Scallion Oil Spaghetti 葱油意面

Scallion oil spaghetti came into being one day when I had a ton of scallions/green onions and no Chinese noodles in the pantry. I thought - why not use spaghetti and cook the dish using Italian methods? The rest, as they say, is history.

Or more specifically, it’s turned into this blog post 🙂

Chinese scallion oil

Scallion oil spaghetti starts and ends with a classic Chinese master sauce…the scallion oil.

To make scallion oil, you’ll need a lot of scallions or green onion ( I think they’re one and the same). Cut them into thin slivers and slowly fry in some neutral tasting oil until charred and crispy. Remove the onions and voila, you will be left with an extremely fragrant oil.

The oil is then combined with Chinese pantry staples like soy sauces, vinegar and oyster sauce. Together this make an amazing multi purpose sauce that is mostly popularly used in scallion oil noodles. However, you can use it on a variety of other ways, check out my scallion oil three ways post!

This sauce is easy to make and does not take a lot of time or ingredients. As you can imagine from the list of ingredients, the taste is deeply savoury and fragrant…I guess that’s why it’s become a classic condiment.

The Spaghetti

Using spaghetti in place of Chinese wheat noodles for this scallion oil spaghetti is a no brainer. After all, they are both long strands of wheat-based carbohydrate that is served with sauces and toppings.

Whereas scallion oil noodles are normally just tossed in the sauce, the spaghetti gets the Italian treatment of being cooked with the sauce, along with an appropriate amount of pasta cooking liquid. By using this Italian cooking technique, the spaghetti can soak up more of that scallion oil sauce within rather than just on the surface.

If you don’t have spaghetti, any other pasta shape would work wonderfully here.

Parmigiano Reggiano

And what’s a spaghetti dish without Parmigiana Reggiano cheese? It would be wrong to serve sans a good shaving of freshly grated Parimigana.

At first, it doesn’t seem right to add Italian cheese to a soy sauce based sauce, but if you think about it, the cheese imparts another dimension of unami-ness. A saltiness from aging and time that is unique all on its own. Similar to what Japanese miso would bring to the party…um there’s an idea…

Back to the cheese though, I must stress that using the real deal Parmigiana Reggiano is imperative to achieving the balance and coherence in this dish of east meets west. Any imitation powered “Parmesan” should be left out entirely…of any pasta dish in fact.

Storage

This recipe makes enough sauce for two servings of spaghetti, but feel free to double the recipe and have extra on hand. I mean, if you are going through the trouble of frying scallions.

It keeps really well in the fridge for weeks so any time you’re in the mood for scallion oil spaghetti or noodles, it’ll be ready for you!