Last week I made the Shanghai-Style Scallion Oil from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Like Umami Oil and Burnt Garlic Sesame and Chile Oil, this is a recipe for a sauce with a note for serving on noodles.

The Sauce

The sauce could not be easier. Scallions, shallots, and a bit of salt are gently fried in a neutral oil until the scallions are wrinkled and pale brown.

The Noodles

Unlike the previous two recipes where the noodles are sauced and tossed in their serving bowls, Kenji instructs to make the sauce and toss all the noodles in that.

For the sauce, some of the scallion oil is heated with light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Cooked noodles are then added and tossed and that’s it.

I tried Kenji’s Italian pasta cooked in baking soda water technique for this one as well.

Other Uses

As Kenji suggests, I tried the oil on pizza and as the oil for a fried egg. I also tried it on plain quinoa.

Thoughts and Opinions

I thought the oil was tasty, but subtly flavored. The fried scallions bits are the tastiest part of the oil. It was overwhelmed by the sauce and cheese of the pizza, and lost on the fried egg after I drizzled sriracha on it. The quinoa, however, went from fine to quite good with a spoonful of the oil.

These casual noodle recipes suffer from a lack of specificity. This one includes measurements for every “2 portions of noodles,” but doesn’t indicate what a portion of noodles is. I used the pasta box’s listed serving size of 2 oz dry noodles. Once sauced they were much darker than Kenji’s photo, almost as dark as squid ink pasta, and they tasted too salty. It may have been better with less sauce to noodles. The baking soda-cooked Italian pasta did come out with a bit more chewiness to it.

I’ll keep the oil as an option on its own, but I don’t think I’ll make the noodles again. If I do I’ll definitely scale back the amount of sauce.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.