Chicken and vegetable lo mein
35 min · 45 g protein · 471 cals / serving
Takeout-style noodles in the time it takes to boil water: silky chicken, a wok full of crisp vegetables, and egg noodles tossed in a glossy soy, oyster and sesame sauce. Twice the vegetables of the takeout version, which mostly means more crunch in every forkful.
Ingredients
Chicken
- 1 1/3 lb chicken breast, thinly sliced
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 5 oz egg noodles, lo mein or thin egg noodles
Sauce
- 2 1/2 tbsp soy sauce, low-sodium if you have it
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tsp rice vinegar
- 1/2 cup chicken broth
- 1 tbsp canola oil
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- a thumb ginger, minced
- 1 head broccoli, small florets
- 1 carrot, in matchsticks
- 1 red bell pepper, in strips
- 2 handfuls sugar snap peas
- 1/4 small cabbage, shredded
- 2 handfuls bean sprouts
- 4 green onions, in 3 cm (1-inch) lengths
Steps
- Toss the sliced chicken with the 2 tsp soy sauce and the cornstarch and leave it while you prepare everything else. The coating keeps the chicken silky in the hot pan.
- Cook the noodles in boiling water 1 minute less than the packet says, drain, rinse under cold water and shake dry. Whisk together the sauce ingredients.
- Heat half the oil in a wok or your largest skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add the chicken in one layer (in two batches if your pan is small) and stir-fry 4–5 minutes, until golden and 165°F inside. Tip onto a plate.
- Add the rest of the oil, then the garlic and ginger for 20 seconds. Add the broccoli and carrot with a splash of water and stir-fry 2 minutes, then the pepper, snap peas and cabbage for 2 minutes more, until bright and just tender.
- Return the chicken, add the noodles and the sauce, and toss with tongs over high heat for 1–2 minutes, until the noodles are hot and glossy. Toss in the bean sprouts and green onion for the last 30 seconds and serve straight away.
Good to know
Why rinse the noodles?
Rinsing washes off surface starch so the noodles do not clump into a block in the wok, and stopping them a minute early means they finish cooking in the sauce instead of going soft.
My stir-fry always ends up watery.
The pan was not hot enough or was too full. Cook the chicken first and take it out, keep the heat on high, and if your pan is small, stir-fry the vegetables in two batches.
Can I swap the vegetables?
Anything that cooks fast works: bok choy, mushrooms, zucchini, snow peas. Keep the total about the same and add the hardest ones first.
Alternative
Per
- Calories
- 90
- Protein
- (39%)
- 9 g
- Fat
- (23%)
- 2 g
- Carbohydrates
- (38%)
- 9 g
- of which sugar
- 2 g
- Fiber
- 1 g
- Sodium
- 204 mg
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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. General guidance, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber. How
As written, 1884 kcal goes into the pot and 2037 g of ingredients comes out as about 2100 g of food: 90 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.