What's up everyone?
Today we're making
Beef Chow Fun
a dish my dad has made thousands of times.
Hi everyone! Today we're learning how to make Beef Chow Fun.
Beef Chow Fun has to have beef and ho fun, flat rice noodles.
We're going to cut the beef first.
We're using flank steak.
It's about 10 oz.
We're making a lot because we're feeding the whole family.
Let's cut the beef first.
Like this.
Not too thick, but not too thin.
The beef we're using here was frozen and only partially defrosted
so it's much easier to cut.
After cutting the beef, what's next?
Use some water to rinse out the myoglobin.
With the myoglobin rinsed out,
today's beef will cook more beautifully, and taste great.
There aren't many vegetables to cut, just some green onions.
Green onions and regular onions.
Half an onion is enough.
Too much onion will give us too much water.
Just a little is enough.
Half an onion.
Green onions.
It's fine even if you add a lot.
How would you make this vegetarian?
It's just the same! But don't add the meat.
Use onions, fresh mushrooms.
Ingredients that don't have too much water.
Stir-fry the vegetables and set them aside.
Then stir-fry the rice noodles.
After stir-frying the noodles, season the vegetables and add them back in.
Mix it together, and that's it.
Then, the beef is almost ready.
Drain the water out.
Now, the ingredients for the beef marinade.
1 tsp baking soda.
Before we continue with the rest of the marinade,
many of our viewers have asked about
how to get really tender meat when cooking these dishes
and the answer is baking soda.
We all know that baking soda helps pastries rise and get fluffy
but it's also an amazing meat tenderizer.
The process of marinating meat with baking soda is known as velveting
because it makes the meat tender and juicy.
It alkalizes the surface of the meat
which prevents the protein strands from binding to each other
and helps it retain water.
Without it, the meat can dry out quickly and become tough.
If you don't want to use baking soda
you can always physically tenderize the meat with a mallet.
1 tbsp cornstarch.
1 tbsp oyster sauce.
1 tbsp light soy sauce.
1 tsp of dark soy sauce is enough, we don't need a lot.
1/4 tsp white pepper.
2 tbsp water.
1 tsp cooking wine.
1 tsp sugar, just a bit.
We have all of these ingredients listed on our blog at madewithlau.com
Along with step-by-step instructions and video clips
To guide you as you make the recipe at home
Mix it well.
Squeeze the water out.
See the myoglobin?
Mix it slowly.
It'll help the beef absorb the flavor quickly.
While we wait for the meat to marinate
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The meat is marinated.
Now the rice noodles, they're all stuck together.
First, we're going to massage them loose.
Put them down on the cutting board and rub them like this.
When you rub them, they loosen up easily, don't they?
Are these fresh?
Fresh noodles. I bought them today.
Chow Fun, also known as caau ho fan
Gets its name from the town of Shahe (saa ho si)
In Guangzhou, where its distinctive style of
Flat rice noodles were first created.
As more Chinese people started coming to America
In the 1940s and 1950s
Over two-thirds of them were Cantonese (gwong dung jan)
Like my mom and dad.
Up until the 60s and 70s
Chinese food in America was primarily Cantonese cuisine.
That's why today, Cantonese dishes like Chow Fun and Chow Mein
Are still among the most popular dishes across
over 40000 Chinese restaurants in America.
Loosen them as much as possible.
Peel apart the ones that won't loosen up.
Jason from Patreon asked"
"How do you store them for more than a day without having them become firm?"
After you buy them, loosen them up before you refrigerate them.
In the fridge, they'll be good for the next day.
No need to freeze them, they're good overnight.
Seal them with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator.
When you stir-fry them the next day,
they'll turn out better if you microwave them for a minute.
Warm up the rice noodles before you start.
Some are still stuck together. Peel them apart.
All right, the rice noodles are ready.
Now for the sauce, we'll be mixing together 1 tsp of dark soy sauce,
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
and 1 tbsp of oyster sauce.
I also wanted to make a special shoutout to thank all of our
Wonderful Patreon supporters to help bring this video to life.
If you enjoy our videos and are interested in supporting us directly,
Head on over to patreon.com/madewithlau to learn more!
You can add it all in together
instead of each ingredient at a time.
The beef has been marinating all this time.
Now we'll add some oil.
The point of the oil is to seal the juice in the beef.
It helps them pull apart.
About 1 tbsp.
Mix it up.
The beef is going to be more tender.
Why do you add it at the end?
It'll only seal it in at the end.
Let the beef absorb the flavors first, and then seal it with oil.
It'll seal the juices inside.
Time to start. Turn on the stove.
Turn it to the highest heat.
How long do you heat the wok?
After it's hot enough, then I'll put the oil in.
How do you know it's hot enough?
I just look at it and know based on experience.
You can see some smoke coming out.
For those without my dad's cooking experience,
we heated the wok for about a minute and a half before adding the oil
but that will vary depending on your cookware.
All right, now we'll add 3 tbsp oil.
We'll cook the beef first.
We're going to heat up the oil for about 30 seconds
or until the oil starts to ripple, before adding the beef.
Do you have to add a lot of oil?
Yes, you have to cook it this way to make the beef tender.
All right, I'm putting the beef in now.
You don't have to cook the beef too well-done.
We're going to cook the beef for only 40-60 seconds on high heat,
until it's mostly brown.
It's fine that it's a little red,
since we'll finish cooking it later.
The beef looks great.
Cook the beef until it's about 80% cooked through.
Take it out.
Wipe down the wok, it's a bit wet inside.
Put it back on.
Add some oil.
It doesn't need a lot, since the rice noodles are already oily.
Fry up the onions so they're fragrant.
Fry the white parts too.
We're going to cook the onions and the white parts of the scallions
for about 20-30 seconds.
Start putting in the rice noodles.
When you stir-fry rice noodles, you don't have to keep moving it.
Take your time.
Loosen them up.
No matter how we make it, cooking at home
is going to be different from the restaurant version.
The restaurants' stoves are much hotter
so we have to take our time, stir-frying at home.
Is that the highest heat?
As high as it can go.
Stir-frying noodles needs to be at as high heat as possible.
Donna and Emilia from Patreon asked,
"How do you keep the noodles from sticking together,
and how do you keep them from breaking?"
First of all, loosen them up like I did.
Make sure they're loosened up before you start cooking.
Also, don't add ingredients with high water content, or just a few.
When you're stir-frying, don't stir and flip it too much.
The more you flip it, the more it'll break up.
What if it sticks?
If it sticks, take it all out.
Scrub the pan clean
and then heat it back up, start frying again
but that's a lot of work, son.
It's a lot of trouble if you let it stick.
You fry it until it's golden?
You'll smell it, it'll be fragrant, then it's done.
We're gonna cook the noodles for about two minutes, or until golden brown,
before adding the sauce.
All right, it's basically ready.
We made the sauce earlier.
Now we'll put that sauce in.
We'll cook the noodles for another minute until the sauce is well-mixed.
At this point, if you feel that it's not dark enough,
you can add some more dark soy sauce.
That'll make it darker.
It's dark enough.
Now, add the green onions.
Bean sprouts.
That's too much, we don't need that much.
We'll cook the noodles with the scallions and bean sprouts
for about 30-45 seconds before adding in the beef.
That's it, we're almost done.
Add the beef.
Finally, we'll cook everything for another minute.
Oh my gosh!
Beef Chow Fun is nearly done.
A little sesame oil to finish.
1 tsp is enough.
See the wok hei?
This is wok hei, son. See it?
All done!
Turn off the heat.
You want to try?
Yes!
You don't even have to ask!
Oh my god!
I could eat this all right now.
How could you eat all of it?
Oh my god!
Okay!
Plate it.
All right, we made Beef Chow Fun!
Hong Doy, time to eat!
Oh my gosh!
Yay!
Cheers!
Hong Doy, cheers!
Did you guys have this growing up?
No, not really.
Not often.
In the US, we ate it more often.
We didn't eat it a lot.
Because in China, we hardly ever got beef.
But we ate a lot of rice noodles.
Yeah.
But just the rice noodles, with some vegetables.
When we're done eating, I'm going to loosen these up to refrigerate.
So this is a 5-pound package that we bought.
Five pounds?!
So this one, we used 1 pound.
What else do you want to cook with this?
We can make noodle soup.
This Beef Chow Fun.
Steamed noodles with soy sauce and chili sauce.
Steam them and add ginger and scallion.
That ginger and scallion sauce, I'll get you some in a bit.
And bok choy soup, with the rice noodles.
Make some bok choy soup and drop some noodles in.
There's a lot of ways to do it.
You want Yeh Yeh to hold you?
Want Yeh Yeh to hold you?
Yeh Yeh, hold him and give him something to play with.
Give him a spoon to hold.
Yeah, good job buddy!
Yummy!
Bye!
See you! Bye bye!