Best Pad Kee Mao Ever
I have perfected this dish. I have not met a single person that didn’t like it, that’s including kids, and not just my own…Everyone has way over eaten when this dish is served. So, if I can make a suggestion, pack up the rest of the dish and put away, before eating, otherwise you will go back to serve more.
Of course, I tweak the recipe with what I have on hand all the time. As long I have the delicious fat rice noodles on hand, I am golden!
Disclaimer, if you are not familiar with some of these sauces or seasoning, they are all very common sauces in Asian cooking, they are available at pretty much all Asian markets.
Here is how I made today’s version:
Ingredients:
1 package of fat rice noodles, left on the counter for a couple of hours to bring up to room temperature, then taken out of the packaging and microwaved on high for 5 minutes to completely soften.
4 large eggs
1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
4 Swiss chard, hard stem removed (I saved the stem for juicing later, no waste!) and thinly sliced
2 carrots, cut length wise in quarters and cut into match sticks
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
4 cabbage leaves (I had Taiwan cabbage, so much softer than regular American cabbage), thinly sliced
4 cloves of large garlic, minced
1 knob of ginger, about 1/2 inch long, minced
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 handful of fresh basil, thinly sliced
Marinade for chicken:
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp cooking wine (I used Shaoxing wine, available at any Asian market)
1 tsp mushroom bouillon
1 tbsp rice vinegar
Seasoning for Pad Kee Mao:
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sweet soy sauce
1 tbsp of Maggie sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp mushroom bouillon
Method:
Marinade chicken with the chicken marinade above, mix well and set aside. Let the chicken soak up the flavor. Wash hands well.
Prepare vegetables as mentioned in ingredient list.
The noodles come in a package, stuck to each other. If you throw the whole clunk into the wok, they will never separate. So, heat them up in the microwave, and separate them with your fingers. Try not to break the noodles, because you don’t want to end up with a bowl or 1 inch long pieces. Be very careful, it can be hot. This is by far, the most time-consuming process.
Wok on high heat, go in with one table spoon of cooking oil. Once oil is hot, go in with chicken slices. Stir fry until chicken is cooked and pull out chicken and set aside.
In the same wok, add 2 tbsp cooking oil, crack all 4 eggs directly into the wok. Use spatula to break up the yokes and scramble the eggs.
Once eggs are set, go in with minced garlic and ginger. Stir around until fragrant. Dump the whole plate of prepared vegetables into the egg mixture and stir fry as if you are making a vegetable dish (hint, this could be a main dish itself, if you add the chicken back in after the vegetables are cooked).
Just look at the color of the vegetables! It’s such a colorful and healthy dish! Stir fry for about 3 minutes until the vegetables are softened. Go in with the separated noodles.
Add all sauces on top of noodles. At this time, you will need 2 spatulas to move the noodles and vegetables around and evenly distribute the flavor. Go in with the cooked chicken.
A very important trick to have amazing tasting Pad Kee Mao is to leave it alone at this point, with heat on. Yes you read it right, heat on, and leave it alone. The bottom layer will be slightly charred, the edges of the noodles will be slightly crispy and browned a bit. That, my friend, is priceless flavor! That is what makes an amazing Pad Kee Mao rather than regular stir fried noodle dish.
Kill the heat, go in with sliced fresh basil and green onions, stir up and dish up. You can garnish with the best looking piece of basil to impress!
