Pad See Ew (Thai Soy Sauce Noodles)
Wide rice noodles charred in a screaming pan with dark soy, egg and Chinese broccoli. Ten minutes of cooking and the whole point is the heat.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 680
- Calories
- 34g
- Protein
- 24g
- Fat
- 82g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 400 g fresh wide rice noodles
- 250 g chicken thigh or pork shoulder
- 200 g Chinese broccoli (gai lan)
- 2 eggs
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 tbsp neutral oil
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1.5 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp white pepper
- Rice vinegar and dried chilli flakes, to serve
Instructions
- 1If the noodles are fridge-cold and stuck together, microwave them for 45 seconds or run warm water over them, then separate the sheets gently with your fingers. Cold noodles tear; warm ones bend.
- 2Slice the chicken or pork thinly against the grain. Mince the garlic.
- 3Separate the Chinese broccoli: cut the stems into 4 cm lengths and keep the leaves whole and separate, since the stems need about a minute longer.
- 4Mix the light soy, dark soy, oyster sauce, sugar and white pepper in a small bowl.
- 5Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a wok or the widest frying pan you own over the highest heat available. Add the meat, spread it flat, and cook for 2 minutes until browned. Push it to one side of the pan.
- 6Crack the eggs into the empty side, break the yolks and scramble roughly for 20 seconds, then fold them into the meat and tip the whole lot onto a plate.
- 7Add the remaining 2 tbsp oil to the pan. Add the garlic and the broccoli stems and stir for 45 seconds, then add the leaves and cook for 30 seconds more.
- 8Add the noodles. Spread them out and leave them undisturbed for a full 45 seconds so they blister and pick up charred spots. This char is the flavour the dish is named for, and stirring constantly prevents it.
- 9Pour the sauce around the edge of the pan rather than over the noodles, so it hits hot metal and caramelises before it coats.
- 10Return the meat and egg, toss two or three times only — wide rice noodles break easily — and serve at once with rice vinegar and chilli flakes on the side.
Pad see ew means "fried with soy sauce", which is an honest name for a dish with almost nothing else in it. What makes the restaurant version taste better than yours is not an ingredient. It is temperature.
Wok hei, and getting some of it at home
The smoky char on restaurant noodles comes from a burner putting out ten times the heat of a domestic hob, plus a wok thin enough to respond to it. You cannot match that at home, but you can get closer than most people do.
Use the widest pan you own so the noodles sit in one layer. Cook two portions at most. Get the pan hotter than feels sensible before anything goes in. And then leave the noodles alone — forty-five seconds of contact with hot metal is what produces the blistering, and stirring resets the clock every time.
Pouring the sauce down the side of the pan rather than into the middle is the same idea: it caramelises on the metal instead of cooling everything down.
Two soy sauces, two jobs
Light soy sauce is thin and salty and does the seasoning. Dark soy sauce is thicker, less salty, slightly sweet from added molasses, and does the colour — it is what makes the noodles that deep glossy brown.
Swapping one for the other does not work. All light soy gives you pale, over-salted noodles; all dark soy gives you the right colour and a strange sweetness with no backbone.
Fresh noodles, handled gently
Fresh wide rice noodles are sold refrigerated in Asian supermarkets, usually as a folded slab. Cold from the fridge they are brittle and will shatter into fragments the moment they hit the pan. Warming them first makes them pliable.
If you can only get dried, soak rather than boil them — hot tap water for about thirty minutes until bendy but still firm — and expect them to break more.
Chinese broccoli
Gai lan has thick juicy stems and slightly bitter leaves, and both belong here. The stems go in first because they need the extra minute. Regular broccoli stems sliced thin are the closest substitute; tenderstem works too.
Nutrition
Around 680 calories a serving with 34 grams of protein. Most of the carbohydrate is from the noodles, and gai lan is genuinely nutrient dense — a good source of vitamin A, C, K and calcium.
The dish is at its best straight out of the pan. Leftover rice noodles firm up in the fridge and never quite recover.
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