This past week I made the Cantonese Superior Soy Sauce Noodles (with Bean Sprouts and Scallions) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Kenji says that this is “a derivative of the Suzhou-style liang miàn huang (Crispy Chow Noodle Cake)” but instead of a singular noodle cake in the end, the noodles are stir-fried with the ingredients.

After cooking the noodles and letting them cool and dry, they are fried in a little bit of oil until crispy, then flipped and fried again until that side is crisped. Then they’re spread out on a sheet pan.

Next onion, scallion, optional Chinese chives are stir-fried until charred. I was able to find Chinese chives at Super H Mart, so I opted in for those. They’re spread out on a second sheet pan.

I got a kitchen torch for Christmas so I was able to do Kenji’s optional wok hei hack: torching the two sheet pans of ingredients.

After the wok hei hack, all of the cooked ingredients return to the wok along with mung bean sprouts. A sauce of light and dark soy sauces, white pepper, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, and sugar is poured around the edge of the wok, and then everything is stir-fried until the sauce is a distributed and the noodles are “charred and crispy in spots.”

I served these noodles as a side dish alongside tofu and salad, and everyone enjoyed them. They were mostly soft noodles with a bit of crunch. Megan even ate some of the leftovers, which she definitely does not do unless she likes it. This dish went over much better than the crispy chow mein cakes.

I’ll be happy to make these noodles again.

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