• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

CooksInfo

  • Home
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Recipes
  • Food Calendar
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar
×
Home » Pasta » Noodles » Egg Noodles » Fried Chow Mein Noodles

Fried Chow Mein Noodles

Fried Chow Mein Noodles are curly, crisp, brown noodles that come in packages or in tins to keep them crunchy. They are egg noodles that have been cut into short lengths, cooked through boiling in water, then deep fried. This is a North American invention, and is completely foreign to China.

They provide a crunchy texture and a nice fatty, deep-fried tasting garnish to many different types of dishes such as salads, soups, sauce dishes or desserts.

In addition to being used as a garnish, they can be used as a base for saucy dishes to be poured over. A few famous refrigerator drop cookie recipes also use them as a key ingredient. They are also used for decorating food at Hallowe’en (e.g. spider legs.)

They are very addictive to eat as a snack food, once you have opened the packet or the tin.

The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t consider the egg content high enough in these noodles to be legally classed as noodles, but they gave up trying to fight popular parlance. In an “Administration Information Letter” (No. 84, December 29, 1948), they wrote, “we have, after a great deal of consideration, decided against any attempt to enforce this policy with respect to the so-called chow mein noodles, either wet or fried.”

Not the same as regular chow mein noodles, which are what is used in China.

Substitutes

Cook dried noodles, either real chow mein noodles or another type of long noodle or pasta, in boiling water according to package directions. Drain, chop into small lengths (or break into small lengths before you even start), then deep fry in oil until crunchy. This is a lot of fuss, though, so you may wish to just omit altogether or use something else that will give crunch, such as slivered almonds, water chestnuts, etc.

Nutrition

High in fat.

History Notes

Fried Chow Mein Noodles became widely popular in North America in the 1970s. A food manufacturer, “Chun King”, (since 1995 owned by Conagra, the same people who currently own Parkay margarine) sold “shelf-stable” Chinese dinners. The dinners were a box in which there were the various tins of things you would need to prepare a complete Chinese meal. Just enough prep was left to be done so that the housewife would feel she had actually cooked a meal. One of the tins was a tin of Fried Chow Mein Noodles, and this was one of the more popular tins in the box: somehow, there were never enough of them in the tin, especially if someone had started munching in the kitchen.

Other names

AKA: Crispy Chow Mein Noodles, Crunchy Chow Mein Noodles, Dried Chow Mein Noodles

This page first published: Sep 14, 2003 · Updated: Jun 9, 2018.

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · Information on this site is Copyright © 2023· Feel free to cite correctly, but copying whole pages for your website is content theft and will be DCMA'd.

Tagged With: American Food, Chinese Food

Primary Sidebar

Search

    Today is

  • Birthday of Venice
    Costumed reveller in Venice
  • Dante Day
    Statue of Dante in Florence
  • Greek Independence Day
    Greek flag
  • Waffle Day
    Waffles
  • Tichborne Dole Day
    Tichborne Dole
  • Lady Day
    Calendar page for March

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright enforced!
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Site

  • Recipes
  • Encyclopaedia
  • Kitchenware
  • Food Calendar

This web site generates income from affiliated links and ads at no cost to you to fund continued research · The text on this site is © Copyright.