Beef Chow Fun / Stir fried Beef Rice Noodles 干炒牛河

Beef Chow Fun or 干炒牛河 is a Cantonese dish of tender slices of beef stir fried with springy wide and flat rice noodles. A very popular street food in Southern China, the flavourings are super simple, mostly soy sauce and oyster sauce.

The Beef

Picking the right cut of beef is important. We are after a super tender bite and a skirt or sirloin works really well in this dish. Cutting the beef across the grain to break up the meat fibres will also help to make the beef easier to chew.

However, the real secret that most Chinese restaurants use to tenderise the meat for stir fry dishes is the addition of baking soda. The baking soda cause the outside of the meat to become alkalised, this makes it harder for the proteins to bond together, thus keeping the meat super succulent.

The Noodle

In my opinion, the key to making authentic Beef Chow Fun is choosing the right noodle. Ho Fun or 河粉 is a type of flat and wide rice noodle that’s used in this dish. It’s soft, and has a slippery and slightly chewy texture. You can use dried, but the fresh ones will be a thousand times better in this classic dish.

But when you can’t get your hands on fresh rice noodles…what do you do then? Making them from scratch is actually not too difficult.

Bringing it all together...fast!

Typically, Beef Chow Fun is tossed together in just a few minutes in an extremely hot wok. Although it's hard to replicate the smoky flavour or “wok hei” or "breath of the wok" that comes from cooking over intense heat as they do in restaurants. You can still make a stellar plate of fried noodles at home by having all the ingredients ready for the hot wok/pan before you turn on the heat...because everything will go fast!