Beef chow fun facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Beef chow fun

Dry-fried beef hor fun
Alternative names	Wide Flat Rice Noodle
Course	Main
Place of origin	Guangdong, China
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	bean sprouts, soy sauce. rice noodles, onions

Beef chow fun is a super popular Chinese dish. It's also known by its Chinese name, gōn cháau ngàuh hó, which means "dry fried beef Shahe noodles." This yummy meal comes from Cantonese cuisine and is made by stir-frying beef, wide rice noodles called hor fun, and bean sprouts.

You can often find beef chow fun in Chinese restaurants, especially in places like Guangdong and Hong Kong. It's a favorite dish in yum cha restaurants and cha chaan tengs (which are like casual cafes). In the Philippines, people call it "Beef Hofan."

What are Hor Fun Noodles?

The main ingredient in beef chow fun is hor fun noodles. These noodles are also known as shahe fen. They first came from a town called Shahe in Guangzhou, China. Hor fun noodles are wide and flat.

There are two main ways to cook hor fun:

• In a soup.
• Stir-fried.

When stir-fried, hor fun can be "dry-fried" (cooked only with things like soy sauce) or "wet-fried" (cooked with a thicker sauce). Today, the dry-fried version is much more common. So, if you see "hor fun" on a menu, it usually means dry-fried hor fun.

How Beef Chow Fun is Made

Making beef chow fun involves a few steps:

• First, thin slices of beef are marinated. This means they soak in a special sauce to make them extra flavorful.
• Next, the marinated beef is quickly cooked in a very hot pan called a wok.
• Then, the hor fun noodles and other ingredients, like bean sprouts, are added to the wok.
• Everything is quickly mixed with the beef and a special sauce.
• The bean sprouts are stir-fried until they are just right. Then, the dish is ready to eat!

The Secret to Great Beef Chow Fun: Wok Hei

A really important part of making amazing beef chow fun is something called wok hei. This is a special cooking skill that means "breath of the wok." It's about cooking over a very high flame and stirring everything super fast.

Why is wok hei so important?

• The hor fun noodles need to be stirred quickly but gently so they don't break apart.
• The amount of oil used must be just right. Too much oil makes the dish greasy, and too little makes it dry.

Because of these challenges, making perfect beef chow fun is a big test for chefs who cook Cantonese food. It shows how skilled they are!

History of Beef Chow Fun

The exact start of beef chow fun isn't fully known. However, there's a cool story about how the dry-fried version might have begun:

During World War II, a chef named Mr. Hui had to move back to his hometown in Canton because of the war. One night, his food stall ran out of a special powder needed to make sauces for his wet chow fun. A hungry military leader wanted his usual wet chow fun. Because of a curfew, Mr. Hui couldn't go buy more powder.

Mr. Hui quickly thought of a new way to cook the noodles. He decided to stir-fry them without the sauce, making them "dry-fried." This new way of cooking saved his stall and his family! And that's how the popular dry-fried beef chow fun might have been invented.

See also

In Spanish: Ternera chow fun para niños