Joshua Weissman Chow Mein

Had a hard time mixing so many noodles in even my biggest pan

Is this chow mein as good as or better than take-out?

Difficulty: 2/5

Time: 35 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

This is another recipe from the Joshua Weissman Takeout pack. Every Chinese takeout order needs a side and chow main is one I’ve never made at home. Given how good the Kung Pao Pork turned out, I had pretty high hopes for this recipe. Looking at the ingredient list, it seemingly had everything it needed to turn out pretty good.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

Couldn’t find Chow Mein Noodles

I could find everything for this recipe except the chow mein noodles. I wasn’t sure if the Chinese noodles that I got were equivalent or not, but I went with them anyway.

Tools:

• Wok (this one probably needs it)

Cooking Review:

Veg Prep: 15 minutes

Once again, I got all of the vegetables ready for this recipe before starting the main recipe.

Sauce and cooking: 20 minutes

I put a pot of water on the stove to boil and mixed the ingredients for the sauce. I then stir fried the vegetables before adding in the cooked noodles and sauce. The noodles I had required a 3 minute cook time. In any case, there were way too many noodles for the pan I was using, which is the biggest one I had. This is a recipe where you could half the recipe to make it easier or you probably really need the wok.

Analysis:

I have a strong feeling that there’s something wrong with the quantities in this recipe. The 1lb of noodles and the amount of sauce don’t pan out. I can’t see a situation where all of the noodles would be well coated in the amount of sauce that this recipe makes. Even in the spots where I can clearly see the sauce had penetrated the noodles, there was essentially no flavor other than plain noodles and cooked vegetables. This was very disappointing. Although the recipe wasn’t hard, the outcome can’t yield a score higher than a 5/10. I really think that if you don’t add the sauce, it would taste pretty much the same given the amount of noodles it needs to flavor.