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Beef Chow Fun (Gon Chau Ngau Ho)

Beef Chow Fun (Gon Chau Ngau Ho) reads umami 7.8, salinity 5.9 and sweetness 5.1 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Chinese · Cantonese main, about 52 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Umami 7.8 · Salinity 5.9 · Sweetness 5.1 · Richness 3.8 · Funk & Ferment 3.6 · Nutty 3.5 · Allium 2.5 · Herbaceous 2.4 · Bitterness 1.7 · Warm Spice 0.9 · Earthy 0.9 · Sourness 0.8 · Heat 0.6 · Smoke 0.6

What's in it (16)

Time & effort: about 52 min (12 min active) · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 129.8 kcal, 5.7 g protein, 1.6 g fat, 23.2 g carbs

Dietary: Contains meat — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (7 steps)

  1. Rub the beef with the baking soda and the water and leave 20 minutes, then rinse well and squeeze dry. Mix with the marinade soy sauce, sugar, cornflour and marinade oil and leave 20 minutes more. The alkali raises the surface pH so the muscle cannot tighten. It is the shortcut version of velveting and it is why restaurant beef is soft.
  2. Refrigerated noodles shatter. Bring them to room temperature and, if they are stuck in a block, steam them 2 minutes and pull the strands apart with your fingers rather than a spatula.
  3. Mix both sauce soy sauces, the sauce sugar and the white pepper in a small bowl.
  4. Heat a carbon steel wok over the highest heat you have until a bead of water vanishes on contact and the surface is faintly hazing. Add 2 tbsp of the wok oil, swirl, add the beef in one layer and leave it 30 seconds without moving, then stir-fry 45 seconds until just browned. Tip it out.
  5. Add the last 1 tbsp oil, then the onion and spring onion whites for 30 seconds. Add the noodles and spread them out. Now stop stirring: let them sit 30 to 45 seconds at a time and turn them with a folding motion of the wok, three or four times in all. That scorch is wok hei, and you only get it from a dry wok, a very hot wok and restraint.
  6. Pour the sauce around the rim, fold it through, return the beef, add the bean sprouts and spring onion greens and fold twice more, about 45 seconds. The sprouts should still be raw in the middle. Serve immediately; chow fun waits for nobody.
  7. Substitutions: skirt steak can stand in for the flank steak.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.