How to make Sapasui (Chop Suey)

At the heart of every island gathering is Samoa's staple dish of choice, Sapa Sui. Introduced by the Asian influence, Sapa Sui is always on the menu at any island feast. Hello everyone, my name is Alai-Mai-Lor, Sira Yandu-Vaenga. And I'm going to show you how to make chop sui. If you're thinking of making chop sui for 5 people, make sure you make it for 40 or more. These are my ingredients for making my chop sui. Crabby beef, the vermicelli, soy sauce, oil, ginger, garlic and onion. The soy sauce, go with this one. There are other types of soy sauce but I prefer this one because it has a nice flavour in it. First things first, we're going to cook the meat. For a nice flavoured chop sui, it's got to be dark. My daughters, they love chop sui. This will be a very nice chop sui with lots of meat. It's going to go in the pot and cook it for 15 minutes. I like to steam it for 15 to 20 minutes and then after that we'll tip that water off. That's how I make my chop sui. Next, I'm going to deal with the vermicelli. How I do my vermicelli, I put them in cold water. Because if I do it with hot water, my chop sui will get overcooked. But if I rinse it or soak it with cold water, it will bring out that texture that I want. It's going to stand there until it's ready to go in. I don't have a masher, I'm going to do the garlic. This is my Samoan garlic crusher. I'm going to use it now. Just crushing the ginger using my Samoan crusher here. And then I finish the job with the knife. I use garlic, half a ginger and brown onion. Okay, over to the vermicelli. I need to chop them up. What I do, I just use a pair of scissors to shorten them. Otherwise they come out like long strings. Now we're going to check on the meat. And then start cooking chop sui by adding all the ingredients one at a time. The meat is cooked. I'm going to tip out the remaining water. We're going to add oil first. Just add a handful of brown onion. Throw it in. Give it a stir. You can smell it. Next, you just throw in your crushed garlic from your Samoan crusher. So now, we're going to add in the ginger together with the others. And then give it a stir. Cooking the meat with the garlic, onion and ginger brings out the flavour of the real chop sui. Leave it for about 5 more minutes and then it's all cooking at the same time. We'll cover it and leave it for a few minutes. So now it's all ready for the soy sauce to go in. Now I'm going to add the soy sauce. You just add enough soy sauce to cover the meat. And then, just leave it for a few minutes. I like to add my renoseli last so that it doesn't get mushy. Oh, nice. I need to drain the water. I always put it in bit by bit, not the whole lot. Put a little bit in and stir. Keep on stirring while adding small portions of vermicelli to the mixture here. Here's the last portion of the vermicelli added to the mixture. All done. Keep stirring so that the bottom doesn't get burnt. Keep checking for the brown colour of the soy sauce if it's there. Looks like I've added enough soy sauce. It's looking good. You need to keep on stirring until all the vermicelli turns brown. I'm just going to add a little bit of water. Because it's looking really thick here, you need to add water. Be careful that your chop sui doesn't turn watery like into a soup. So you add and stir, add and stir. Leave it to cook. As you can see, it's not dry, it's not watery. It's just right. And it's ready to eat. This is my chop sui. I serve it with rice. But you can also have it with taro, green bananas, potato salad or even bread. Haftai lava, tofa, soifua. So that it doesn't get mushy.