Do (did) Jews eat Chow Fun?

[Fat Guy]

But why the 20 cent premium on the Fun noodles? The rice flour?

←

Right. Rice noodles almost invariably cost more, per pound, than wheat-flour noodles. At the store where I shop, it costs the exact same amount of money for an 8-ounce box of rice noodles as it does for a 12-ounce box of wheat-flour noodles. Annie Chun's mail order site has the identical ratio: $12.24 will get you a 6-pack of 8-ounce boxes of "Original Rice Noodles" and $12.24 will get you a 6-pack of 12-ounce boxes of wheat-flour "Chow Mein Noodles." I don't know if the same ratio holds true at wholesale, but yes, rice noodles cost more.

[Fat Guy]

I don't really understand it myself, but isn't chow mein more of what we think of as pan-fried noodles?

←

I'm sure somebody with actual knowledge can do better, but since I'm here I'll tell you what I think I know about this issue. Many of the menu-words for Chinese dishes that we use in North America are utterly confused and bear little relationship to correct Chinese. There's also a lot of confusion between the names of ingredients and the names of dishes. As far as I know "chow" means fried and "mein" means wheat noodles. For its part, I believe "lo" means tossed. This is, at least, what a number of Chinese people have told me is the case (mind you we're only talking about the Cantonese dialect here).

Needless to say, the term "fried" (aka "chow") doesn't offer a particularly high degree of specificity. It can be taken to mean stir-fried, or deep-fried. Thus, regional variations -- as well as variations from restaurant to restaurant -- have sprung up here in North America. There is also overlap between the stir-fried meaning of chow and the tossed meaning of lo. So what we call lo mein here on the East Coast can be pretty much the same thing they call chow mein on the West Coast, whereas what we call chow mein here in the East may use deep fried noodles. In Canada I've seen a whole bunch of wildly different dishes called "chow mein."

"Fun" I believe refers to rice noodles (though it also seems to encompass mung bean noodles). But even if rice noodles can be assumed, "chow fun" is an incomplete description of a dish because it just means fried rice noodles. The "chow ho fun" description is more correct, because the ho fun are the wide flat ones while the mee fun are the angel-hair ones. So "chow ho fun" and "chow mee fun" make the most sense, however things have evolved on a lot of Chinese menus such that the two dishes are "chow fun" and "mee fun" and you're just supposed to know that chow fun implies the wide noodles. Incidentally, I remember back when the Chinese place we ate at added mee fun to the menu. The menu description at that time was simply "fried rice noodles," and there was only the angel-hair option. The wide ho fun noodles came years later.

There are also about a million other Chinese noodles out there, like e-fu noodles, which are fried and then boiled -- yes, fried then boiled.

Hope I didn't get that all too terribly wrong.

[plk]

I never saw chow fun on local menus until I moved to San Francisco and started going to lunch in Chinatown with a Chinese coworker who had grown up in the city. Beef chow fun was one of her favorites, so of course I had to try it. And it was amazing -- a dark sauce and beef bits (strips of flank steak) on soft, wide rice noodles. There may have been vegetables too, but the wide noodles were the revelation. It's a bit similar to pappardelle pasta, but the rice flour makes it softer.

[hummingbirdkiss]

I am half Jewish does that count?

..yes I did and still do eat it!

[markk]

I don't really understand it myself, but isn't chow mein more of what we think of as pan-fried noodles?

←

I'm sure somebody with actual knowledge can do better, but since I'm here I'll tell you what I think I know about this issue. Many of the menu-words for Chinese dishes that we use in North America are utterly confused and bear little relationship to correct Chinese. There's also a lot of confusion between the names of ingredients and the names of dishes. As far as I know "chow" means fried and "mein" means wheat noodles. For its part, I believe "lo" means tossed. This is, at least, what a number of Chinese people have told me is the case (mind you we're only talking about the Cantonese dialect here).

Needless to say, the term "fried" (aka "chow") doesn't offer a particularly high degree of specificity. It can be taken to mean stir-fried, or deep-fried. Thus, regional variations -- as well as variations from restaurant to restaurant -- have sprung up here in North America. There is also overlap between the stir-fried meaning of chow and the tossed meaning of lo. So what we call lo mein here on the East Coast can be pretty much the same thing they call chow mein on the West Coast, whereas what we call chow mein here in the East may use deep fried noodles. In Canada I've seen a whole bunch of wildly different dishes called "chow mein."

"Fun" I believe refers to rice noodles (though it also seems to encompass mung bean noodles). But even if rice noodles can be assumed, "chow fun" is an incomplete description of a dish because it just means fried rice noodles. The "chow ho fun" description is more correct, because the ho fun are the wide flat ones while the mee fun are the angel-hair ones. So "chow ho fun" and "chow mee fun" make the most sense, however things have evolved on a lot of Chinese menus such that the two dishes are "chow fun" and "mee fun" and you're just supposed to know that chow fun implies the wide noodles. Incidentally, I remember back when the Chinese place we ate at added mee fun to the menu. The menu description at that time was simply "fried rice noodles," and there was only the angel-hair option. The wide ho fun noodles came years later.

There are also about a million other Chinese noodles out there, like e-fu noodles, which are fried and then boiled -- yes, fried then boiled.

Hope I didn't get that all too terribly wrong.

←

I don't know if you got that right or wrong myself, but to add to the confusion, I had (or tried to have) this discussion a few years ago with an English speaking young Chinese woman in a Chinatown restaurant, stemming from a seafood dish served over yellowish noodles bound up in that thick, gummy sauce that usually binds them, and she thought about my question, i.e. frustration over not understanding noodle nomenclature, and explained to me that "mein" meant 'egg noodles', which was why anything 'mein' was always yellow and spongy soft. So I left that discussion more confused than ever.

[Fat Guy]

My understanding is that the division is mein versus fun -- wheat flour versus rice flour. However, I don't think I've ever seen mein that weren't made with egg. That seems just to be standard for mein. Then again I'm not really sure.

[Fat Guy]

(Maybe we need a new topic on Chinese-American noodle nomenclature)

[Toliver]

To add to the confusion, you can order beef chow fun "dry" (not so much sauce) or "wet" (comes with a lot of sauce). Most prefer the "dry" version.

[Dejah]

To add to the confusion, you can order beef chow fun "dry" (not so much sauce) or "wet" (comes with a lot of sauce).  Most prefer the "dry" version.

←

Dry ho fun = gon chow ho fun.

I'll have to take out my splatter screen and try the crispy ho fun. Have never heard of that but it sounds good!

My understanding is that the division is mein versus fun -- wheat flour versus rice flour. However, I don't think I've ever seen mein that weren't made with egg. That seems just to be standard for mein. Then again I'm not really sure.

To add to the confusion, I grew up with a soup noodle dish called "Yut gah mein". The noodles came in dried form. Once added to the broth, it softened into chewy noodles. These were white which makes me think they were made without eggs? I am almost certain they were made with wheat flour. Wish I had a box to check but it's one of those items that you tuck away in your memory to be pulled out by threads like this!

[LoriZig]

I cannot stop giggling over "Cho-Sen!"

Thank you all for trying to sort out this noodleclature (ha?) thing!

Another question that may have already been discussed here... why do you think Jewish people have such an affinity for Chinese food? I've seen it referred to in books and certainly experienced it- I have carried on my parents' natural bond with my local Chinese food restaurant owners! My friends are always amazed and I always, jokingly, say that it's a "Jew thing!"

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

Chow fun was totally off my radar screen until I met my husband, who grew up eating it in Los Angeles! Maybe it's a regional thing. . .

←

In the section of the greater Los Angeles area that I grew up in (East San Gabriel Valley), I didn't see chow fun on the menus too often. I never had it until I moved to the Bay Area.

I'm not Jewish though.

When I was growing up, almost all of the family dinners for my mother's family were at Chinese restaurants (kind of confusing since the family is Japanese). Typically the order was some kind of spicy shrimp with those little red chilies of death, combination fried rice, pork chow mein, sweet and sour pork, crispy fried chicken and wor won ton soup.

[Gastro888]

To add to the confusion, you can order beef chow fun "dry" (not so much sauce) or "wet" (comes with a lot of sauce).  Most prefer the "dry" version.

←

Dry ho fun = gon chow ho fun.

Beef ho fun with gravy (and lots of it!) = sup chow nghow ho

If you really want to go all out:

"Dow see sup chow nghow ho"= Beef chow ho fun with black bean sauce gravy.

Oh yeah.

NOTE: All of these phrases are in Cantonese.

[Gastro888]

...As far as I know "chow" means fried and "mein" means wheat noodles. For its part, I believe "lo" means tossed...

←

"Lo" means to mix. "Tossed" makes me think of a salad... but it's all semantics, I suppose.