Lettuce Wraps and Peanut Sauce Noodles

This week I tried to make Chinese style lettuce wraps and peanut sauce noodles! I looked up a quick recipe on ingredients for the lettuce wraps, then completely improvised afterward! For my peanut sauce noodles, I attempted at cooking them similarly to my Stir Fry Udon. Keep reading to see how it turned out!

Lettuce Wraps:

I made a Chinese style lettuce wraps called ‘San choy bao’. For my lettuce wraps, I bought Iceberg lettuce, celery, green onions, white onions, ground beef, sesame oil, soy sauce, hoisin sauce and prawn flavoured chips. First I stir fried all my meat and vegetables into a pan with sesame oil, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce. I kept adding more sauce until the colour looked brown just like it did at Chinese restaurants that I ate them at. Once I thought it was flavourful enough, I washed my lettuce. To be honest, washing the lettuce was the hardest part because the lettuce needed to stay in the semi circle shape it comes in. However, taking apart the lettuce and washing it was extremely difficult to not accidentally rip it apart. Overall though, I thought my lettuce wraps turned out extremely well and even tasted just like they would in restaurants! After scooping my meat and veggies into my lettuce, I would crumble prawn flavoured chips into it and add more hoisin sauce then wrap it all up! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a video of how to wrap the lettuce wraps but I found a video online to show instead, see below! Note how they roll the lettuce wraps, I do the same thing but I fold the bottom up so my filling does not fall out!

Peanut Sauce Noodles:

I bought these A-Sha Mandarin Style noodles and was really craving peanut sauce noodles after I had them at hotpot! So, I decided to try to make my own. I boiled the noodles until they were cooked, then took them out and put them on the stir fry pan. I threw in a bunch of peanut butter, sesame sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. However, my sauce was just way too thick and peanut butter like! Therefore, I kept adding soy sauce and cups of water into it until finally I had a texture I was happy with! As you can see in my photo at the beginning of this post, the noodles were still quite sticky! I finally figured out this was because I let the noodles cook too much by both boiling them and trying to stir fry them after! Instead, I should boil my noodles until they are cooked, then drain the water. Next, I should create a little bowl of my sauce, as I would in hotpot: soy sauce, hoisin sauce, peanut butter, sesame oil, sesame sauce. After my noodles are drained, I can mix in my sauce with my noodles! I actually did this the next day because I wanted to try again, but I forgot to take a photo again! But I can tell you that they were much better texture and way less soggy!

Overall, both these dishes were really good and I will keep trying to improve my peanut sauce noodles!

Do you have any suggestions on how to cook noodles then stir fry them without making them soggy??

Lettuce Wrap Rating: ★★★★★

Peanut Sauce Noodles Try #1: ★★☆☆☆

Peanut Sauce Noodles Try #2: ★★★★☆