Vegetable Lo Mein | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji i'm going to stir-fry some noodles so lo mein this is a recipe um so this is actually for my new york times column although i'm not following that recipe exactly there's a few tiny differences because mainly because i don't have shiitake mushrooms here right now and i think that recipe does have shiitake mushrooms but anyhow the process is basically the same so like any stir fry we want to have all our ingredients ready to start with so that in this case means i'm going to finish cleaning these mung bean sprouts mung bean sprouts you can pick off the little ends so the sprouted end is the part that most people well most chinese chefs will advise you to pick off uh mainly just for texture um if you don't want to pick off those ends if it bothers you or you don't have time don't bother you don't you don't need to i have the time i don't do it half the time i do um today i'm just going to finish this off i started recording i started prepping before i decided to make this video so um some things are already slightly um prepped i apologize if you really wanted to watch me pick mumb mung bean sprouts for five minutes so just like any stir fry uh yeah having all of your ingredients ready to go before you start cooking is super important because stir-frying is fast and so in this case that means we're going to have all our vegetables ready we're going to have our noodles ready and we're going to have our sauces ready all right that's close enough discard the rest of those all right so i got my bean sprouts these are going to go in a bowl on their own um the way i organize my stir-fry is also i try and i put together things that are going to cook together so the bean sprouts go in at the very end on their own so they're going to go in a bag on their own there um the vegetables i'm using today are this napa cabbage which i just had in the fridge it's gonna cut it into relatively thin shreds doesn't have to be super thin this is probably like six ounces or so of nava cabbage you could also use green cabbage you could use um white cabbage you could use red cabbage you could use no cabbage at all all right napa cabbage and that's going to cook together i had this half a red onion from something else i don't remember what i used it for but i'm going to add this in there too um i think my rest of the printed recipe calls for a yellow onion i'm just using this one because that's what i had and it's going to cook at the same time as the cabbage we got this carrot which we're going to cut into julienne fine julienne matchsticks so we're going to start by cutting it into about two inch segments we're going to cut one side flat so making a little little claw here cut one side flat to get a stable surface to rest on okay and then the rest of this we're going to cut into these planks okay and then we'll take those planks stack them up a few times cut them into matchsticks the idea is we want the carrot pieces and the onion pieces and the cabbage pieces to all be relatively the same size so that they all cook at about the same rate and we can cook them all together okay so same thing cut one side to make a flat surface cut into planks and then cut the planks into juliet all right so those can all go in here together and finally we're going to put our aromatics in one in a separate bowl so a few cloves of garlic just going to trim off the ends give him a smash and just a rough rough rough chop so all you need and these scallions i've already washed them and kind of peeled off the they were starting to look a little limp so i pulled off the outer layers this will discard that too now we're going to cut it into about two inch lengths also and then cut lengthwise so i kind of bunch them up like that okay it doesn't have to be perfect and if you you know if you're uncomfortable cutting scallions lengthwise like this you can also just cut them you know slice them like you normally would or or leave them whole it doesn't really matter i mean leave them as you know you can cook them just like this and they'll still taste fine if i was cooking like that rather than adding them with the garlic which is what i'm going to do in this case um what i would do is i would put them in with all the other vegetables so they have a little bit more time in the wok all right aromatics done okay so now i've got all this going i'm gonna pre-cook my noodles so these are fresh egg noodles chinese style egg noodles um if you can't find chinese style fresh egg noodles you can use fresh pasta so fresh spaghetti or linguine that you can get at like you know whole foods or another sort of fancy supermarket you can use that just fine and if you really can't find that you can also just use regular pasta that you parboil until barely al dente so this we're going to get these in here boiling water um with a little bit of salt in it and we're just going to park them they're fresh noodles so they really take almost no time at all they're going to cook for about about a minute okay in the meantime i'm gonna get my wok preheating because i'm gonna be using it soon so when i'm breathing my wok teeny drizzle of oil i'm going to rub out with a paper towel and that oil is basically going to be my temperature indicator so when that starts smoking i know my wok is well smoking hot all right noodles are just about done [Music] all right so the news are about done i'm gonna drain them out i'm using i'm using a salad spinner to drain my noodles because i want to dry them so into the salad spinner they go give them a spin to dry them and that's it they don't have to be perfectly dry because they are going to sort of continue to steam and that steam will dry them off that steaming action will dry them off even more but you want to get most of the excess water out all right so i've got them here i'm going to give them about a tablespoon of oil [Applause] and toss them a little bit and that's just to make sure that the noodles don't clump up because what can happen is as they start to cool and dry off the starch that's on the surface of them is going to get really sticky and that can cause them to like frying to clump up so a little bit of oil helps and then that oil also is going to help with the step we're going to do pretty soon which i'll show you um we'll get to it in a second all right so wok is smoking hot i'm going to get about another tablespoon of oil in there swirl it around to coat as my friends over at chinese cooking demystified would say now long gal first long gal which is the the process of coating a wok a hot wok with oil [Music] all right so got our vegetables in we're gonna cook just give a few quick tosses like that and then basically i'm going to let it sit here let it cook without moving until it's nice and brown on the first side meanwhile i am going to grab a torch oh actually i already got one [Music] and now if i was doing this on my outdoor burner i would get wokay the smoky flavor that you get from cooking over super high heat and letting some of the oils combust i would get that naturally using a really hot burner but indoors we don't get that so what i'm doing now is i'm using a blowtorch this is a butane butane tank with a um a torch head from a company called iwatani um they're my favorite torch head you can get it on like amazon or wherever the chinese supermarket and i'm just gonna torch the noodles just lightly and what you want to see and hear is a sort of faint crackling sound and some little orange spots of flame as the oil on the noodles combusts and that's what's going to give them that nice smoky flavor that you get from grape noodles at a restaurant so you see it's starting to get these little bits are charred and you get this really sort of nice nutty aroma from that charred cabbage we're gonna repeat that process like a couple times [Music] yeah so here i can i can already smell the smokiness from the noodles i might give it another another quick little pass it's okay so you see there's like some little bits of browning and blackening on noodles that's fine you don't necessarily need to see that though for this to work because it's not really the food itself that you're trying to uh burn or combust it's the oil that's coating it that's what you really want that's what's gonna give you that real well part of what gives you that smoky wok flavor okay almost done here let me get the second tray ready for the vegetables you know if you have the skills one thing you can do point the torch in here while you're stir frying and that's gonna give you a smokiness but if you're nervous about doing that and i know some people are just nervous about stir-frying in general um so adding a torch to that can be a little bit difficult so if you don't want to do that you can do it this way which is how the instructions that i'm writing for the newspaper have you do it spread it out into a tray thin layer like that put it on top of a heat proof surface like your burner rack then just like i did for the noodles i'm gonna do the same thing on the vegetables and so you can see that orange flame so the flame coming out of the burner should be blue that's a sign that you're getting good um efficient combustion and then as it hits the oil it should leave these little orange sparks and though that's the oil itself combusting and that's what's going to give you that smoky wok flavor part of it i'll show you the other part of it in a second all right so walk back on the heat smoking hot again add another tablespoon of oil and we're going to get our aromatics have everything ready now to go so i got all my sauces that's wine dark soy sauce light soy sauce and sesame oil i've got my aromatics i've got my mung bean sprouts a little white a little white pepper that i'm going to use and then my vegetables and my noodles so garlic and scallions in stir-fry just until it's aromatic so just about like 10 seconds okay and everything's going back in vegetables in torched vegetables torched the noodles sauce use your spoon to break it up a little bit if you want you can use tongs as well okay and now the last part that's going to give more of that smoky wok flavor is gonna clear up a little spot i'm gonna add my white pepper about a quarter teaspoon of white pepper so i'm gonna add a little bit of extra oil around the edge of there it's like another teaspoon or so and then soy sauce directly where i added that oil about a teaspoon of light soy sauce teaspoon of dark soy sauce and you want to see it immediately start bubbling like that that sort of singed soy sauce flavor is uh is essential for for wake and here's um about a half teaspoon of uh sesame oil and then about so that was about actually about a tablespoon each of um sorry i said teaspoon i think i meant i meant a tablespoon each of light and dark soy sauce tablespoon of cashew wine if you don't have shashing wine you can use like sherry and then some white peppers and a dash of sesame oil okay finally last night about nap last but not least my bean sprouts are going back in [Music] i should have had a plate ready for these already [Music] so and you cook just basically until that soy sauce is dry this is not a saucy noodle dish this is a dry noodle dish all right we're good to go [Music] all right there we got some delicious smoky lots of okay vegetable lo mein see it let's see how we did hmm all right home here nice and smoky shopping come on there you go buddy chomp chomp chomp all right smokey wokey vegetable lo mein guys gals and non-binary pals i will see you next time bye you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 321,886

Rating: 4.9298496 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: iac_idcz6XE

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/fermelabouche]

God I love this man. 😍

[u/St_SiRUS]

Curious if there's a method to ensuring the noodles and vegetables end up fully incorporated together. Whenever I do a stir fry I always notice most my veges hanging out in the wok after I pull the noodles out, similar to Kenji's In the video. Maybe next time I'll liberally oil the noodles before I add them.

[u/bbuck96]

Hey u/j_kenji_lopez-alt , does cutting the scallions lengthwise instead of horizontally reduce some of the flavor from not breaking as many cells, the way cutting an onion orbitally (or anti-orbitally, I forget which way is which in terms of onion longitude and latitude) does?

[u/stew_fibroid]

Love his recipes but the go pro camera work makes me nauseous . Wish he would just get a gimble of some sort - but to each their own.

[u/4587Azalea]

Going to stir fry up some noodles this weekend! Thanks

[u/pastryfiend]

I think I've found tomorrow's dinner!

[u/swampy_pillow]

Time to get a blow torch

[u/Fidodo]

This is a great recipe, and there are some techniques in here that I learned a few months ago that I wish I learned years ago. Mainly getting the wok smoking hot dry, tossing a lot, and perhaps most importantly, adding your sauce directly to the pan into oil, not in the ingredients! That makes the sauce so much better.

The blow torch is a new one for me and I'm definitely going to do that a lot from now on! Can't wait for the wok cooking book.