Mee Sua is distinct from most other types of noodles – it is salty. It is this saltiness that creates magic – adding tastiness to otherwise bland soup. For this reason, salt can even be omitted from the soup prepared for the Mee Sua.
The Mee Sua I stock at home is no ordinary Mee Sua. It is handmade at one of the few places in the world that carries on this tradition – Sitiawan. Handmade Mee Sua does have better texture than its machine-made counterpart – it is more “Q” (chewy). You can see from the photo that the Mee Sua looks fatter than normal. This is because this is the part of the noodle that is least stretched (面尾 instead of 面头). It is not as good for sure, but tasty nonetheless.
The classic Mee Sua dish is none other than Foochow red rice wine Mee Sua soup, which i used to cook often and still do once in a while. It is extremely easy to cook. You do need to get hold of the red wine for the soup and also fermented red yeast rice wine lees for flavouring/marinating the chicken. Otherwise, normal rice wine makes for a decent Mee Sua soup dish as well, which is what i have done today. You can find many recipes online, and i think this Taiwanese blog entry captures the process well in photos. Even if you don’t understand Chinese, i think you can figure out what to do. I followed their suggested recipe and added King Oyster Mushrooms to make the dish more interesting.
I think the fact that Mee Sua tends to stick together makes it easy to eat and swallow, and there is a sense of satisfaction you get out of this that you don’t get with other types of noodles. And it just blends very well with soup.
Leave a Reply