Singapore noodles are seriously fine fusion food. It draws on many cuisines — mainly Cantonese, but with Indonesian, Malay, Thai, and Anglo-Indian influences. It’s quick and simple to make, delivering a heavyweight hit of rich spiciness, heat (African peri-peri or bird’s eye chilies), and surprisingly different textures.
Strangely, Singapore noodles origins may not be Singaporean at all. They might instead lie in an eclectic dish first devised and relished in Hong Kong. The notion might make sense given that the dish always features Madras curry powder. That’s a hot, spicy Anglo-Indian concoction that would have been well known in Hong Kong during its British colonial days.
Perhaps the Singapore tag was used as a drawcard to give the new dish a bit more exotic appeal. Who knows?
Seems nobody does for sure. All that really matters is the outstanding way ours tastes.
Beware going over the top
Singapore noodles are a hugely popular item on Asian restaurant menus around the world. It’s also pretty much a standard feature in take-away fare from anywhere offering the food of South-East Asia.
But a danger with this much-loved dish is that it often gets mistreated. It can easily become the final refuge for leftovers and other tempting oddments that happen to be lying around the kitchen. That’s a shame. Instead of having a clear-cut identity, it ends up not knowing — and more importantly — not tasting like what it’s supposed to be.
It’s meant to be a fiery, colorful dish with multiple, individual flavors and a variety of textures. Made our way, it’s an exciting combo of majorly appealing contrasts. Even the simple rice noodles appear in two completely different guises.
Silky smoothness comes from cooking some of them with all the other ingredients in the finishing, stir-fry process. And a crunchily crisp counter-balance is created by crowning the dish with noodles flash fried hot and fast at the last minute.
Keep it simple, make it quick for a top-notch Singapore noodles
For speed and simplicity, our Singapore noodles recipe uses chicken breasts instead of ‘char sui’ — Chinese barbecued pork. Tastes every bit as good but cuts out the long marinading time and additional cooking that’s needed for that sort of pork.
In comparison to the relatively sparse ingredients in our Singapore noodles, I’ve seen recipes that also chuck in things like bean sprouts, bok choy, French beans, broccoli, lemongrass, carrots, and asparagus. I’ve certainly eaten versions that must have been cooking away since the previous week — a stodgy gloop unified by a single color (grey), and a single flavor (nasty).
You can easily avoid that sad outcome by first resisting a temptation to ‘enhance’ our ingredients with some extensions.
The second key to producing a first-class dish is hot, fast, carefully timed stir-frying. You should be aiming for an overall frying time of almost spot-on ten minutes. That’s all it should take from the moment you put a big skillet or wok onto a high heat, through to serving. Add to that another minute or so to flash-fry the crisp, crowning noodles, and you’re done.
Happily, before all that rapid frying, you will have already prepped the rice noodles, as well as the sauce with its accompanying egg mix. Your cooking focus can then be entirely centered on that crucial hot and fast.
Like this recipe? You’ll love these too:
- Thai Chicken Noodle Soup: A classic, creamy, and exotic, with plenty of zing.
- Buckwheat Soba Noodles: Satisfying, earthy, and comforting all in one. Perfect as a side or entrée.
- Spicy Ramen Noodles: Why turn to those cheap packs when you can bring some homemade flavor to ramen so easily?
