of the dish and it kind of just turns it into a pedestrian strip mall Thai food that just isn't very good. There's something about the noodles kind of being broken down and how that integrates with everything else, so you can just eat a huge spoonful at a time that just makes it a lot more satisfying and a lot more soul nourishing. It almost eats like a casserole, which sounds weird and not particularly Thai, but you just got to trust me that it works better when it's like that. After no more than 10 or 12 seconds of stirring, you can see that everything is pretty cohesive. The basil is melted, the noodles have gotten nicely broken down, and the noodles have absorbed that oyster-y fish sauce. I am going to give it a little taste for seasoning though. Man, shout out to oyster sauce, by the way. That is one of the most underrated ingredients of all time. It's essentially just like liquid MSG, and it makes stuff taste awesome. It is on the saltier side because this is drunk food and it's made to be paired with cold beers and being a little bit numbed out, so if you're sensitive to that, instead of the 20 grams soy and fish sauce, maybe go down to 15 and see how you like it. You can always add a little bit back in, but if you're wondering, that seems a little sparkly when you eat it, that's by design. Now, to serve this, I'm just going to pile up into a low bowl. You can see the noodles are broken, and I think most people would think that that's a bad thing, but here, I just think that that's what you need. You can get a bunch of stuff on a spoonful at a time, and the noodles become this background substrate. I almost think of it like rice. It's just a starchy substrate to carry sauce and bind things together and to make the whole thing a little bit chewier and soft, but yeah, that is drunken noodles, dude. Absolutely beautiful. I mean, it's not truly beautiful. It's actually super ugly-looking, but it has that ugly, delicious look to it, to quote David Chang. I would like to serve this with a fried egg on top or a bunch of chili crisp, and of course, it's really nice next to a stone-cold canned beer. Here we go. Mm, man. Dude. My God. That is so flavorful. Oh, my gosh. The Thai chili and the Thai basil, they flood you right away, and they get you up in your head. It kind of moves up, and you get disoriented in a good way. They're just so pungent and so aromatic that the whole time, you're just sort of a little woozy and a little floaty. It's just really, really fun, and then the whole thing is held together by this very comforting umami noodle, very starchy. The gai lan is perfectly cooked. It's juicy but still snappy, and the whole thing just has a lot of life for something that's so comforting. If you haven't had it before, whether you're drunk or not drunk, it's just tasty food, and I really hope you try it. If you guys want to make this recipe, I will throw the short version down in the description, along with a link to the long version over at my blog, brianleggerstrom.com. As always, guys, thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you for sticking around to the end of the video, and I'll see you next time.