Seafood Pan Fried Noodles

And look at that, loads of seafood. You don't get this much seafood in the restaurant. Hi everybody, it's Bill from the Walks of Life and today we're making a classic Cantonese noodle dish, seafood pan fried noodles, or in Cantonese, hoisin chow mein. The star of the dish are these Hong Kong pan fried noodles, non-negotiable, you gotta use these thin noodles. So the way they do this hoisin chow mein, and seafood pan fried noodles, is that they fry the noodles crispy and then they cook everything else and pour it on top with a nice gravy that soaks into the crispy noodles. You get a nice contrast, softened crispy noodles and super crispy noodles. It's just a great combination. But the problem I have with the restaurants is that they deep fry the noodles and they get a bit oily and greasy and sometimes a little over fried. You can control that at home, but you definitely wanna get a nice crispy noodles on the base. We'll make some sauce with the seafood and pour it all on top. So the key to a good seafood pan fried noodles is the seafood itself. Make sure you get fresh sea scallops, don't get the little bay scallops, and they're really good. They don't smell ammoniated. You gotta make sure when you go and buy your seafood, you make sure they either smell like nothing or they smell like scallops. And then you get some nice sized shrimp and finally, some fresh squid. You can actually buy pre-processed frozen squid that's already done. You just take it out and give it a wash and you're ready to go. So first, to prep for this dish, we're gonna cut the vegetables. These are just beautiful choy sum pieces. And the only thing that you have to do with these pieces is just to cut off the end because we're gonna use them whole. You can cut these into smaller pieces. Next, we're not gonna use this whole carrot, but we're gonna use about a quarter cup of these carrots. And a fun way to cut these carrots, I'm gonna cut off this end. I can use this little gadget here and make sort of like crinkle cut pieces. Another fun way to cut the carrots is to make some notches, four or five notches here. Of course, they make gadgets to do this and you do have to be careful here because the carrot is round and does tend to roll. And then you can just slice them like this. And you get these little funky shapes, little star shapes. It's supposed to be a flower. A little flower, yeah. So I call for straw mushrooms in the recipe in the blog, but they do come in cans. So you can use fresh beech mushrooms, which we have actually pictured in the recipe in the blog, or you can just use simple button mushrooms or shiitakes, whatever you like. Today, we're using fresh button mushrooms. And the mushroom is a simple cut. You just slice them. And then finally, the garlic. These are the aromatics. I like a lot of garlic. You can actually grate your ginger or mince it, but what I like to do is cut two, three, four, five slices of ginger. I like to take the skin off, actually. It looks neater, so this is what I do. It's a little bit wasteful, but you can use your ginger here for another soup dish or soak your feet. Soaking your feet in ginger actually works, some people tell me. Then you got your scallion, which we're gonna slice. In our recipe, it says use the whites of the scallions, but you can use the whole thing if you like. Here are our aromatics, here are our vegetables. We're ready to go. I'm gonna show you how to cut the seafood. So for the scallops, we're absolutely gonna do nothing with them. These are large scallops. We've got six ounces of shrimp here, which is one, two, three, four, five, six shrimp. The only thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make them a little bit nicer. We're gonna just open them up a little bit. These shrimp have already been pre-cleaned and the sand track taken out. So all we're doing is we're just making the slit a little bit deeper. Butterflying. Yes, they're gonna be butterflied and they're gonna open up really pretty. Next, squid. So you can buy squid at your fishmonger at the store and it comes usually like this with the skin peeled, the heads are off, or you actually can buy them whole with the heads on them and you can process them, take the skin off and take the heads off. It's a little bit more work, but you can do it. Now these squid, we actually caught off of Montauk. So I have these fresh squid and I'm gonna use them. What we're gonna do is cut these to open these up. Once you open them up, there's stuff inside them as well. Just gonna scrape that off, give them a little crosshatch, just like so. A really light crosshatch. These are gonna look really nice when they're cooked up. Now we're gonna make them into these little pieces. So again, I'm gonna scrape out this inside, crosshatch on this side, then I'm just gonna crosshatch on this side. I'm just using the weight of the knife and this is a pretty sharp knife. I just sharpened it this morning and these pieces will probably roll up. That's a good amount of squid. So now a bunch of you are gonna ask me about velveting and should we velvet the seafood? And my answer is no. We have super fresh seafood. So once we blanch the shrimp, scallops and the squid, they're gonna be nice, tender, fresh. For me, I don't think it's necessary to velvet them at all. Now we're gonna whip up the sauce. We've got a quarter teaspoon of sugar, our chicken bouillon, one and a half teaspoons, or you can use box chicken stock. We're gonna stir that in. Then we're gonna put two teaspoons of oyster sauce, half teaspoon of sesame oil, one and a half teaspoons of salt, white pepper to taste. Just gonna give it a couple of good shakes. We're gonna put one tablespoon of rice wine. You could also put this at the wok. Right after you put the garlic in, but I'm just gonna stick it in the sauce because it's convenient. Remember to use the clear rice wine for any time you make a clear sauce. Now we're ready to go to the wok. Okay, our water's boiling now and we're gonna add our eight ounces of fresh noodle. And we've got a 30 second time clock going here. If you're using dry noodles, make sure you use half the amount because our recipe calls for eight ounces of fresh noodles, which is four ounces of dry noodles, because when you cook them up, they're gonna be eight ounces. Move these noodles around for even cooking. I'm gonna use my handy spider. I love it. Cook it for about 30 seconds. Do not overcook this. Okay, I'm gonna turn the flame off. No ice bath needed. I'm just gonna put a little bit of extra water in here. And then you're gonna drain it thoroughly. I'm gonna take it right into the colander. A couple of shakes. Into this guy and spread it out to dry. And if you spread it out like this, it dries faster. One way to expedite these drying of these noodles, you throw it onto a clean washcloth. Give it a pat. And of course, your kitchen towel has to be clean. And then you take this and you pour it right back into your colander. And voila, you got dried noodles. All right, I'm gonna start with a clean, dry wok. Spread about two tablespoons of oil. It is good to be generous with the oil. I can put a little more later. Put these noodles in there. Spread them out. You can also use a nonstick pan to fry these noodles. But you know, if you've got a well-seasoned wok, this should not stick at all. So I'm gonna add a little bit more oil to the edges here. Even though we're adding extra oil, it's not like deep frying them. Oh, it's starting to get a nice golden brown to them, but not quite yet. Oh, we've got noodle movement. That's a good sign. I've been turning this because I want a nice golden brown color. A little scorch is okay, but I don't want them burnt. Ooh. Yes, we've got some nice color there. I'm gonna put a little bit more oil in there. If I was making this, I would stop right here. I like it a little softer. Yeah, this is about right. So at this point, you can continue to fry if you like really crispy noodles, or if you like them softer, you can stop right here. I'm gonna flip them one more time and take a look. These look pretty crispy, and there's a little bit of a softness to them, so I think I'm gonna plate this. Next, we're gonna heat up some more water to give the seafood a quick blend. Let that come to a boil. First, we're gonna blanch the choy sum, but we're gonna add a little bit of oil. Wait till it gets to a good boil, and then add them right in. 30 seconds. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. These choy sum vegetables are very, very tender, so they don't need a lot of cooking. And just put them on the side. Now, we're gonna continue boiling this water. This seafood just needs to be blanched super quick, 20 seconds, about 80% done, because we're gonna cook it again. And the curling action has begun. Take these out. Beautiful. Next, I'm gonna cook the shrimp and the scallops. You only want these cooked for 20 seconds until they're about 70 to 80% done. And that looks like they're done. Look how beautiful those shrimp curl up. Now, we gotta pour out the wok and make the sauce. First thing I'm gonna do is add this ginger. For this, you don't need high heat. You actually don't wanna burn the ginger. Just wanna infuse everything. Add the rest of your aromatics, the garlic and the scallion, and the mushrooms. Give everything a quick saute. And this is where you would add the wine. But I got lazy, and I added the wine to the sauce, so I'm just gonna add all the sauce now. So while we're waiting for this to come to a boil, the sauce, you decide. You look at your seafood, and you say, well, how cooked is the seafood? And this really looks like it's 70% done. It could use a little bit more cooking. So I'm gonna add it now. If you decided that you've cooked your seafood and you're afraid you're gonna overcook it, thicken your sauce, then add your seafood. And look at that, loads of seafood. You don't get this much seafood in the restaurant. We've mixed three tablespoons of cornstarch with three tablespoons of water, and you stir it again right before you use it. Please, folks, don't just dump all of it in. I'm just gonna drizzle this in, and we're gonna see how it thickens. This might look like a lot of sauce, but you actually want a lot of sauce in here because it's gonna go over those dry, crispy noodles. Ah, you see how this is thickening now? But it's still not thick enough. I mean, it's a little bit too watery. Use it all. Well, you gotta be careful here. This is where you're gonna judge. Oh, look how nice that is. Everything's coated super nice. You could drizzle some of the extra sauce over the vegetables, which is kind of nice. Make sure you get every drop of this sauce. And that is your seafood pan-fried noodles. Let's go give it a try. Whoa. Get a shrimp, beautiful cross-hatched squid, and oh, yeah, one of my favorites, scallop. That is a perfect serving for somebody. And that somebody today would be me. And I get a little bit of crunch. Mm-hmm. Ooh, they sound saucy. The sauce is delicious. Wow. Look at that shrimp. Delicious. I'm dripping all over. And these choy sum, very sweet tasting. I just eat them like little trees. And it's very refreshing after the seafood. So delicious and pretty easy to make. What these days is quite an expensive dish when you eat out. And you're not getting this much seafood in one order at the restaurant. And you can make a lot of this ahead of time. Fry up the noodles at the end. You can even pre-fry your noodles. And keep them warm in the oven because you've got that hot sauce all over it that's gonna warm everything up. If you like this seafood pan-fried noodle dish, give us a like on YouTube and visit us at thewatsoflife.com for the full recipe. Thanks, folks. I'm gonna have another scallop. I realized how silly it is that we eat here like at this low table. People pointed it out. They're like, why do you eat in your living room? It's got the best light.