Hi guys, welcome to the Ministry of Food!
Ok, I'm going to teach you how to make a lovely stir-fried chicken chow mein.
It's something we've all heard about, a lot of people have it on the high street.
I've broken it down, I want to show you how to make your own homemade version
with lovely fresh ingredients in it.
I'm gonna use half decent chicken, half decent - *lovely* chicken.
I'm gonna cut that into strips. I've got noodles, a little corn flour to thicken.
I've got bok choy, this is a type of cabbage and if you can't find it
you can use a regular white or savoy cabbage.
I've got some shiitake mushrooms, you can get these in the supermarkets,
but again you could use button mushrooms if you wanted to.
And then in the tin we've got water chestnuts.
If you've never tried them, they're crunchy, they are fresh and you know
it's just a nice contrast to all this in a stir-fry.
Now, I've got some boiling water cooking here, I've got a wok here.
Wok. You could do it in a very large frying pan, absolutely,
but woks obviously have that nice shape, so you can be tossing it and it cooks really quick.
First things first, put that wok or large pan on a high heat
really ferociously high.
Preheat it for like four minutes, get it screaming hot.
That's what stir-frying is all about, so fan on, windows open.
Now, every stir-fry I can think of starts with a fragrant sort of base.
So we've got coriander, you can get this in supermarkets.
Simply rip this off this can go in towards the end.
These stalks, nothing wrong with them, you've given it a wash.
We're gonna finely slice these. Then you've got spring onions.
You could use white onion, but the spring onions are a bit lighter.
We're gonna slice that up as well. And then we've got chili for that fiery heat.
Put as much or as little as you like, but you kind of want it in there, because it's a stir-fry.
Then we've got garlic that's going to bring it all together
and ginger, nice and juicy, lovely.
So to start off with let's get the coriander and the spring onions
and just rock your knife over like this.
If your knife skills are terrible, then just take your time, just do it, there's no rush.
Once you get the hang of this, you should be able to knockout
this kind of stir-fry in at least 15 to 20 minutes.
So I want to push this to the end like that.
And then we've got the chili, do exactly the same.
So I'm going to slice that up like that.
The ginger. Cut the ends off,
cut the sides off
and then you, this bit left, just you know with a peeler
or a knife if you're good enough with it, just take this skin off.
Wonderful flavor of this, really good for you as well.
So it's a thumb-sized piece of ginger for about two portions.
You cut the ginger in half
and then we can finally slice it and take your time, no rush.
So slice up the old garlic.
This is where your time is going to go,
because cooking happens in about 1.5 - 2 minutes.
Ok. So first things first, get your base ready.
Then there's the chicken.
Now, I've bought free-range chicken here,
but you can get some RSPCA Freedom Food chicken,
you can get it, you know, for a reasonable price.
The truth is actually you don't even really need a big chicken breast per person,
because once you've sliced it up and you've got it amongst
all the vegetables and stuff like that you know
a little goes a long way. I'm going to give you a breast per person here.
Just use your knife to slice the chicken up like this.
So I've sliced up two chicken breasts.
So wok, very very hot. I've got my water here, I've got my noodles.
I put my noodles in first.
I wanna put the oil just a couple of tablespoons into a pan.
Now, you've got to get really on it, concentrate and we're gonna be cooking.
So first of all, get your chicken to go straight in.
You can hear that it's really hot. Use a spoon
and move the chicken around.
We're gonna to go straight in after about 30 seconds
with the fragrant base: ginger, chili, garlic, coriander stalks.
You can see we've already got color on the chicken and how quick is that
and the colors are so lovely. That it's easy.
Bok choy. Dead simple - cut it in half,
cut the halves into quarters,
chuck it in the water with your noodles,
move the noodles around so they're not all sticking together.
We're about a minute away from finishing this dish.
You can see you've got good color.
That's why you need the heat high.
It's that scolding heat that's going to make this.
That chicken is almost cooked.
I'm gonna go in with some whole mushrooms.
You can cut them in half if you want.
Now, you don't have to do this, right.
Some people don't like it, some people love it, because they're used to it.
But then corn flour, right. Corn flour, nothing's wrong with it at all.
It's just corn flour. One teaspoon here, just scattered over the top like this.
One heaped teaspoon in there and then just toss it about like this
or stir it around.
What that's gonna to do is thicken it, so it's not just water
and noodles, it's more of a silky broth than anything else.
Straight in with the chestnuts and the water that it comes in, nothing wrong with that at all.
And basically that chicken is cooked now.
And all I'm gonna to do is get some tongs or you could drain this
and I'm literally gonna pull the noodles from here
and the bok choy into here and
I want to use some of this water.
So use your tongs or your spoon to mix this around.
You can see that corn flour just made it go silky, can you see how it's thick in there.
Lovely. All right, have a little taste.
Right, there's been no salt in that, so I'm going to put soy sauce in.
About one and a half tablespoons and that's got flavor and seasoning.
I've got lime. All right, so we've got heat from the chili, great.
Salt from the soy sauce.
Then I want to get a bit of lime action.
Squeeze some lime in there.
There you go. And then turn it off.
Job done, so we'll move this around.
What you've got there is lovely noodles, they're not cooked to hell, they've only cooked for two minutes.
The bok choy that hasn't been cooked to hell, now it's got lovely green color.
Just time to serve it up now.
Use your tongs or if you haven't got tongs a couple of forks together will work pretty well.
Move it over like this
and just make sure each plate gets a little bit of everything.
If you cook that for all of your mates or your partner they'll be well over the moon with that.
It will taste I'm sure that it's going to taste a damn slight better than anything
you've bought in your average high street takeaway,
especially by the time you got it home, it's been sitting there and all that sort of stuff.
A little wedge of lime and there you go - a beautiful chicken chow mein.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Well chuffed.
So there you go guys. I can promise you once you've done a stir fry for a couple of times,
you'll really get the hang of it. You won't believe how easy it is.
It involves a little bit of assembly, but when you get cooking
it's dead cool, dead exciting and you just will not believe the flavors.
And if you're passing it on at home or in the workplace, good luck!