Singapore Mee Siam Recipe (with Soup)
This Singapore Mee Siam Recipe (with Soup) is sweet, spicy, tangy and altogether delicious! No wonder it is such a popular noodle dish in Singapore and Malaysia!
Servings: 8 people
Calories: 499kcal
Equipment
- mortar and pestle OR blender
- Wok (or pot)
Ingredients
A.For the wet mee siam rempah (spice paste)
- 40 Dried chillies Soaked to soften. Remove the seeds if you don't want to choke on the spice!
- 7 oz Shallots (200g) Substitute: onions, preferably red, cut into small pieces
- 0.7 0z Shrimp paste (belacan) (20g)
- 1.05 0z Candlenuts (kemiri) (30g) Substitute with macademia if you live outside of Asia and can't find this (I did manage to find it in Chinatown in London so you never know!)
- 0-5 fresh large red chillies (The number of chillies I use depends on the fertility of my chilli plant!) These are added for color so it's OK if you don't have any.
A. Pound separately
- 3 Tablespoons dried prawns, soaked till softened. Pound alone. Keep the soaking water to add to soups or stews.
- 1 teaspoon sugar or to taste
- 1 teaspoon salt or fish sauce, to taste
B. Noodles
- 4-6 Tablespoons cooking oil
- 20.25 oz water (600ml)
- 15.75 oz beansprouts (450g)
- 15.75 oz fine rice vermicelli (bee hoon) (450g) soaked in hot water till soft
- 6-8 Tablespoons rempah from above (Section A)
C. Gravy
- 1-2 Tablespoons Oil
- 4½ Tablespoons rempah from above (Section A) If you still have rempah left, freeze it or use it to stir-fry vegetables.
- 9¾ Cups water (about 2.25 litres/ 76.05 oz)
- 1½ Tablespoons tamarind (assam jawa)
- 1½ Cup water (12 oz/ 354ml) Mix with the tamarind above, then squeeze through cheesecloth and strain. Keep the water!
- 3 Tablespoons taucheo (preserved soya beans), mashed coarsely with a fork Substitute with miso or doenjang if that's what you can get
- 3 teaspoon sugar or to taste
- salt to taste
D. Ingredients and garnishing
- 8-16 hard boiled eggs, peeled and sliced into 4 Depending on whether you want 1 or 2 eggs per person
- 20.25 oz prawns (600g)
- 3 pieces tau kwa, deep fried and cut into 1 cm cubes
- 5.25 oz Chinese chives (koo chye) (150g) Use spring onions if you can't get koo chye. Wash and cut them into ½ cm bits
- 8 limes, sliced in half preferably calamansi limes
- 3 Tablespoons dried prawns Cut into small pieces then stir fried with a little oil
Instructions
A. Rempah
- Boil the dried chillies till they are soft. (Remove some or all of the seeds, if not, it'll be super spicy!) Drain then pound the chillies with the rest of the rempah ingredients (from Section A but not including the dried prawns, salt and sugar) till they've become a fine paste. (The water from boiling the chillies can be discarded.)
- Add oil to the wok and heat till shimmering then add the pounded dried prawns for 1-2 minutes, till the smell is released. Add the rempah spice paste from above and continue stir frying till fragrant and the oil has been released. (This may take a while)
- Add salt and sugar to taste, then place the rempah in a bowl, leaving 4-5 tablespoons in the wok.
B. Noodles
- Add the water to the wok. Once simmering, add the bean sprouts and stir for about 1 minute. Add in the noodles then fry over high heat and stir till all the sauce has been absorbed.
- Lower the heat, stirring continuously till the noodles are dry and fluffy. Plate.
C. Gravy
- Add oil to the wok and once shimmering, add 4½ tablespoons of the rempah, the taucheo and a little tamarind water (to prevent burning). Mix everything well.
- Add the rest of the tamarind water then bring to a boil. Add the sugar and salt, and season to your taste.
D. Assembling the noodles, gravy, ingredients and garnishing
- Boil the eggs, peel then cut into quarters.
- Boil the prawns till cooked, shell, de-vein and, if feeling hardworking (or short on ingredients but want to bulk up the plate) halve the prawns. (The water used to boil the prawns can be kept as a base for soup stock.)
- Assemble your bowls: place some bee hoon in each bowl, then pour the gravy soup over the noodles. Add a few prawns, 4-8 egg quarters and 1 calamansi (ie 2 pieces since it's sliced in half) to each bowl.
- Sprinkle the koo chye, tau kwa and fried dried shrimps over each bowl.
Notes
Storage
Store the ingredients separately: i.e. the blanched vermicelli noodles in 1 container, the rempah in another, the firm tofu pieces in a 3rd etc.
When you want to eat it, for best results, reheat the noodles and ingredients separately from the soup. Assemble after re-heating.
For meal prep
You can make the rempah spice paste in a big batch and freeze in ice cubes. These can be used to make mee siam or added to stir fries to add some oomph.
Note: the nutritional information is an estimate automatically calculated using the WPRM recipe maker and I am not responsible for its veracity.
Nutrition
Calories: 499kcal | Carbohydrates: 70g | Protein: 23g | Fat: 15g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 4g | Monounsaturated Fat: 7g | Trans Fat: 0.1g | Cholesterol: 269mg | Sodium: 1196mg | Potassium: 541mg | Fiber: 6g | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 1911IU | Vitamin C: 41mg | Calcium: 155mg | Iron: 3mg