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A plate of Singaporean fried vermicelli noodles with egg, carrot and fish cake.
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5 from 60 votes

Singapore Fried Vermicelli (Bihun Goreng)

Singapore Fried Vermicelli, also known as Bihun Goreng, is delicious, easy to cook and quick to make in under 30 minutes. Using only simple ingredients (no chicken broth needed), it's a complete meal in itself. It's also cheap enough that some hawker centres (street food stalls) in Singapore sell it for only S$2/ US$1.50!
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time15 minutes
Course: Breakfast, Main Course
Cuisine: Chinese, singaporean, Southeast Asian
Servings: 4 people
Calories: 351kcal
Author: Zen

Equipment

  • Blender Substitute: mortar and pestle if you have the time!
  • Large heatproof bowl to soak the bihun
  • Metal sieve To drain the noodles
  • Wok Or large pan/ skillet

Ingredients

Rempah

  • 4 Dried Chillies, seeds removed Cut into small pieces and seeds removed. Don't rub your eyes after handling chillies or they'll burn!!
  • 1 Tablespoon Tamarind Paste Mix well with ½ Cup water then sieve- use the resulting tamarind "juice" for this recipe. If you don't have tamarind on hand, substitute with ½ T rice vinegar. Click here for more info on tamarind.
  • 1-3 Fresh red chillies Omit if you don't have any on hand- I often do this as my fresh chilli supply is very intermittent depending on how my balcony plants feel! Alternatively, these are some chili substitutes although note that I've not tested the recipe with them.
  • 3 garlic cloves Peeled
  • 3 shallots Peeled

Noodles

  • ½ lb dry bihun (bee hoon/ mee hoon) (226.8g) Soak in hot water for 20-30 minutes then drain in colander. Don't use cold water to soak. If in a rush, you can blanch the noodles but they'll break easily when frying later.
  • Hot water See above

Sauce

  • ¼ C kicap manis Substitute with dark soy sauce and a pinch of sugar (preferably gula melaka) if you don't have any kicap manis on hand.
  • 4 Tablespoons tomato ketchup (Weirdly enough, if you add more tomato ketchup it makes the noodles spicier!)
  • 2 Tablespoons light soy sauce Don't substitute with dark or thick soy sauce. They're not the same thing! You can, however, use fish sauce as an alternative.
  • 1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
  • Salt, optional You should not need salt after all those saucees but do season to taste if you find it necessary.

For stir-frying

  • Pork lard Substitute with vegetable oil if you don't have pork lard on hand (you may need to add a bit more salt in that case as vegetable oil has less flavour) It's easy to render pork lard at home FYI and it keeps for months!
  • 1 Asian omelette, cut into strips I used 6 eggs for the omelette, but it's really up to you
  • 1 Carrot Peeled and julienned
  • 1 fish cake
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil. optional Sesame oil in Chinese cooking is almost always toasted sesame oil. If you don't have it, try 1 of these substitutes for sesame oil.

Optional garnish

Instructions

Preparing the Noodles

  • Put the bihun in a heatproof bowl and cover with hot, boiling water for 20-30 minutes. (You can stop soaking once the noodles are flexible, have turned slightly opaque but not soggy. (Whilst it is soaking you can proceed to prepare the rempah, as stated below.) After the 20-30 minutes, drain the bihun.

Making the rempah paste

  • Blend the rempah ingredients along with the tamarind water. (Or pound in a mortar and pestle, adding the tamarind water gradually.) You should get a water red paste. Leave on the side for now.

Frying the Ingredients followed by the Rempah

  • Heat a pan on medium-high heat. Add the home rendered pork lard (or vegetable oil) to the hot wok.
  • Stir-fry the eggs, then plate and cut into strips. Using the same pan, fry the carrot strips till soft and plate with the eggs. Similarly, pan fry the fish cake slices. Plate.
  • Add more oil to the same pan, followed by the blended rempah paste and stir-fry on medium heat in the same wok till it darkens, is fragrant and splits (i.e. the colour of the rempah changes and the oil separates out.) Leave the cooked rempah in the wok.
    Tip: I'm using a gas stove. Use medium-high heat if using an induction cooker.

Frying and assembling the noodles

  • Mix the ingredients for the sauce together then leave beside your cooker.
  • Add the drained bihun to the wok with the rempah, stir, then add the sauce ingredients. Stir fry till well-mixed, add the omelette, carrots and fish cake, stir a few times then switch off the fire.
  • Drizzle the sesame oil over the noodles and serve.

Notes

Other ingredients to add to your noodles include: canned abalone, Chinese cabbage, prawns, sliced chicken/ pork etc
Meal Prep
Make a big batch of the rempah and sauce beforehand, then divide into portions to freeze. The rempah blend will also last for about 3 days in the fridge whilst the sauce mix will last for at least a week.
Note: the nutritional information is an estimate automatically calculated using the WPRM recipe maker and I am not responsible for its veracity.

Nutrition

Calories: 351kcal | Carbohydrates: 75g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 0.01g | Cholesterol: 41mg | Sodium: 1158mg | Potassium: 287mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 19g | Vitamin A: 2926IU | Vitamin C: 20mg | Calcium: 43mg | Iron: 1mg