I’ve never had lo mein at home but it’s my favorite thing to get from Chinese takeout.
I eat low carb and just found some spaghetti-shaped shiritaki noodles, and I think I’d rather have some lo mein instead of Italian spaghetti!
I looked around for a lo mein recipe but I have no idea what would be considered a “good recipe” and what would be a bummer. And what is “good” to me is “typical Chinese takeout flavored”, $4.25 a pint!
Also, can I leave the starch out of the sauce? Is there anything I can substitute for the starch? I can’t think of a low-carb thickener. Gelatin? Xantham gum? I guess I could find some not/Starch somewhere.
I don’t think you need starch in there, or any substitute for the starch. Basically, you just need to cook your choice of meat and vegetables together, with suitable flavoring agents (e.g., soy sauce, satay sauce, sesame oil, chili sauce), then toss together with the cooked noodles. But the way I cook it is to treat it as a whole family of dishes that are found from China to Indonesia (where it’s called “mee goreng”).
I think it looks good enough, looks fine. But for my tastes and authenticity that matches the Chinese takeout I would probably make or try to find a lo mein recipe that includes oyster sauce as an ingredient, but that’s just me.
I probably wouldn’t leave out the corn starch, unless you like a “loose sauce” or essentially chicken noodle soup… I’m thinking there are seaweed based thickeners that might be available… couldn’t tell you where you could get it though.
Cornstarch doesn’t have very many carbs - I never worry about it, nor does the amount used in most recipes raise my blood sugar. If you split the recipe into 4 servings, you’re getting about 2 carbs per serving from the cornstarch. Really not enough to worry about.
(for the record, for Chinese-style dishes, 1 - 1.5 t. cornstarch will suitable thicken about a cup of sauce. It thickens more as it cooks, so keep an eye on it. If it’s too thick, you can always add more stock/wine/water/whatever.)
It’s kind of a weird recipe, though. You poach the chicken in the broth then throw the poached-chicken broth out. Stupid. That’s the broth you WANT, the stuff that tastes like CHICKEN. I’d just poach the chicken in all the broth, then use that. And I’d use low-sodium chicken stock, not bouillon, but if bouillon is all you have then it’ll work (but it’s horribly salty).
Other than that, it looks good. Let us know how those noodles are - I’ve heard they’re not much like real noodles, but kinda good nevertheless.
Xanthan Gum would work, but it has just as many carbs as cornstarch.
Geletin doesn’t work for hot food.
Agar might be your best bet, but it’ll break down if you boil it, so watch out. And hard to say how much to use. Definitely will be gelatin-y rather than starchy.
Shiritaki noodles seem to be a “love 'em or hate 'em” kind of food. A lot of people find them slimy, it seems. However, I used them for Singapore noodles (which is kind of lo-mein-y) and thought they were great. I think they work well in a dish where they are stir-fried as opposed to being used as a substitute for wheat-based pasta with a tomato sauce.
Forgot to mention I’ve already eaten shiritaki noodles That is sort of why I was looking to make lo mein because I am tired of the recipe I have already made.
I read about them on the Hungry Girl Web site and they said the key to making them not bad is to dry dry dry dry them out. So I had some fettuccini noodles and rinsed them, dried them and then sauteed them in a skosh of bacon grease with garlic. Then I added cream cheese, parmesan cheese and heavy cream and the previously-cooked bacon (chopped up) and ended up with a delicious alfredo.
It was quite good! I am not craving carbs whatsoever (never was much of a pasta fiend anyway) but it was nice to have something different to eat.
Then I tried the same recipe with the angel hair shiritaki but I couldn’t finish it. It turned out to be too … ugh. The angel hair tasted exactly like spaghetti squash which is fine, but you can’t use the same amount of fat with angel hair as you do with fettuccini.
Anyway I’m over shiritaki alfredo and want some lo mein now
I saw oyster sauce in other recipes so I might try to snag some of that and find a recipe that uses it. I also saw “coleslaw mix” in other recipes as a quick way to get shredded cabbage so I’ll be getting some of that.
I agree. Those tofu shiritaki noodles work very well, IMHO, in Asian dishes (either stir fries or soups), not so much in Italian dishes. The tofu shiritaki has a slight funkiness to it, perhaps a slight fishy smell? The directions usually recommend rinsing them under hot water thoroughly to minimize this smell and taste, but I actually don’t mind it, so I just drain in a strainer and cook them without rinsing.
I made it tonight, following the recipe exactly, including using sesame oil and every other little detail.
It was good, but not great. It tasted very much like so many other generic noodle dishes I have tried before. The soy sauce and cornstarch mix at the end adds some flavor, but not enough.
Try noodles from different grains, such as teff or quinoa.
You mentioned spaghetti squash. I personally think a Chinese noodle recipe substituting spaghetti squash would be pretty good!
Thickener: Guar gum. Low carb, but use SPARINGLY. A quarter cup of the stuff can solidify an entire blender full of liquid! I’ve seen recipes recommending Guar gum to be put in a shaker, and a small amount gently sprinkled on the liquid to be thickened, then whisked like mad. Don’t cook it any further.
~VOW
I’m not sure what “real” lo mein is supposed to taste like, but this wasn’t the same as what I get from the Chinese place. That is nice noodles in a light, delicious salty sauce with a few veggies inbetween. This was a goopy mess.
I played with guar gum and xanthan gum and guar was the clear winner. About 1 tsp for 1.5c of liquid (I got rid of 1c of water from the recipe).
It thickened but it was still slimy. Wouldn’t have been too much of a problem but those shiritaki noodles - being that they’re made from tofu - don’t soak up liquid worth a damn. So once you have your noodles (thoroughly dried to the best of my ability) and all those veggies, you’ve got a ton of extra water. Add in the water/soy/wine/guar mix and it just becomes like gross stew.
I didn’t quite care for the taste either, let alone the soupiness. It could be that I got “organic brewed soy sauce” instead of the bog standard LaChoy. But that’s all they had at the guar gum store. I also think the wine I ended up using sucked - a little bottle of chardonnay. It all tasted too wine-y.
I did use chicken and being that I’m not the spice type, I didn’t up the garlic or anything. maybe a smidge extra sesame oil.
Anyway…blech. I need to find another recipe that makes just a light coating of sauce and not this heavy stuff. Could be my fault, could be the recipe, I dunno.
Maybe I should just put some soy sauce on some shiritaki noodles and call it a day.
Speaking of shiritaki, I also think maybe 8oz of dry-then-cooked spaghetti noodles is larger by volume than 8oz of shiritaki. I bet twice the volume. So that’s why my dish felt so veggie-and-sauce-heavy, too. But a pound of noodles would be ugh…
That is sort of why I was looking to make lo mein because I am tired of the recipe I have already made.