Barbecue Pork Shanghai Noodles

These have quickly become a favorite quick and easy dinner recipe of mine. I first made them when I'd purchased some shanghai noodles to make peanut noodles for a big asian dinner party but ended up swapping to a different noodle dish after finding out one of the attendees was allergic to peanuts. I'd also made Kiteless' Char Siu Bao and would up with a bunch of extra fully sauced pork leftover. The next night I was feel kind of slacker so I just threw the pork (with a little bit of extra sauce) in a wok with the noodles and some onion and garlic. Since then I've refined the "recipe" such as it is and have made it a number of times. I don't claim that they're at all authentic (though a chinese friend says his mom makes something similar as a form of street noodle.)

I'll admit that I rarely make the effort to make the pork from scratch unless I'm making the buns, but any asian grocery with a butcher will sell BBQ pork and a local restaurant here actually sells the best in the city. The pics below are made with pork from a local market though as I couldn't get to the restaurant the day I had a craving and it's not quite as good though still passable. You can fiddle with the sauce to make them to your taste as well.

I'm told by friends that these are an awesome hangover food (I don't suffer from hangovers :)) They're also incredibly easy and adjustable to most tastes.

Ingredients

The Pork

Ambitious

• Make some pork from this recipe Char Siu Bao

Lazy

• Buy Chinese BBQ pork from your choice of source.

• Either way, I usually have about 1/3 of a pound per package of noodles.

The Rest

• Shanghai Style Noodles (I prefer the thick variety but there are thin as well)
  • For lunch or if you have a side dish like dumplings or something 1 package will feed two. I often make them for 2 bigger eaters and a moderate one and usually use 2 packages and about 3/4lb of pork and we don't have a ton of leftovers.
• Green Onion
• other veggies, I use whatever's in the crisper, bell pepper, gai lan, carrot anything's nice. Chop into bitesize chunks.
• 1 TBSP Garlic
• Minced Chili to taste, optional (see below)

The Sauce

• Rough Quantities per package of noodles, adjust to taste

• 1.5 tbsp Hoisin Sauce
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Oyster Sauce
  • I sometimes us fish sauce instead of one of the soy sauces if I'm out of Oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp of honey
• 1/4 tsp ground pepper
• 1/4 tsp white ground pepper

Options

• minced chili or hot sauce to taste (I sometimes make it with, sometimes without and go for a more tangy taste)
• lime juice (see above)
• A pinch of star anise (optional, some people hate the flavour)

Also note, if you don't have honey you can use brown sugar to mellow the taste a bit if need be, don't overdo it though or it gets that too sweet flavour of a lot of bad asian noodles.

Method

• Mince your pork into small cubes then slowly get it sizzling in a pan (I was using my wok for something else at this point but I usually do it all in the wok)

• If you got a spice cup with your pork add it now if you want (basically minced chilis in sesame oil if you didn't) you can leave this out if you want the spice to come from the sauce only.

• Cook until the surplus bits of fat melt down and you get a nice crisp on everything (I like mine a bit crispy, you don't have to go as far as in the photos)

• Take the pork and lay it aside once ready

• Simultaneously get out your noodles, rinse them with hot water then microwave in a bowl or on a plate for about 45 seconds

• Mix all your sauce ingredients until the taste is what you want.

• With a bit of oil, toss the noodles in a hot wok, doing about a half package at a time until you get themnice and hot and a little bit of a crisp on them.

• Once they're all done, put to the side, cook up your veggies to the desired texture then toss together in the wok to blend. Depending on your veggies you can do this simultaenously on the side, but part of the appeal of this meal to me is 1 wok and 2 bowls for prep :)

• Toss with the sauce and serve as desired.

Yum