Coconut Noodles
Updated June 4, 2024
- Total Time
- 20 minutes
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
Advertisement
Ingredients
Yield:serves 4
- ½pound chicken, boned, skinned and cut into ¾-inch cubes
- 1teaspoon fish sauce
- Sea salt
- ¼cup peanut oil
- ¼teaspoon turmeric
- 1small sweet onion, finely chopped
- 3cloves garlic, finely chopped
- ½teaspoon sweet paprika
- 201-inch cubes fish cake, deep-fried
- 5cups chicken broth
- ¼cup roasted chickpea flour
- ⅔cup coconut milk
- 13peeled shallot lobes, one of them finely sliced and soaked in water
- ¾pound boiled spaghetti-size egg noodles
- 2hard-boiled eggs, thinly sliced
- 2scallions, sliced
- Handful of deep-fried rice noodles
- 1lime, cut into wedges
- Red chilies, roasted in a pan and then coarsely ground
Preparation
- Step 1
Knead the chicken with the fish sauce and a pinch of salt and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Step 2
Place a medium saucepan over medium-high heat and add the oil and turmeric. Scrape in the onions and sauté for a minute. Add the garlic and cook 1 more minute. Stir in the paprika, then the chicken, cooking until the chicken is blanched on the outside. Fold in the fish cakes and ½ cup water and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed.
- Step 3
In a large saucepan, bring the broth to a boil. Dissolve the chickpea flour in ½ cup water and pour into the broth, stirring until the mixture thickens slightly. Add the chicken to the broth, and stir in the coconut milk. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Add the shallot lobes and simmer until just cooked through. Season to taste.
- Step 4
To serve, place a handful of noodles in each of 4 deep bowls and ladle on a generous amount of chicken and broth. Garnish with sliced (drained) shallot, hard-boiled egg, scallions and fried noodles. Serve, passing lime wedges and roasted chilies.
Private Notes
Leave a Private Note on this recipe and see it here.
Cooking Notes
Doug Johnston
Fish cakes? Even more perplexing is the off-hand instruction that they be "deep fried". Does that mean breaded and fried? If so, the source's assertion that even the worst cook in the world could fix this takes on new meaning? The potential for a greasy, gummy mess seems pretty epic--about what you'd expect to appear from the kitchen of the world's worst cook...
WinTT
Fish cake in coconut noodles is not really necessary. Especially if you cannot get the fresh fish and make it yourself. I wouldn't trust the readymade ones in canned or packages since those were most likely added MSG.
I usually add hard tofu in it. Also, I always add fresh mashed ginger sauté along with garlic.
Just sharing my experience since that's where I came from. :)
Maung maung myat
Burmese fishcake
Fish meat boneless.....500 gm
Ginger juice 1 tbs
Flour ....2 tbs
Sault and pepper
Put all in food prosscer or blander ...traditional way is pound in a stone motar.
Making a 50 gm balls
Use oil not to stick each other.
And deep fry it to be like a rubber ball.
Slice it for serving in coconut noodle.
Kameo
It doesn't look difficult, I'll give you that, but to mark it as a 20-min dish considering all the bringing to boil + simmering till thick/till cooked/till absorbed seems disingenuous at best. And I'm not even getting into the time it takes to prep that ingredients list.
Kaleigh Prokop
What kind of fish cakes? And where do I buy them?
Deejer
In Yangon this may be ''so easy, the worst cook in the world could make it." But it is not an easy dish to make or to shop for. Beware
gajumaru
If you can get past the annoying whining commenters who seem to have never worked with any of these very BASIC Asian products, then do try this recipe. It is quite good and easy and took me no more than 30min. If the ingredients seem totally difficult to get, then skip the dang recipe! Deep fried cake is at nearly all Asian markets. Someone complained about not finding turmeric. Really? Just move on to another recipe at that point.
andythebeagle
All too many people finding fault with the recipe. So many angry, unhappy cooks. Make your own fish cakes, don't add sugar, don't add MSG if you're scared of it, take the time it takes, prep all that you will need, do it all, or do none of it. This recipe is great as is. Just stop complaining. You are making the rest of us sad.
Jennifer
This says the worst cook in the world can make it? What's really disappointing about this dish is it sells itself like it's an easy dish but it calls for a bunch of random ingredients a novice cook wouldn't have and not very detailed instructions on how to make it. What a bummer
Lynn
This looked delicious as I love Burmese food, and this recipe might be easy for "the worst cook" provided they lived in Myranmar or a large cosmopolitan city. But fish cakes and roasted chickpea flour, or even Asian markets are not something I have access to. Shallots are expensive where I live - so 13 shallot lobes (?) is a deal breaker. Just how many grams is a "lobe", anyway?
Wilma Goldstein
Whoever presented this recipe needs to spend some time with Mark Bittman and/or Ina Garten, two American's who understand how to blend ease and flavor. Perhaps where she is from that's easy...in this culture it is complicated and confusing.
Figaro
Lightly toast the flour in a skillet over med-high heat until it colors and you can smell the flavor. Immediately remove from heat and pour onto a dish to cool.
I use this in Dukkha from Martha Rose Shulman. Hope this helps.
JRussell
I made this without fish cakes or shallots or deep-fried rice noodles. Used fettuccine noodles, since I had them, and pre-roasted chicken with a hot rub I had made a couple days ago. Added some chile paste at the end to pump up the heat. Absolutely delicious! I think it's important to just try to take the basics of the recipe, but use the ingredients that you already have without getting uptight. I will make this again with many of the same adjustments since I live in the boonies.
Margaux Laskey, Staff Editor @ NYT Cooking
A specialty food market or an Asian market or would have fish cake. Happy cooking!
Louise
I gather the 20 minutes prep time starts only after you have come home from the Asian market, cubed the chicken and fish cakes, boiled, peeled, and sliced the eggs, made the chicken broth, peeled more than a dozen shallots, roasted the chickpea flour, chopped/sliced all the remaining veggies, boiled the egg noodles, deep fried the rice noodles, and roasted and ground the red chilies?
Yukimaa
really useful for a beginner
jojo
This recipe is amazing. Forget all the haters. I used ground pork because that’s what I had on hand. Subbed the chickpea flour for almond flour. Skipped the eggs and fried noodles. Used some quick fry shallots instead. It wasn’t a quick 20 minute meal, but definitely doable for a weeknight. Thank you!
Hannah
This recipe isn’t hard but could be written without so many steps. Best to cook onions and garlic, add chicken, Spices, then fish cakes from the bag (buy the fried ones), then add stock and coconut milk to same pot. Can skip the shallots or use more onions instead. Can substitute cornstarch for chickpea flour or skip it. And I added some bokchoy at the end as well. Simple and good.
Delores Borealis
Good but not great. If I make it again, I’ll thicken with cornstarch (was hoping the toasted garbanzo flour would add flavor, but if so, it wasn’t much). Overall, the dish felt one dimensional and kinda bland. So many better recipes on this site that take less time.
Julie W
I love to read everyone's comments. It helps me decide if I should try a recipe. It took me 45 minutes; I'm just a home cook, that loves Burmese, coconut noodle soup. My batch came between as good as some but not the very best coconut chicken noodle soup I've had. The flavor was not as good, but still good. Maybe because some recipes call for lemongrass and galanga root. The "so easy, the worst cook in the world could make it", and "made it in 30 minutes", seemed like a challenge :).
chagalife
Can I use coconut flour instead of chickpea?
Katie
This recipe is AWESOME! We used the whole 15 ounce can of coconut milk and would recommend. Shallots were so so, but a nice texture element, and wouldn’t leave out next time.
Katie Smith
Took way more than 20 minutes, but did enjoy the end result!
Elena
This recipe is... SO GOOD! Our two changes were: 1) substituting tofu for chicken (YUM) and 2) using an additional cup of coconut milk (also YUM). Thanks!
Jeffsee
This is the type of recipe that always drives me wild. Chickpea flour and "1 inch cubes of fish cake - deep fried". Maybe these are pantry staples in Myanmar? By the time I go through chickpea flour its stale, and, define fish cake. How bout recipe notes that are definitions and/or decent substitutions.
Karen
Does chickpea flour thicken better than wheat flour? I substituted normal flour for the chickpea flour, and I think it's much thinner than it was supposed to be. Perhaps this is why the flavor is very subtle. Thoughts?
sofia
Yummy and easy! Not sure why other commenters are saying it’s not easy, but I suspect they might just be getting scared away by ingredients that are unfamiliar to them. Don’t be scared to make modifications if you can’t find an ingredient. This really is an easy recipe, especially if you skip some of the garnishes. And it’s well worth it!
Jeffsee
Not afraid of substitutions, but if you don't know what it tastes like or what the textures are like to begin with, I am not producing the same food and the recipe becomes "something like, but not really."
andythebeagle
All too many people finding fault with the recipe. So many angry, unhappy cooks. Make your own fish cakes, don't add sugar, don't add MSG if you're scared of it, take the time it takes, prep all that you will need, do it all, or do none of it. This recipe is great as is. Just stop complaining. You are making the rest of us sad.
JRussell
I made this without fish cakes or shallots or deep-fried rice noodles. Used fettuccine noodles, since I had them, and pre-roasted chicken with a hot rub I had made a couple days ago. Added some chile paste at the end to pump up the heat. Absolutely delicious! I think it's important to just try to take the basics of the recipe, but use the ingredients that you already have without getting uptight. I will make this again with many of the same adjustments since I live in the boonies.
Mason Kessinger
We made homemade fried fish cakes and they were a delicious necessary addition. We put half in when they called for it and then used a few to garnish. A delicious dinner.
Private notes are only visible to you.
Advertisement
