Phat See Ew

Phat See Ew

My daughter asked me if I can cook soy sauce noodles for her because we haven’t had it for a while. For us, that is a soy sauce noodle dish – Phat See Ew. It is really stir fry noodles with soy sauce as the name tells in Thai. Actually, the name of ‘See Ew’ is soy sauce in Teow Chew which is a dialect from Guangdong province in China. It is one of the popular street stir-fried noodles after Pad Thai in Thailand. It is also a kind of sister or brother of Char Kway Teow.

Phat See Ew is traditionally cooked with sliced pork. However, my daughter is not a big fan of pork, so I mostly use beef or chicken, nothing wrong with that.

Phat See Ew has its unique flavour of slightly sweet which comes from Thai sweet dark soy sauce. I have two versions of Phat See Ew – with Thai dark sweet soy sauce and with normal dark soy sauce. Both work beautifully. Below is with normal dark soy sauce because sometimes it is hard to find the Thai sweet dark soy sauce.

It normally takes me less than 15 minutes to prepare and cook. The recipe looks slightly long, compared to other recipes, but after making soy mixture everything becomes very easy. The most important technique to remember is you need very high heat and do it one plate at a time.

I hope you will like it too!

Phat See Ew Recipe: 

Marinate the meat:

100 g (3½ oz) pork/beef/chicken

½ teaspoon fish sauce

½ teaspoon dark soy sauce

Soy mixture (mix in a bowl):

½ tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon dark soy sauce*

½ teaspoon palm sugar

1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil, divided

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 egg

250 g (9 oz) fresh flat rice noodles

70 g (2½ oz) Chinese broccoli (phak khana), trim the end and cut into 5cm (2 inch) lengths

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper

To serve (optional): pickled chillies or chilli flakes

Marinate the pork with fish sauce and dark soy sauce in a small bowl.

Heat ½ tablespoon of oil in a wok/fry-pan and fry garlic about 15 seconds or until lightly brown. Add the pork and stir-fry for about 1 minute. Take it out and put it in a small bowl.

Clean the wok and heat 1 tablespoon of oil in high heat, crack in the egg into the wok and slightly scramble for about 15 seconds and push it to a side.  Add the noodles and soy mixture and toss well until the noodles are heated, about 45 seconds. Mix the noodles and egg together for another minute (stop stirring the noodles for about 15 seconds if necessary to get the noodles slightly burned) or until soy mixture is absorbed.

Add Chinese broccoli and cooked pork and stir-fry for 1 to 1½ minutes. Add white ground pepper and keep stirring the noodles until mixed well and cooked through.

Serve with pickled chillies or chilli flakes.  

*(I used thick caramel dark soy sauce, if your dark soy sauce is not thick/dark enough, you can add more)

Preparation: < 10 minutes                                                

Cooking time: < 7 minutes

Serve 1