Garlic Chili Oil Noodles

Whenever we want a quick and easy dish, we love making garlic chili oil noodles. This has become one of our staple household dish. It's so simple do make, yet very satisfying and packs so much flavor.

As many other people, we discovered our addiction for garlic chili oil noodles during the pandemic. We make it at least once every few weeks, and we think we really nailed the flavor combo. It's spicy, salty and simple mouth-watering. It's the perfect quick meal for lunch or dinner, ready in under 15 minutes, and uses only one pan to cook everything.

What are Garlic Chili Oil Noodles

This dish consists of 3 basic ingredients, which are lots of fresh garlic, chili oil, and handmade wheat noodles. We love making garlic chili oil noodles because it uses simple cooking method with pantry-staple ingredients. It's also a very versatile recipe, where the carb, protein or vegetable can easily be replaced. However, we love our recipe and highly recommend following it for the best flavor combo. It's saucy, aromatic, hearty, and very satisying. Did we also say that it takes under 15 minutes to make? We just can't get over these noodles! Cook, toss, eat. Easy, peasy!

More related recipes:

• Beef Chow Fun
• Shrimp Chow Mein
• Spicy Peanut Sauce Noodles
• 15-Minutes Asian Garlic Sesame Noodles
• Asian Cold Noodles Salad with Peanut Butter Sesame Dressing

Which Chili Oil to use

We love to use a Szechuan chili oil, such as this one from the famous Lao Gan Ma brand. We love this chili oil because it's so flavorful, is made with Szechuan chilis that make your tongue go a little numb! It's also very easy to find in your local Asian market, as this is a staple in every Chinese household. Alternatively, you can also swap for your favorite chili oil, or even a homemade one. We have seen a lot of people using gochugaru or chili flakes instead. However, we do believe that making it with the Lao Gan Ma chili crisp hot oil is the best.

The BEST Noodles for this dish

This is a noodle dish, so choosing the right noodles is very important. We highly recommend buying handmade wheat noodles with these Chinese characters on the package: 刀削面. This translates to knife shaven noodles, as these type of noodles are traditionally made by shaving long noodles with a sharp knife and are put straight into boiling water. These are some of our favorite noodles, they're chewy, dense, wide and flat, and hold any sauce very well. These should be easy to find in your local supermarket.

How to serve Garlic Chili Oil Noodles

Garlic chili oil noodles can be served cold, hot or at room temperature. As we added protain and vegetavles in our dish, we love to eat it as is, but it's also delicious accompanied by side dishes such as an Asian cucumber salad.

Tips and Variations

Another reason why we love this recipe is that it's so versatile and any ingredients can easily be switched out.

• Noodles: If you don't have handmade wheat noodles on hand, feel free to replace by any wide and flat noodles, such as rice noodles or even pasta!
• Chili oil: If you can't find the Lao Gan Ma brand, use gochugaru, chili flakes, or your handmade chili oil instead. We love eating spicy, so we use at least 2 tbsp of chili oil, but feel free to adjust to your liking.
• Vegetables: We love to use baby bok choys, as they give a nice juicy crunchy touch. If you prefer to replace by another vegetable, we suggest cucumbers!
• Protein: We prefer using ground pork (medium fat, not lean) because it adds a lot of flavor to the dish. The fat in the ground pork gives it that extra umami flavor that we love. If you would like to skip on the meat, we recommend firm tofu or shrimps!
• One pan: This recipe call for only one large pan to cook everything! Save time and dishes to clean. This is the type of efficiency that we love!!

FAQ's

Ingredients

Handmade wheat noodles are preferred for this dish, but can be essentially be swapped for any other noodles or pasta.

Fresh garlic is a necessity for this garlic chili oil noodle dish!

Green onions will add an extra oniony flavor that we love.

Vegetable oil or any neutral oil is needed. This will ensure that the taste of the oil do not overshadow any other ingredient.

Chili Oil will add a spicy, salty flavor to these noodles that we love. Our favorite is the chili crisp hot oil from Lao Gan Ma.

Low-sodium soy sauce is preferred than dark soy sauce, as we find it too powerful and would over shadow all the other flavors.

Sesame oil to add a little oomph to your dish, and a little goes a long way, so don't go overboard!

Baby bok choys is our favorite vegetable to go with this dish.

Ground pork will not only add protein, but also a lot of umami flavor. Be sure to chose the medium fat kind, as a lot of flavor is hidden in the fat!

Garlic powder and gochugaru will be used to flavor the ground pork.

Cilantro for topping is optional, but we love the freshness it adds.

Instructions

Prep the noodles. Cook your handmade wheat noodles as per package instructions. Drain and cool over cold water. Set aside.

Cook the flavoring ingredients. In a large pan, heat vegetable oil on medium oil heat. Add garlic and green onion and let cook for 1-2 minute, or until fragrant. Add chili oil and let cook for another minute.

Cook the protein and vegetable. Mix your ground pork with garlic powder and gochugary. Add ground pork to the pan, and let cook for 2-3 minutes. Push ground meat to the side to make place to add your baby bok choys. Let cook for 3 minutes, and then mix everything together.

Combine everything together. Add your cooked noodles to the pan, along with the soy sauce and sesame oil. Toss everything together.

Serve immediately and top with cilantro, optional.