How to Make Jet Tila's Famous Drunken Noodles | Ready Jet Cook | Food Network

Today, I'm going to be making a dish that is the perfect marriage between my Thai and Chinese roots, drunken noodles. Drunken noodles are known for being a late night street food dish, but despite the name, there's no alcohol in the noodles. It's usually in the patrons eating it. Hey, team, I'm Jet Tila, and welcome to Ready Jet Cook, where I teach you how to make my favorite Asian dishes from pantry to plate. But before we get into the dish, please take a moment and subscribe to the Food Network YouTube channel so you can keep up with more of my favorite recipes. So let's jump in the pantry and start building this sauce. A few key ingredients for this, sweet soy sauce. I'm going to need oyster sauce, and we got to talk about sriracha. We got to have that sriracha heart to heart. So I think fish sauce is finally, after decades, become ubiquitous. Everyone knows it. It gives you that salt and umami. Just make sure you're using Thai fish sauce for Thai dishes. Of course, hot, sour, salty, sweet, savory. Remember, five flavors. So the sweet is going to come from sugar. Now we're getting into the pantry ingredients. I think sweet soy sauce is probably the easiest to understand. It's basically just molasses and soy sauce. So if you're like, man, I cannot find sweet soy sauce, just take 60% blackstrap molasses and about 40% soy sauce, and you've made your own. Very, very simple. I did say this is a Thai-Chinese hybrid. So anytime you're cooking noodles and you're stir frying, you're probably going to be using oyster sauce. Oyster sauce is kind of the end all, be all. If you had to go to battle with one sauce, you would start with soy sauce and then start bringing all these other plus ones, is what I call them. Let's just take a beat and talk about sriracha. We all know the green cap sriracha, but it's not the OG sriracha. This sriracha is made here in the States. Real sriracha, or what they call sriracha, is a province in Thailand that grew chilies and made this sriracha. This is original Thai sriracha. It's going to be sweeter and more rounded, whereas this is delicious, but it's going to be more acid and chili forward. So I'm going to let you guys pick, but please do me a favor and try the Thai sriracha. I think it's quite delicious. Sriracha in this dish is just adding a little heat. So if you like heat, add more. If you don't love heat, you can leave it out or add less. So the liquids are in. It's time to bulk up the liquids with aromatics. In the world of Asian basils, this is known as Thai basil, also known as sweet basil. We know it because the stem and the stalks are purple. The leaf is a smooth profile, and it's got a really nice licorice smell to it. That's sweet or Thai basil. You may come across something that's called hot basil. The leaves will be jagged. The stems will be green, and it'll have more of a peppery smell to it. If you cut a green bell pepper, that smell that permeates, that's going to be closer to hot basil. This was always my little tip. Because there's basil in this dish, I'm going to chiffonade basil into the sauce. That liquid sizzling in the pan is going to steam out all of the essential oils of this garlic and this basil. All right, so let's chiffonade this basil. Literally pick the leaves, lay them on top of each other, and then roll them into a very tight cylinder. Basil leaves are rolled up tight. And I'm just trying to get the thinnest slice possible. Always be moving your knife either forward or back because that's actually slicing. If you're not moving the knife as you're bringing it down, you're actually bruising the basil. So that motion of going forward or back, that creates a really beautiful chiffonade. And that's it right there. That licorice smell is going to just kind of fill the kitchen. It's pretty amazing. I'm going to also add garlic to the pan, but I also want to add a little bit of garlic to the sauce. And I simply just cut the root side off the garlic before anything, just like that. Root side pops right off. And now these garlic cloves will release from the skins. They're really literally just holding on by the root. And if you get a little bit of that skin, it's not a big deal. If you ever are walking through night markets in Thailand and you're watching uncles and aunties smash garlic into the wok, a little bit of that skin actually creates another flavor layer. It chars up. It really creates a really, really nice kind of aroma and another look to the dish. So I'm just doing a quick slicing pass, a very tight slicing pass. And my final move is going to be smashing the garlic against the board with the knife. So check it out. It's kind of this row, row, row your boat. So, and you can hear it. It's very ASMR. This smashed garlic, a little bit of it is going to go into the actual sauce. And I'm going to reserve this to go into the wok with me. All right, so let's mix this sauce up. Drunken noodle sauce, done. So the last two items I'm going to need are the noodles and the serrano peppers. So before I give my dissertation on noodles, let's just get all of our knife work out of the way. I need a half of this onion and I'm always starting by taking off the tip and the tail. I get a lot of comments about, bro, I don't think you should be taking the root of the onion. Trust me, if you're cutting hundreds of onions in your lifetime, it's the way to go. It makes life a lot easier. And then cut it in half. I only need half today. So I'm going to peel in the half. And because you removed the top and the tail, the skin comes off super, super quick. Now I like the leonase cut. You've seen the slice off the rainbow. You've seen the dice, which makes boxes. The leonase cut is the cut for stir fry or the wok or saute. Basically keep the edge of the knife aimed to the core, to the center of the onion. And by keeping it always aimed to the middle, cut quarter inch to eighth inch pieces. So by the time you hit the top, you're at top dead center. Always leaving the edge aimed. Quarter inch slices. And these are superior wok fighting cuts. Meaning they're not going to wilt in the wok. So that's what I want right there. Chili is very personal. You don't seed Asian chilies. So I'm just going to do a thin slice. I like thin surface area because they melt into the pan very well. And obviously I'm doing two at a time. To double my efficiency. All right, next cherry tomatoes. Flat hand. Make sure the knife is in between you and the board and just rock it back and forth. And that way you're going to get them all done in one go. All right, so I'm using a wok here, but you do not need a wok. You just need a pan that can get oil hot and has enough surface area to hold all your ingredients. That's it. So I'm starting with a little bit of neutral oil. And that just means peanut, canola, grapeseed. I don't need a lot. I just want to get everything in this pan sizzling. I like to start with garlic and chilies because they're my kind of aromatics. A word of warning. If you're using chili, you see all this vapor? It's going to be like pepper spray. So stand back and just kind of be ready. And if you're cooking in an enclosed, like an apartment, open some windows, get a fan going. I'm going to be adding eggs. And I like to do this kind of thing called hot side, cold side. I put a lot of the ingredients up against the side of the pan. I'm going to add a little bit of oil just for the eggs. And I'm literally just cracking eggs in. Don't pre-scramble. You don't need to do any of that. I really like that difference between white and yolk. And I'm breaking up the yolks a little bit. So egg is about to set, right? A little on the wet side. I'm really kind of just letting it set up a little bit. Let's get that shrimp in there. And that's going to cook up really quickly. As the shrimp are cooking up, I'm going to add the onions over the shrimp. Asian sauteing is this beautiful balance of getting every ingredient cooked to perfection by the end of the dish. So that's why I'm kind of being meticulous about when things go in, where they are in the pan, and to the level of cook. Now, I'm going to break out these noodles and show you how they come together, right? This whole pack was one giant noodle sheet, like literally six to 10 feet long. What I'm going to do is each bar basically opens up to become one noodle. So check it out. It was one noodle sheet folded over itself probably about eight to 10 times. And it's breaking off now at the ends to create these beautiful pieces. I've got two bars pulled apart. The rest I'm going to keep nice and airtight so I can put those in a zippy bag or in a container, and they're going to go right in. Check that out. Fresh rice noodles. Now, it's really important for the noodles to get a little bit of sear. Because they're so fresh, when they get a little bit of that caramelization, they get almost crispy on the edges, and I love that. Don't be afraid to spend 30 seconds to a minute here and really let those noodles sear up. You can have direct pan contact, and that's going to also create that wok hay, that kind of aroma of the wok. And that's just from searing all the ingredients at a really high heat. So now, shrimp about three quarter way. Egg is good to go. The onions are starting to get translucent. So now basil is going to wilt right in. Now, the lovely part of that, the basil, is going to be those essential oils. And to release those, I'm going to need some tomato, because tomatoes have a lot of that tomato water, which is sweet, but it's also going to give me some moisture. And I'm going to let this saute up a bit. And the tomatoes are going to release their liquid. That liquid is going to help steam those leaves, and the leaves are going to give their essential oil. It's a very purposeful cook here, and that's looking gorgeous already. And before we apply sauce, make sure to take an extra second and get that sugar whisked in. Get all that sriracha, sweet soy, and fish sauce to play. And I'm almost coming at it from the edges, because I want that, again, boil, that caramelization, that steam. And get those noodles bathed in using that surface area of the pan. And what you're going to find is the noodles are going to start to yield the liquid, all those delicious sauces are going to hit the pan and start to reduce. And I'm looking at the bottom of the pan for the viscosity, and I want this to have reduced just a little bit. And I'm just about done. This is the last chance you're going to have to know how delicious this is. So please, taste your food before you serve it. I can turn down the heat a little bit, because I can see the noodles are done. The sauce is reducing. Oh, man. This really is like a perfect dish. All right, this is exactly what I want. All the ingredients are cooked to perfection. Your final check is, has the sauce reduced and stuck onto the noodles? Do the noodles look moist? That's it. That is perfect. And you got to serve this dish hot and fresh to get your maximum impact. Look at that. That is straight out of the streets of Bangkok, right there. This dish is literally served hot, eaten right off the street, as most of the people are sobering up. And it is one of those dishes that is a bit sweet, is super satiating. That's really, really fun to eat and fun to cook. Here we go. Cheers. Mm. It's the bounciness of the noodles, that umami, and then just kind of the bath of that kind of licorice flavor that really ties it together. This really is one of my favorite dishes, and I know it's going to be one of yours. What a great, perfect dish. I used two Serrano chilies, and on a 10 scale, it's only like a three or four, but that's very personal. Make sure to match the level of heat to your diner at home. Well, there you have it, team. My famous drunken noodles. I hope this has given you the confidence to go tackle this dish at home. With just a few ingredients adding to your repertoire, you're going to be able to knock it out of the park and then start your way to cooking way more Thai dishes. Make sure to let me know what you think about the recipe, how it came out for you. Make sure to subscribe, and we'll see you next time on Ready Jet Cook.