Why your wok should be red hot to master Adam Liaw’s stir-fried noodles, aka char kwai teow

Name: Why your wok should be red hot to master Adam Liaw’s stir-fried noodles, aka char kwai teow
Cook time: 30 min
Yield: 5
Cuisine: Malaysian
Ingredients: 1kg flat, white fresh rice noodles (about 1.5cm wide), separated; 200g (about 15 medium) prawns, peeled, deveined and butterflied; 180g fried fishcake, sliced 3mm thick; 2 lap cheong (Chinese sausage), sliced on a sharp diagonal; 1 bunch (about 100g) garlic chives, cut into 5cm lengths; 200g bean sprouts; 5 tbsp vegetable oil or lard, plus extra if needed; 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped; 2 tsp chilli paste, such as sambal oelek (optional); ground white pepper, to season; 5 eggs; banana leaf, to serve (optional); sambal belacan, to serve

Learn the secret to good “wok hei” to make perfect char kwai teow – a stir-fried flat, wide rice noodle dish – the Adam Liaw way.

Adam Liaw

September 20, 2023

easyTime:< 30 minsServes:5

Char kwai teow is one of the many variations on stir-fried flat, wide rice noodles that abound in South-East Asia. Thailand’s pad see ew and the Cantonese classic beef chow fun are other examples of similar dishes. The best-known char kwai teow comes from Penang, where I was born, so let’s start with that version. A traditional Penang-style CKT would also include blood cockles, but they can be hard to find, so I’ve left them out. But you could include them if you like.

Ingredients

1kg flat, white fresh rice noodles (about 1.5cm wide), separated
200g (about 15 medium) prawns, peeled, deveined and butterflied
180g fried fishcake, sliced 3mm thick
2 lap cheong (Chinese sausage), sliced on a sharp diagonal
1 bunch (about 100g) garlic chives, cut into 5cm lengths
200g bean sprouts
5 tbsp vegetable oil or lard, plus extra if needed
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 tsp chilli paste, such as sambal oelek (optional)
ground white pepper, to season
5 eggs
banana leaf, to serve (optional)
sambal belacan, to serve

Stir-fry sauce

2 tsp caster sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce

Method

Step 1
Combine the ingredients for the stir-fry sauce in a small bowl and stir well to dissolve the sugar.
Step 2
Separate the ingredients for a single serving – 200g of rice noodles, 3 prawns, 5 slices of fishcake, a fifth of the lap cheong, 20g of garlic chives and 40g of beansprouts.
Step 3
Heat a wok over high heat and add 1-2 tbsp of oil and the prawns, fishcake, lap cheong and chopped garlic for a single serving. Toss for about 30 seconds until the prawns are just starting to change colour. Add small amount of sambal oelek, if using. Add 200g of noodles and flip the wok so that the noodles are in direct contact with the metal of the wok (and the other ingredients are now sitting on top of the noodles). Allow the noodles to fry for about a minute, then toss the wok and add a little more than 1 tbsp of stir-fry sauce around the outside of the wok. Toss the noodles through the sauce to combine and fry for about 30 seconds until the sauce starts to caramelise. Move the noodles to one side of the wok, add a little extra oil to the open side of the wok and crack an egg into the open side. Scramble the egg for about 30 seconds until it is nearly set, then add the garlic chives and beansprouts for a single serve and toss everything together for about 30 seconds. Season with a little white pepper.
Step 4
Cut a square of banana leaf and wave it over the flame to soften slightly. Serve the char kwai teow on the banana leaf with a little sambal belacan. Repeat for the remaining four serves.

Masterclass

You don’t need a commercial wok burner

If there’s one thing that really gets my goat in the discussion about wok cooking, it’s the idea that you can’t cook a decent stir-fry on a domestic stove because it’s less powerful than the jet-powered commercial gas burners. It’s completely untrue, and quite obviously so.

You don’t need a jet-powered burner to stir-fry at home.Quentin Jones

Stir-frying wasn’t invented when high-powered commercial gas woks came into existence. Billions of people around the world stir-fry on domestic stoves every day with fantastic results. Do people who trot out this line think everyone in Asia has a restaurant kitchen in their home? And that Asian people outside Asia simply never cook?

The problem is that people look at wok cooking in a restaurant and think that’s what we’re supposed to do at home. It isn’t.

I’ve cooked on woks and stoves of all kinds and the only thing standing between you and good wok hei in your home stir-fry is technique. With an understanding of wok technique, you can achieve a great stir-fry on even the smallest burner on your domestic stove. Or even on an electric stove, if that’s all you have.

Getting that “wok hei”

“Wok hei” is the goal of wok cooking. Often described as the “breath” or “spirit” of the wok, the term refers to the charred-ingredients-on-hot-metal taste that a well-fried wok dish gets. It’s not quite “searing”, as you can taste it in rice or noodles that you wouldn’t normally describe as “seared”, but it’s similar. When you taste it, you’ll know.

Heat the pan until it’s very hot before you start cooking. iStock

The first thing you should think about in achieving is getting your wok hot before you start to fry. This means heating the wok with nothing in it (not even oil) until it’s very hot before you start. On an electric or induction stove you will, of course, need a flat-bottomed wok (or just use a frying pan). As a guide, when the wok starts to smoke, it’s ready to start cooking.

After the wok is hot, add your oil. I use a squeeze bottle to add the oil around the edge of the wok so it runs down to the base.

From this point on, the main issue most people have with the wok is putting in too many ingredients. An overloaded wok will not be able to produce “wok hei”. When cooking your CKT, make one serving at a time – or two at most if you feel confident with your technique.

It’s much faster and easier to cook one serving at a time than it is to try to cook five servings at once, and you’ll have much tastier results.

Adding liquids

Getting good “wok hei” is actually easy for CKT because all the ingredients are dry, and the liquid seasonings are relatively few. The reason most stir-fries fail is that liquids are added too early (or too many ingredients that release liquid are added to a wok).

For those who can recall their high school physics, liquids require extra energy (known as “latent heat of vaporisation”) to change state when evaporating from liquid to gas. If there is watery liquid in your wok, that energy will come from the wok, so any liquid in your wok will cool it down to 100C, far lower than is needed for frying.

Get your “wok hei” into the ingredients before you add the seasonings, then when you add the sauce, add it directly to the metal of the wok. Soy sauce is mildly alcoholic (about 2 per cent) so if added directly to the noodles, they will absorb it too quickly and the sauce will taste raw. A quick sizzle against the metal of the wok will make the dish taste noticeably better.

Next steps

If you’ve mastered this basic CKT, try using duck eggs for the next one for richer results. It’s all the rage in Malaysia. Or perhaps try adding blood cockles or pipis (quickly boiled first and removed from the shells) for a more authentic Penang flavour. Or if you feel like spreading your wings, move on to pad see ew or beef chow fun.