Soy Sauce Pan-Fried Noodles has been on my and my husband’s weeknight dinner rotation for the past few weeks!
The preparation time is less than 15 minutes, and you can modify the ingredients according to what you have in your refrigerator.
Broccoli, baby corn, peppers, and bean sprouts are examples of vegetables.
For protein, you can add tofu, chicken, beef, or pork.
The sauce is what makes the Soy Sauce Pan-Fried Noodles super addicting.
A perfect balance between savory and spicy. The amount of Thai red chili you add can be adjusted based on your tolerance for heat.
I suggest adding about two to three chopped red chilis if you like your food spicy. To make the sauce, you’ll need water, sugar, sesame oil, and dark and soy sauce.
Everything pairs well with the sauce, and if you’re on a ketogenic diet, you can even use it as a stir-fry sauce.
What you need to make these soy noodles
The sauce for these noodles is based around soy sauce. However, the truth is that a good noodle sauce cannot be made solely with soy; soy-based sauces are flavorless and one-dimensional. Instead, to give this dish more depth and personality, we’re also utilizing a few common Asian sauces. These ready-to-use sauces reduce the number of ingredients while maintaining a high level of flavor!
Here’s what you need:
You can’t just use soy sauce! It’s too bland!
- The main flavor of this sauce is soy sauce; I’ve used both dark and light soy sauce in this recipe. When combined, they produce the flavor and color I’m going for. As you can see in the picture below, dark soy sauce gives the noodles a gorgeous mahogany color and has a stronger flavor. To prevent the sauce from becoming overly dark, the light soy sauce adds more flavor without adding too much color. Check out the recipe notes for information on substituting these and additional soy sauce options!
- One of the key ingredients in this recipe is oyster sauce, which has a thick, pungent consistency and tastes sweet and salty. When it comes to giving any dish a few dashes of oyster sauce unparalleled complexity, flavor, and umami all at once, it truly outperforms its weight. This deeply flavorful sauce, which is a mainstay in Chinese and Southeast Asian cuisine, is made with oyster extract. But it tastes nothing at all fishy or oyster-y (is that even a word?). See recipe notes for substitutes.
- The other secret component that gives this dish its flavor and complexity is mirin, a sweet Japanese cooking wine. Chinese cooking wine is typically used in Chinese recipes, with a small amount of sugar added as needed. However, I’m cutting corners today and using mirin, which contains sugar already. Use more oyster sauce as a non-alcoholic alternative, requiring one fewer ingredient.
- Sesame oil: toasted (brown in color) as opposed to untoasted (yellow in color and milder in flavor) Here in Australia, toasted sesame oil is the norm. It’s actually hard to find un-toasted. Keep in mind that sesame oil loses flavor the longer it cooks, so it is added to the sauce rather than used as frying fat.
- Green onion – Serving dual functions here. First, to flavor the oil when we sauté the white part with garlic, it serves as an aromatic flavor base. Afterwards, the green portions are utilized to give the noodles a burst of color and texture.
- Garlic: Aside from a couple of cake recipes, it’s difficult to find a recipe on this website that doesn’t call for garlic. ).
- Use any kind of noodles you choose, whether they are thick or thin, dried or fresh, white or yellow. I used fresh white noodles, which I usually prefer to dried noodles, straight out of my grocery store’s refrigerator section. It’s chewier and tastes better, which is how I like it. That being said, dried noodles will also function perfectly in this recipe. Or even spaghetti. Yes, I did just say that. Although it may sound incorrect, dried spaghetti and many dried noodles are really just flour and water. So you really can’t tell the difference once it’s combined with the sauce!
