Pancit canton (chow mein) in a flash
Wikipedia defines chow mein as “a generic Chinese term for a dish of stir-fried noodles, of which there are hundreds if not thousands of varieties.” It says further: “In Anglo-American Chinese cuisine, it is a stir-fried dish in consisting of noodles, meat, and cabbage and other vegetables. It is often served as a specific dish at westernised Chinese restaurants with soy sauce and vegetables such as celery, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts.”
In the Philippines, we call it pancit canton which is a generic name for both a certain variety of egg noodles and the cooked dish itself.
Some serve it with lots of starch-thickened sauce; others prefer it quite dry. The following recipe has no starch-thickened sauce and is the second of three dishes I cooked using a single slab of pork belly which I pre-cooked then divided into portions prior to chilling.
There are a lot of vegetables that are good with pancit canton — string beans (the short variety locally known as baguio beans), sitsaro (snap peas), carrots, cabbage, mushrooms… You can even add hard-boiled quail eggs. I cooked this dish in under 20 minutes so I tried to keep the combination of vegetables to a minimum — garlic, onions, julienned carrots and shredded cabbage.
You will need:
pre-cooked pork belly (see ‘meals in a flash‘), cut into 1-inch cubes
a head of garlic, crushed, peeled and minced
1 large onion or 2 shallots, coarsely chopped
1 medium-sized carrot, peeled and julienned (cut into match sticks)
1/4 to 1/2 head of cabbage (depending on the size), cored and shredded
soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper
3-4 tbps. of vegetable cooking oil
cooked egg noodles (simmered in broth – see related cooking tip)
pre-fried commercial fish, squid or shrimp balls, cut into rings (optional)
Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan (a wok is so much better). Add the cubed pork and cook over high heat until the edges start to brown. Cover loosely to avoid oil spatter. Turn the heat down before removing the cover to stir and turn it up again once the cover has been replaced.
Add the garlic and onion, stir fry for about 30 seconds. Add the shredded cabbage and julienned carrot, stir, season with soy sauce and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until the vegetables are tender-crisp. Add the cooked noodles, toss to distribute the meat and vegetables and serve at once.
Seasoning this dish with only soy sauce and pepper might spell bland and flat. But the success of this dish, in terms of flavor, depends a lot on how the egg noodles are cooked. That’s why I posted the technique for doing that ahead of this recipe. Please check it out before deciding to cook this dish.
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Hi Connie.
I surely can relate to this dish since this is one of my son’s and my hubby’s faves. As a matter of fact, I just did one the other day.
Anyway, what I normally do is I add water after I render the pork fat to soften the meat (maybe about 5-10 minutes). Then I season it and add the bilbao, shrimp, sliced fish or shrimp balls and all the other veggies. After cooking everything for about a minute or so, I take all the meat and veggies out of the pan and left with the seasoned sauce. It’s then that I add enough water and season it again to be used with the dried egg noodles. With this, I get all the seasonings and taste from the meat and vggies.
After the dried noodles are cooked, I add the meat and veggies in to the pan again to incorporate everything… and voila!!! Pancit Canton (Yum-O!)
Sometimes, if I’m really in a rush, I use the noodles from the ramen packs instead of the traditional dried noodles.
Kudos to you. Keep up with the great recipes! Love your site!
Haven’t blog-hopped in a while. Canton is my favorite pancit of all the varieties we know in the Philippines. The closest I’ve tasted to our pancit Canton was in Kuala Lumpur (street markets and such) and served more like a seafood pancit with the noodles deep-fried right in front of you and the thickened sauteed sauce of seafood and veggies poured over it. I forgot what they called this dish – but it is Cantonese in origin I was told. The chow mein in the US is not at all like what we know. The noodles are more like mami noodles without the lye but with more bite. It’s also flavored with oyster sauce and/or hoisin.
Thanks, Laurel.
Mita, baka it’s the preference for a less oily version of oriental noodles? Chinese stir fries are oily but they just don’t taste the same when cooked by Westerners.
Yes, I’ve always enjoyed this dish when we are in the Philippines for holidays, albeit a slightly different version but still so very nice. Over here in Malaysia, we call this “Cantonese Fried Noodles”. There are many kinds of dialets and usually each Chinese Clan has their own unique recipes & dishes.
Connie, I have always enjoyed your blogs and recipes! Keep up the good work.
I love Pancit Canton especially when cooked with lots of recado and not too dry. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
Hi Connie I just want
to let you know that I really appreciate your website.
My family is hard to feed i can not cook the same kind of ulam every week kailangan 1 month ang gap yong medyo na kalimutan na nila ang lasa..
Ang pinaka gusto ko sa mga recipes mo tamang tama talaga ang timpla not like others medyo ginagamitan ko pa ng common sense at nag iisip ako ko kung tatama ba ang tipla sa lasa na gusto namin.
More power to you