Khow Suey Khaogay?

I was a Khow Suey virgin until a couple of weeks ago, when my friend from Pakistan invited us over for a Burmese Khow Suey dinner in Canada. That’s how global we are!

This easy noodle soup had to find its way in our home too. Its that good.

I began by cooking the meat for the dish. I used minced beef, you can use chicken; the meat has to be boneless. I cooked my mince beef with chopped red onions, ginger-garlic paste, cumin powder, coriander powder, red chilli powder and salt.

I did add a little water towards the end of the cooking process to get the right consistency for the meat.

While the meat was cooking, I started on the coconut milk soup.

I used two cans of coconut milk, quarter cup fish sauce, 2-3 tablespoons of besan (mixed in water), some more water, sugar and salt to make my soup. It takes about 15-20 minutes of temperature-controlled cooking to finish making the soup.

The most time-consuming thing to do for Khow Suey though are the condiments. Especially if you are doing things from scratch, like I did. You obviously have a more viable option of using ready-to-use things.

For the topping/condiments of my Khow Suey I used crispy fried red onions, fried and crushed peanuts, slices of fried garlic, fried and crumbled Maggi noodles, bits of boiled eggs, chopped cilantro, chopped green onions, chopped green chillies, julienned ginger, and wedges of lemon.

At the end of all the prep work, my condiment station looked like this.

I left the pasta/noodle to be cooked right towards the end to prevent any lumps from forming. I used whole wheat spaghetti for my Khow Suey. You can use regular egg noodles and cook according to package instructions. Don’t forget to salt the water while cooking the noodles.

With the meat, noodles, coconut milk soup and condiments ready, now it is all about assembly! That’s the easy part I guess. If you have kids around, let them go ahead and make their own bowl of Khow Suey. They will love the grown-up feeling of throwing in a bowl what they like from that large spread of colourful condiments. Make sure the soup and meat are hot/warm enough for you to enjoy the taste.

Begin with the noodles, and follow it up with the meat and the soup.

Then toss in the condiments in no particular order. Finish with a squirt of lemon juice. Mix and slurp. 

P.S. If you are making a vegetarian version of the Khow Suey, use minced soya nuggets.