Make ramen noodles better – faster!
The next time your workday is demanding and you have to answer the question that billions of people worldwide ask themselves, “What’s for dinner?” consider Chow Mein Ramen Noodles.
It’s just everything you love and know about Chow Mein, but it comes together more quickly:
- 12 minute recipe including prep
- one pan cooking
- simple, magic 5 ingredient Chow Mein Sauce
- You’re not even aware that this is half of the daily recommended five servings of vegetables! It’s loaded with veggies!
But First, What is Chow Mein?
Noodles are stir-fried with meat or vegetables to make Chow Mein. It’s a favorite meal in most Chinese restaurants in America, and it can now be found in your house!
I designed this recipe to serve as a flexible foundation for your dinner requirements; feel free to substitute other veggies, meat, or even a different kind of noodle.
- Chow Mein Noodles: Traditionally made from wheat and egg, chow mein noodles have a bite that makes me think of traditional pasta noodles from Italy. Dried chow mein noodles are available in almost every grocery store’s Asian aisle. Additionally, some markets have freshly cooked noodles that are already cooked and can be added to your pan with the vegetables right out of the refrigerator.
- Vegetables: Green onions, carrots, cabbage, and bean sprouts are a few traditional vegetables used in chow mein. But, you can be inventive when choosing your vegetables and include celery, corn, bok choy, water chestnuts, broccoli, spinach, kale, and snap peas. Chow mein is a great way to use up any leftover vegetables you may have in your refrigerator.
- Meat: You can use any kind of high-quality meat as a source of protein for your chow mein. Choose for beef, pork, shrimp, or chicken breasts or thighs; these will add flavor and fillingness to your meal.
If you’re not a meat eater, you can still enjoy chow mein in its plant-based form by using tofu or tempeh instead of meat and using vegetable stock. Incredible taste guaranteed!.
Handy shortcuts for this recipe
This is not a super quick dinner recipe in the vein of Jamie Oliver’s 15 Minute Meals, where you have to juggle a ton of dishes flying everywhere, the stove and oven going at the same time, mix with one hand while flipping steaks with the other, and then clean up for 45 minutes.
This is a quick and simple 12-minute recipe. These are some helpful shortcuts I use:
- any other instant noodle dish prepared in a skillet, such as ramen;
- Shredded carrots and cabbage from a store-bought cole slaw mix; open the package and pour it in!
- Cornstarch or cornflour is not needed to thicken this five-ingredient Chow Mein sauce; instead, the starch from the ramen noodles does so.
