I get a lot of email from casual and long-time readers, and it is always a joy to read each piece of it. Some of the emails are simply compliments, which is always wonderful, but often readers pose questions to me, hoping for an answer to a culinary puzzle or conundrum.

Probably the one subject I get the most questions about are woks. How to season them, how to clean them, how to cook in them and what to do when they go awry. And while I answer each email personally, whenever I get a certain number of wok questions, I usually make a post outlining the questions along with my answers, because my feeling is this–if one person has a question and actually goes to the trouble of emailing me to ask it, it is likely that several other people are wondering about the same thing, but are too shy to email and ask.

Previous posts in this series include Wok Wonderings, Let’s Talk Woks, Asian Kitchen Equipment Essentials, and Wok Words.

The first of my latest batch of Chinese cooking and wok questions comes from Stefan, who wrote:

I have been trying to cook Chinese stir-fry for some time now. I have a cast iron wok and a gas stove so now i’m going through your Chinese recipes postings trying to pick up some helpful tips to give my dishes much needed “wok-hay”

I had a couple of questions for you on the stir-fry technique. First, do you always cut up the meat before marinating it or do you sometimes just marinate a whole chicken breast? I remember you posting about using only dry ingredients in your stir-fry. Does that mean you dry off the marinade from your protein before hand? Lastly, when you cook the garlic or onions to season the oil ,do you remove them from the oil before cooking the main dish?

Here are my answers:

You must cut up the meat first–this makes for more surface area for the marinade to penetrate. This flavors and tenderizes the meat more effectively. Also, it only makes sense to cut up the meat before marinating it–you have to cut it up into smaller pieces in order to cook it in the wok in the first place, and it will be much easier to cut the meat without slippery marinade sticking to it and making it slither all over the cutting board.

Add cornstarch to the marinade–enough of it to make the marinade cling to the meat. Then, when you add the meat to the wok, the only liquid that goes into the wok with it is what clings to it. If there is any liquid marinade left in the bowl, you add it later, with the other wet ingredients. The cornstarch marinade will brown when it hits the wok, and will help create wok hay, especially the stuff that clings to the sides and bottom of the wok. When you add liquid–broth, wine or soy sauce, scrape up the browned marinade bits into the sauce–the cornstarch in it will thicken the sauce and the flavor is incomparable.

As for the onions and garlic–I always leave the onions in, then put in the meat. Garlic, you can put in first–or, you can sprinkle it on top of the meat when you put it in the wok. While the meat rests undisturbed on the bottom of the wok for a minute to brown before you start stirring it, oil and juices bubble up and hit the garlic and the intense heat of it draws the flavor from the garlic into the liquid. Then, when you stir the meat, the garlic gets mixed in with it and cooks without burning.

Next up is Dan, who had several complex questions to ask me:

First of all, love the website, keep up the good work. I love cooking Chinese dishes and noticed in the recipes I’ve tried so far you use heavy doses of black pepper, black vinegar and dark soy sauce. In recipes I’ve used in the past I’ve used white pepper but never black pepper. Did Lo and Huy use black pepper that much? I love vinegar but just recently started using black vinegar. The dark soy sauce gives the dishes a nice heavy brown color, but not as much taste? Maybe it’s the brand I use but the thinner soy sauce has more taste to me. I tend to use broths and stocks in my sauces. I’m on a quest to duplicate restaurant quality Chinese dishes and think your recipes are more on the authentic side? One thing I’ve never been able to do is to get that smoky flavor you find in restaurant lo mein. I use a carbon steel wok and turkey fryer burner. I can always adjust recipes to my own taste, less black pepper, substitute half of the dark soy sauce with the thinner version, halve the black vinegar and replace the half with stock. Love all the garlic and ginger though! Thanks again.

And here is how I answered Dan’s queries:

The dark soy sauce is often used in red meat dishes to give a more appealing color to the meat and the finished sauce. It does have flavor, but because it has some molasses in it, it is not as savory as thin soy sauce. In most of my recipes, you will see that I seldom use dark soy sauce alone; most of the time I combine light and dark soy sauces together. This gives the best color and flavor. The brand I use is premium Pearl River Bridge or Kun Choon Premium. A little more money goes a long way in getting really good tasting soy sauce.

Black pepper is more likely to be used in Sichuan dishes, and since Huy was cooking primarily Sichuan foods, he used black pepper. White pepper is more often used in Cantonese and Shanghainese foods–and since I learned from cooks from Hunan and Sichuan, I don’t tend to use it.

You have the heat necessary to replicate the smoky flavor of the lo mein in restaurants–but you need a VERY seasoned wok–it takes a while to create the patina that makes the wok hay that you are missing in your lo mein. You also need to use a LOT of oil–the unique flavor of Chinese restaurant food comes from three factors, most of which are never replicated by Chinese American and Chinese home cooks. One is a high heat burner–you have that. Two is the very well seasoned wok. Three is a lot of oil–most Chinese and Chinese American home cooks do not use as much oil in cooking as is used in restaurants, but it is the third factor in creating the flavor you seek. The oil picks up the flavor created by a hot wok with a heavy seasoned patina, and this flavor inundates the entire dish.

Restaurants use this much oil for several reasons–the super high heat of their stoves calls for extra oil to keep stuff from burning–it also makes delicious food, and it cooks food faster. Most meats, for example, in Chinese restaurants–are oil-blanched–which means they are cooked in at least 1/4 cup to 1 cup of boiling oil. Then they are removed from the wok, the extra oil is poured out, leaving about five or six tablespoons, and the aromatics are added, the meat is put back in, sauces and vegetables go in, and in a flash of time, the food is done. It is also very oily.

But it sure tastes good!

I don’t cook that way at home, and if and when I open a restaurant, I wouldn’t cook that way there, either. Chinese food doesn’t have to be laden with calories and fat.

So, there we are–my recipes are a combination of what I learned in the restaurant business and what I have learned from home cooks–and my own experimentation.

And finally, I have this very technical wok question involving seasoning from John:

I’m a long-time reader of you blog. Big fan! I finally got an outdoor wok burner and a carbon steel wok from the wok shop in san francisco. Following your seasoning steps, I achieved a very nice starting patina and made several lovely vegetable stir-frys. I was holding off on stickier items such as cornstarch-marinated meats to let the patina develop further, but I couldn’t hold back and tried your thai-inspired pork and gai lan stir-fry last night. First thing first – OMG it was SO delicious my friends who were over just sat at the table in silence scarfing like pigs. It was was shameful. So thanks for the wonderful recipe. Second question though has to do with post-starch patina. Before this dish the surface of the wok was extremely smooth and glossy. In cooking last night, the food did not stick at all, BUT the patina is definitely rougher and patchy in spots. Is this normal? Did I not scrub with the bamboo brush hard enough? Before going medieval on it, I wanted to get your advice.

Here is what I could tell John:

John, first of all, I am glad you liked the recipe so much. I get the silent treatment at my table a lot–which is how I gauge how well people like my food. If all talk stops and all I can hear is scarfing noises, then I did it right.

The patchyness is normal. If your wok’s patina is still a bit new, the cornstarch marinade that makes your food so good does give the wok a workout. Scrubbing a little harder will make it smoother again, but I wouldn’t worry overmuch about it. The more you use the wok, the smoother and darker the patina will become until it is black and shiny all the time.

If you want to smooth it out and give your wok’s patina a boost, deep fry something in the wok! That will speed the process up a bit, and will help smooth out what the cornstarch did to your wok.

That’s it for Barbara’s mailbag today. Remember, if you have any questions at all pertaining to Chinese cookery or woks, or Indian cooking and spices, or just cooking in general, or you have a special recipe you want me to present, or a book you want me to review, just send me an email flying across the aether, and I will be glad to do my utmost to help you out. I love hearing from my readers and I want to do my best to help everyone cook tastier, healthier food in their very own kitchens.

This year, I planted a whiskey barrel with Thai chilies and basil; eight starts of Thai Dragon chilies, a dozen of Siam Queen basil. These relatively few plants kept us in fresh Thai ingredients for the entire summer and early fall. The rainy early summer resulted in lush growth but the first chilies were fairly mild; however, the drought that fell upon Ohio in the late summer (something like eight weeks without appreciable rain) made for smoking-hot ripe chilies.

The same was true for all of the farmers around here–their first chilies were mild, the ones harvested after the drought, no matter what variety, were at the hotter end of what that variety can be.

It all has to do with water content in the fruits. The less water the plants get, the less water is able to be stored in the tissues of the fruit. The less water in the fruit, the more concentrated the essential oils and flavoring components in the chile, and the better they will be.

By the end of September, there were so many chilies on the plants that they were leaning over, unable to support the weight of the plethora of ripe fruits. Because we are going out of town for ten days, I decided yesterday that I needed to go ahead and pick the ripe chilies and preserve them somehow and leave the green ones on the plants to pick when we came back. Once I got close to the plants, though, I noticed that there were very few green fruits, except on one plant that is still covered with blooms.

So, using scissors, I cut the heads off of all the chile plants, except the one that was still blooming, and brought the bundle of plant tops, all filled with brilliant scarlet fruits, inside.

I spread them out on the dining room table, put on latex gloves and went to work stripping the chilies off of the stalks.

Every now and then, a green fruit would appear, and those I set aside, with their stems intact, to be frozen. The red fruits, however, went together in a bowl, to be turned into my own homemade chile-garlic sauce. The red fruits I very carefully separated from their stems and the little green caps that attach the fruit to the stem–these tough bits of plant matter would not be tasty ground up inside my Chinese-style chile garlic sauce.

I had help in my work from Delia, who decided to gnaw upon a green chile after she picked up one of the plant tops and dashes away with it.

Karma was instant and brutal; the kitten jumped straight up in the air and dashed away.

She didn’t stay away long–while I was still patiently snapping green caps off of the red chilies, she jumped up on the table and watched the proceedings intently, while she batted at the chile leaves idly with her polydactyl paws.

It is imperative to wear gloves even when harvesting chilies–the oils, especially in really hot varieties like these Thai chilies–can be very irritating to skin, and even if it doesn’t bother your hands, if you should rub your eye or nose, you could be in for a world of pain.

(Can you tell I have done that before? It really, really sucks, so now I am quite cautious.)

But, let us talk about how to make Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce.

This is one of my pantry staples, and last year, I decided to go ahead and make my own. One may ask why, since it is easily obtained in the store, is cheap and tastes pretty darned good. Well, it has to do with the satisfaction of doing something yourself–of growing something from a seedling to a ripe fruit, picking it and turning it into something else. Not only is it satisfying on its own, every time you use the results of your efforts over the next year, that satisfaction from a little bit of self-sufficiency returns to you. Besides–as good as the store bought versions taste–the homemade ones are better.

The version I made last year was fairly tame, but very flavorful, since I made it with red New Mexico chilies, serranos and cayennes. This year’s version was made with my own Thai chilies and two types of cayenne, both bought from the Farmer’s Market. I put together mixed red chilies with fresh garlic, also from the Farmer’s Market, with some salt, some sugar and some locally made apple cider vinegar (rice vinegar is more traditional, but apple cider vinegar is local and works fine, too), and ground it all into a thick paste in the food processor.

While grinding the chilies, it is a good idea to put the vent hood on in your kitchen and open the windows, especially if you are using really hot chilies. Otherwise, you might find it hard to breathe, and if you have asthma, the capsaicin in the air my trigger an attack of wheezing. So, keep your albuterol handy, and keep the ventilation going, even if it is cold outside. Better to put on a jacket and breathe, I say!

After everything is ground together, I add more vinegar–enough to make the sauce somewhat fluid–it thins as it ages–and then I stir it all up well. Once it is stirred, I scrape the resulting sauce into a jar, screw on or lock down the lid and let it sit on my counter for a day in a slightly warm place. After that, I let it finish aging in the refrigerator–it is ready to eat in about a week, but it tastes best after a month. I still have a tiny bit of the gallon I made last fall, and it is divine; this batch will be hotter, but with an amazing garlicky aroma from the hardy German garlic I used this time around.

I use this Chinese chile-garlic sauce in lots of my stir-fries, and Zak loves to put a big spoonful into his ramen. It can be used to spice anything up, but I like it best in my Chinese recipes–it tastes better than any store-bought version I have ever had. The chile fragrance is just amazing, and the garlic is much more pronounced than the commercially made types.

Of course, this is not the only way to preserve the chile harvest. I also made kimchi Hunan salted chilies and frozen chilies. Last year, I also made kimchi-style cucumber pickles, which I just opened two nights ago. WOW, were they amazingly good–they tasted great on bulgogi burgers with lettuce, tomatoes, homemade chile-garlic sauce and ketchup. I also discovered that I really like just snacking on these pickles, when I need a pick-me-up during the day. They sure are an eye-opener.

But this recipe is probably the easiest to manage for a beginning pepper preserver. While the Hunan salted chilies are technically simpler, having only two ingredients, I have heard from folks who have had them go awry. This can happen with lactic acid fermentation, so if you are wary of losing a batch of chilies to the problem of not enough salt and rot, I suggest you try this sauce. The vinegar keeps everything chilled out and fresh.

Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce
Ingredients:

Mine lasts about a year if properly refrigerated.

And you thought I had abandoned Chinese cookery, didn’t you?

Ha! Nothing of the sort. Just because I have started doing research on recipes from along the Silk Road for work, doesn’t mean I am going to permanently turn my back on my greatest culinary love. No–I just have to multi-task!

Morganna, who has been home from school because she was trying to pass kidney stones, (she’s fine now and is well enough to go back to school tomorrow) gave me the puppy-dog eyes and asked in a sweet, pleading tone of voice for “something stir-fried for dinner.”

How can I refuse my long-suffering child anything when asked so plaintively?

So, I asked her what, and she proposed beef, and so my imagination went from there.

I had no gai lan, so that wasn’t an option. Zak doesn’t care much for broccoli, so that was out.

Then, I thought back to Chinese dishes I haven’t eaten in a while, and my mind instantly settled on Sichuan dry fried beef.

I used to order it years and years ago at China Garden, before I even worked there. Consisting of thin strips or shreds of beef cooked to a fascinating chewy texture that was filled with strong meaty flavor in a tangy brown sauce with lots of chilies, the dish had always been a favorite of mine. It was like e ating juicy beef jerky, if you can wrap that concept around your head. It was chewy, but not dried out, and it had a very concentrated beefy flavor that was very compelling–almost like it was the essence of beef packed into little thin meat shreds. I always wondered how he got the beef to be so wonderful, and for years, he wouldn’t tell me.

Finally, he told me, and even when I found out that Huy got that interesting texture by essentially deep-frying the beef, I still loved it He’d deep fry the beef, then toss it into a wok with shreds of celery, carrots and scallions, and slivers of ginger, before building the sauce from Sichuan chili bean sauce, Shao Hsing wine and a smidge of salt.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the deep frying of the beef was done to emulate the traditional Sichuan cooking method of dry frying where a food item is cooked for a long time with a moderate amount of oil in a very hot wok. This process cooks most of the water out of the beef, and gives it not only the characteristic chewy quality, but also concentrates the flavor of the meat. Restaurants don’t do this because it is simply faster and more expedient to deep fry uncoated, unbattered food for a few minutes, then toss it in a wok with some seasonings than it is to stand over a wok and tend it for long, slow cooking.

I think that the texture and flavor of truly dry fried foods are superior, plus they don’t have as much excess oil on them. They are lighter and much better tasting, and certainly healthier than the dishes you get in most Chinese restaurants.

In a post written a while back, I have already covered the traditional dish of dry fried string beans (and a vegan version)–in this post, I will show you not only how to use the same method to cook beef–and then, as you see from my recipe, I combined the two ingredients to make a great contrast in flavors and textures.

The first step to a successful foray into dry-frying beef is to choose a proper cut of beef. Flank steak, trimmed of all excess fat is quite good for the purpose, as is the top round that I used. You want a cut of beef that can withstand this type of cooking, which is on high heat for a relatively long amount of time, without turning into shoe leather.

The second step to making your dry fried beef delicious is learning how to cut it up properly into even, thin shreds of meat.

As you can see, I took my top loin, which had been cut and sold as “London Broil,” and cut the slab of meat along the grain diagonally into 1/4″ thick slices. In order to get even slices, I always leave my meat partially frozen and use my sharpest knife, honed with the steel just before setting down to work.

Then, I stacked two slices together, and turning my knife on the opposite diagonal, though not at as an acute angle as before, and cut thin strips out of the stacked slices across the grain. If I cut everything completely with the grain, the long muscle fibers would all contract evenly when they cooked, causing the meat to stiffen and toughen up. If I cut across the grain, the muscle fibers are interrupted, and thus cannot toughen as easily.

Cutting shreds like this takes a little bit of practice, but once it is learned, it is a simple way to get evenly shaped and sized pieces appropriate for stir frying or dry frying.

Then, after the meat is cut, it is not marinated, which goes against most conventional wisdom when it comes to cooking meat in a wok. However, the point of dry frying is to remove the water from the food, so if that is the goal, why put extra liquid into it?

Then, after all the other ingredients are prepared and ready, the wok is preheated until it smokes and about a third of a cup of peanut or canola oil is added to it. When it is very hot, the beef shreds are added, and cooked, stirring constantly.

What will happen quite soon is that the liquid in the wok will increase and become cloudy, and then great gouts of steam will billow forth from the wok, right into your face. Persevere and keep stirring. What is happening, as you can see in the photo, is that the water is being forced out of the tissues of the meat. It clouds the oil by creating a temporary emulsion or mixture of water and oil, and as it boils out, it evaporates into steam. Keep stirring, and cooking and stirring. If you have a very high gas flame under your wok, tiny droplets of oil may splatter with the steam and be ignited–be prepared for that and don’t get burned! (Unfortunately, since I was cooking and taking photos at the same time, every time there were flames, I couldn’t snap a photo fast enough!)

Keep stirring until the liquid begins to clear again. At this point, the meat will, instead of gently burbling and hissing with steam, begin to actually sizzle as it begins to be cooked completely by contact with the hot oil and wok, and not by being boiled in its own juices. The liquid clears because the water has boiled away, leaving only the oil, and tiny particulate matter from the meat which browns in the oil, flavoring it deeply of beef.

At this point the formerly grey and unappealing beef will undergo a transformation, as it becomes browned and chewy.

Once the meat is chewy and somewhat crispy, I removed it from the beefy oil, and drained it on paper towels. Then, I threw in the string beans, and cooked them in the same manner until they were done.

Then, I put the meat back into the wok with the now very deeply browned and fragrant oil, and added chile bean paste, Shao Hsing wine, soy sauce and salt, along with aromatics (ginger, scallion, garlic and fresh chilies) and two other vegetables–shredded carrots and sweet red pepper. I finished it by sprinkling it all with roasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns, just before giving the contents of the wok a few more turns and then scraping it out on a platter.

It was delicious. The beef was just as chewy and flavorful as I could want, without being drowned in oil, and the string beans were quite velvety with a deep flavor from their long cooking in the beef-flavored oil. The other vegetables were crisp from just a quick stir fry in the wok, and the sauce was delightful–savory and spicy, with the aromas of ginger, garlic and scallion throughout and the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns like a biting grace note at the end.

I must admit that this is a rather demanding recipe–standing for twenty minutes over a hot wok, stirring beef and then green beans over hot oil that bursts into flame now and again is not for the faint-hearted or impatient cook. As such, I would categorize this as a recipe to be made only for special occasions.

But for those special meals, this dish is sure to impress guests who will wonder how it was you got the beef and string beans to have such unusual textures, and such deep flavors.

You can tell them, or let it be your secret.

Sichuan Dry Fried Beef

Serve immediately with plenty of steamed rice–this dish is intensely fiery and flavorful–and well worth the trouble of cooking it.

Chow fun is a transliteration from the Cantonese, which means “stir-fried rice noodles;” the Mandarin transliteration would be “chao fen.” It does not have anything to do with the English slang word, “chow,’ meaning “food” and “fun”, meaning “fun.” No, it does not mean “food that is fun,” though I do think it is fun to eat and now I am pretty sure it is fun to cook, too.

The Cantonese name is the one by which this dish is most commonly known in American Chinese restaurants, however, in large part because the first waves of Chinese immigrants to the shores of the United States came from Guangdong Province, formerly known as Canton. Thus, much of what many Americans think of as “Chinese” food is Cantonese food that has been adapted to Western tastes and available ingredients; the deep influence of Cantonese cuisine upon our perceptions of the myriad cuisines that make up Chinese food in the US is hard to overstate.

Chow fun is one of the dishes that is often found on Chinese restaurant menus here in the US, and it is properly made with soft, fresh rice noodles cut into 1/2 to 3/4 inch widths. These noodles, known in Cantonese as “ho fun” or “hor fun,” and in Mandarin as “shahe fen” or “he fen”, are soft, chewy and have a special stretchy texture which is distinctive and very interesting on the tongue. Most restaurants use a great deal of oil in cooking these noodles, because in part, they require a good bit of lubrication to keep them from sticking to a hot wok. They can be served either “dry” where they are cooked with a meat and vegetables and no sauce to speak of, or “sauced.” where the noodles, meat and vegetables are moistened with a savory sauce.

I prefer the sauced version myself, as I have found that the unsauced noodles to be a bit too greasy feeling for my taste, but there are others who swear that the dry versions are best.

A classic Cantonese teahouse dish is chow fun made with beef, mushrooms and bean sprouts, stir fried in a light sauce. It goes very well with pu er tea; a fermented, aged tea that has an earthy, deep aroma and flavor that goes very well with rich foods. It is said to help the digestion and it is believed to help lower cholesterol, though I have not seen any peer reviewed articles on that particular claim in any medical journals, so don’t take my words as gospel truth.

My very favorite version of it is the decidedly untraditional but delicious one at Noodles Corner in Columbia, Maryland, with beef, fermented black beans and broccoli. It is delicious, filled with the bittersweet savor of the broccoli and the strong flavor of the beef, tied together with the funky and fantastic aroma of the fermented black beans.

I have to admit to making my version of chow fun with half inch wide dried rice noodles; fresh rice noodles of the type used to make real chow fun are nearly impossible to come by in my section of Ohio. I was concerned about that, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to make a good chow fun without the proper fresh noodles, but none other but cooking teacher and cookbook author Florence Lin said that she preferred dried rice noodles to fresh because they were more consistent and versatile to work with. She gave a chow fun recipe in her seminal work, made with rehydrated rice noodles. Taking my cue from her experience and wisdom, I decided that just because I couldn’t get proper ho fun, didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun with making my own chow fun at home.

I decided to eschew the traditional mushrooms and bean sprouts since Zak doesn’t care for either of them and replace them with gai lan and sweet red pepper. This would approximate the flavor and color palette of my favorite chow fun at Noodles Corner while using my favorite Asian vegetable of all time–gai lan is the best green in the world, as far as I am concerned. I kept the fermented black beans in the dish, and added onions, garlic, ginger, a single fresh chili from my Kung Pao chili pepper plant, and a good amount of ground bean sauce to the aromatics in the stir fry. These combined to make the noodles rich with umami scent and flavor, with tender beef, crunchy gai lan stalks and pepper slices, and velvety gai lan letaves.

Though the noodles lacked the slightly stretchy, chewy quality that fresh ho fun have, they were still wonderful, soft and slippery, soothing and yet still toothsome ribbons that carried the other flavors beautifully, contrasting with all the other textures like a symphony in the mouth.

When the dish was done, I was pleased to discover that I could use much less oil than traditionally called for in the cooking of the fresh noodles, which lightened the finished flavor considerably. Al though my first impulse was to call these noodles “faux chow fun,” I changed my mind and called them “fun chow fun” because I liked playing with the homophones which have different meanings but still point to a singularly good kitchen experience.

Lighter it may have been, but Zak and I discovered that this version of beef chow fun still went hand-in-hand with pu er tea. The dark forest flavor and scent of the tea cut through the vivid flavors of the noodles, cleansing the palate and allow us to savor each bite as if it were our first.

Fun Beef Chow Fun

This makes enough for 2-4 people, depending on appetite and whether or not you are serving other dishes with this as a meal. With this as a one dish meal, Zak and I ate comfortably, and there was enough left over for Morganna to take to school for lunch the next day. It is good at room temperature, or reheated in the microwave.

Zak and I were sitting with Kat, all of us with a bowl of roast pork noodle soup in front of us (well, Kat had noodles with minced up bok choy, finely minced roast pork and a bare dribble of soup in her bowl) and we were eating happily.

Zak looked up thoughtfully from his bowl and said tentatively, “You know, this is awesome–but there is something not perfect about the broth. It is missing something.”

Now, he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. The broth was excellent, very flavorful, meaty and rich, with great body and aroma. It was a dark golden color from the soy sauce and Shao Hsing wine and the drizzle of toasted sesame oil gave it just the perfect tinge of nutty smokiness.

But still, there was something missing.

It wasn’t sugar–there was just enough in it to enhance the pork and bok choy flavors without making it taste like “candy soup,” which has a definitely unappetizing sound to it. It wasn’t lack of white pepper, nor was it that the stock was too weak–the main flavor was meat.

Zak and I talked about it while we each offered Kat spoonsful of broth from our own bowls to slurp. He said, quite clearly as he took another sip, “It has something to do with the meat flavor–it is almost right, but not quite.”

I finally stood up and sighed. “I bet I know exactly what it is,” I stated, as I strode purposefully to the kitchen, opening the spice cabinet. I plucked out a jar I have had for ever, but which I have never opened.

I carried it back to Zak and cracked it open. Over my bowl of broth, now swept clean of noodles, pork and greens, I sprinkled a few grains of sparkling crystalline white powder.

“What’s that?” Zak asked.

“MSG,” I said. I handed him the jar, and said, “I kind of wondered when I was cooking this if I shouldn’t add some, but it goes against my nature to do it. I thought about using Chinese black mushrooms or kelp to get enough glutamates in the broth, but they both have their own flavors which come along for the ride, which would clash with this dish.”

He sprinkled a few grains into his bowl, stirred it and took a sip. The umami flavor which had been missing–that meatiness, that savory component–it had arrived.

His eyes lit up. “It is almost like a whole new broth. You are right. It’s perfect.”

I tasted mine. He was right. The broth was taken to another level: it was meaty and savory and wonderful, with all of the natural flavors enhanced perfectly. That was the not-so-secret secret ingredient to make my soup taste just like the ones from our favorite noodle shops. A little tiny sprinkle of MSG. It is amazing how little was needed to add that last bit of oomph.ZZ

So, what do I suggest you do if you want to recreate this recipe?

Well, if you are opposed to MSG as an ingredient, or are sensitive to its effects, I suggest you just do without. In truth, the soup tasted plenty wonderful without it, such that Zak kept repeating as he ate his first bowl of it, “I love you, I love you. Oh, I love you.”

So, the soup was fine, really.

But, if you want it to taste just like you remember from some noodle shop somewhere, wait until you have poured the hot soup over the noodles, pork and greens in a bowl. Then, sprinkle a few grains of MSG, known in Japanese as Aji-no-moto, over the broth and give it a stir with a chopstick. I am of the opinion that it is easier for you to season it by the serving than by the potful–it would be too easy to end up using too much MSG if you try to season several quarts of soup broth at a time.

Remember, you want to use as little MSG as possible if you use it at all. If you overuse it, instead of enhancing the flavor of your food, it will flatten it out and make it one dimensional. And you might end up unintentionally giving your guests a headache.

And if you don’t want to use it–that is fine, too. Your soup will still be good without it.

For thoughts on MSG and health, check out my earlier posts:Let’s Talk About MSG and More on MSG and Glutamates