Easy Char Kway Teow Recipe!

Hey guys, Jeremy here from School of Wok, Covent Garden. It's Wok Wednesday, we're right on the Wok, and this week we're doing Cha Kuey Teow, one of my favourite Malaysian street food dishes. It's a really simple stir-fried ho fun which is the sort of flat rice noodles and my noodles I've already soaked and dried, they're soaking or they're drying over here on a clean tea towel. So I actually soaked my noodles in cold water first and then just quickly blanched them in hot water for about 30 seconds and that keeps them hopefully as whole as they possibly can be. They might break up a little bit in the wok but they're nice and separate at least. Noodles are dealt with. I'm going to keep the ingredients here very simple. I've got some Chinese chives which I'm just cutting into lengths. My bean sprouts have quite simply been picked and really washed well. They'll go later on in the stir fry. And then the sauce is made up of These ingredients here, I've got some sambal or chili bean paste, some sort of chili paste if you want it a little bit spicy. Some ketchup manis which has this great sort of treacly texture to it. A little bit of salt and some chicken stock. Then I've just got some prawns and all I need at the end to garnish is some finely sliced spring onion. Nice fine matchsticks of spring onion. That's to go on the End of my wok clock of ingredients. So my wok clock, if you don't know, very simple, got a round plate, 12 o'clock with our first ingredient, and we go all the way around. In fact, the egg, which I'm going to crack and whisk up now, that should go at 12 o'clock. So my prawns can go in somewhere around here, and then all I have to do is get my eggs ready, and my sauce, and then I'm ready to wok. Right, eggs ready at 12 o'clock. My plate of ingredients, my wok clock, is ready next to my wok, my sauce, very simple, about a teaspoon of chili bean, a good couple of tablespoons of this dark caramelized soy ketchup manis, just get all of that into there and that will really color the noodle as well. I'm going to keep the chicken stock in its separate little ramekin because I might not need all of that so I'll just pour in as I go. And then I'll put a little pinch of salt in there because ketchup mayonnaise is quite sweet. Okay, my sauce ready to go. This is really very simple, but it's all about wok technique and your wok hei. If you understand your height of your fire and you're a true wok master, then you'll make a good char kway teow. So cooking this type of noodle dish, the hard part is keeping your noodles as whole as possible without chopping into it too much. The chicken stock will help with that because it'll separate them out in the actual wok. I'm gonna start With a little oil in the wok, make sure it's on a really high heat. You want it to be smoking hot before you add any egg or your first ingredients. As you can see, smoking hot, your egg can go in. There is a slight art to cooking an egg in a wok like this. You need to allow it to cook and then push into it. And then allow it to cook some more and push into it some more, so that way it won't burn, but you'll get nice wisps of egg. Push that to the back to allow space for your next ingredient. Your wok should be nice and clean at this point. There's enough oil in there for my chives, so my chives can go straight in. Smoking hot, chives in. Bring my egg over the top of the chives so it doesn't burn, and then start to break that egg up, just gently with the edge of your ladle. Flip that through a couple of times. It'll continue to cook, so I'm gonna push that right to the back. I'm gonna add a little bit of oil, not a lot, just a drizzle, ready for my prawns. All really quick cooking. Smoking hot, prawns in. Again, bring your egg and your veg over the top so that they don't burn, and allow those prawns to cook for 30 seconds or so before you start flicking them through the wok again. Once the liquid like your sauce and your stock goes in, everything will cook really quickly through with the steam. So push that to the back, allow more space for your bean sprouts, a little bit more oil. My bean sprouts and my noodles are going to come in next, so I'm going to add enough oil for both to go in. My oil needs to be smoking, smoking hot before this happens. Bean sprouts in. You're going to hear that sizzling sound guys, that's really important. And then my noodles are going to go in pretty much straight after that. Bring all the stuff together and at this point I'm going to pour my sauce in because I want that sauce to start separating out my noodles without having to sort of dig into it too much with my ladle. A little dash of stock, that's chicken stock there, and then Give that a couple of flicks through and you can see immediately those noodles start to separate out. Now this is cooking through nicely already. I'm just trying as much as possible not to dig in with my ladle and just sort of move the noodles around using my sort of wok toss instead. I've got a little bit more ketchup manis here because I want to get a bit of caramelised colour into it. So I'm just going to drizzle that over the top to get the right colour. And then if I need to add a bit more chicken stock as I'm going, I'll do so. High heat all the way, so long as you know how to cool your wok down and move that air. So there's a few ways of doing it. Stirring is one, the second is folding as I'm doing. The third one, which is much more effective, is a quick wok toss through. Last one, tummy in the head, round and round, back and forwards, except it doesn't need it right now, so I'll hold off. Colour's looking great now, just from that small addition of ketchup manis. Tummy in the head, couple of flicks, a small drizzle of chicken stock just to finish that off. I don't want it to be wet, this noodle dish. I just want it to be saucy enough To wrap around the noodles. So once your noodles just start to want to stick at the bottom of your wok, then they're ready. Okay, oh, you missed it, again. I'm in a showboating mood today, Chris. So you can see that stickiness from the ketchup manis and the last bits of noodle. Char kway teow with that slight bit of char. Let's dig in. Chow kway chow, even though it's using that sweet soy sauce with that treacly texture. Shouldn't taste overly sweet, it should be really nicely sort of mellow and balanced and that is definitely mellow and balanced. If you've been to Malaysia or even if you haven't and you really like this type of food guys, don't forget to subscribe to our channel. 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