Cantonese · Main
Gon Chau Ngau Ho (Dry-Fried Beef Ho Fun)
- Advanced
- 20 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, wood-smoke running underneath, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 450 g fresh flat ho fun rice noodles, at room temperature
- 250 g beef flank, sliced 3 mm across the grain
- 3 g bicarbonate of soda
- 30 ml water
- 10 ml light soy sauce, for the beef
- 5 g cornflour
- 20 ml groundnut oil, for the beef
- 45 ml groundnut oil, for the wok
- 1 onion, sliced 5 mm
- 150 g bean sprouts, tails picked
- 4 spring onions, cut into 6 cm batons
- 20 ml dark soy sauce
- 15 ml light soy sauce
- 8 g caster sugar
- 10 ml Shaoxing wine
- 2 g ground white pepper
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueSteaming: basket, leaf and lidKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasResting meat & slicing against the grain
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · peanuts · soy · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Slap the bicarbonate and water into the beef until every slice has drunk it and the pile turns tacky, rest 20 minutes, rinse well and squeeze dry, then work in the soy, cornflour and 20 ml oil until the slices are slick and fall apart singly. 20 min
- Pull the ho fun into single strands with your fingers, rubbing a teaspoon of oil through as you go: they must be loose and at room temperature, so steam them for 1 minute first if they came straight from the fridge. 1 min
- Get the wok smoking with a thin film of oil, lay the beef out in one layer and leave it until the underside browns and it releases on its own, about 45 seconds, turn once and tip it out still pink inside.
- Wipe the wok, heat the rest of the oil until it shimmers and the first wisp of smoke rises, give the onion 30 seconds, then add the noodles and press them flat against the metal in 20 second stretches until you smell scorched starch and see brown freckles on the strands.
- Pour the soys, sugar and wine down the hot side of the wok so they caramelise before they reach the noodles, return the beef, throw in the sprouts and spring onion and toss six or seven times: out of the wok while the sprouts still squeak.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Zinfandel (old-vine)
- Also Right
- Shiraz or Malbec
- From the Taps
- Smoked porter
- Zero-Proof
- Cherry cola, honestly
Barbecue’s sweet-smoke wants jammy fruit that shakes hands with the sauce; dry austere reds argue with sugar and lose.
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