Chow mein

• 1. Introduction

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  Chow mein is a Chinese dish of stir-fried noodles, yet in Louisiana a dish called Cajun chow mein has no noodles at all. It is a rice dish, a variation on jambalaya. The official recipe used by cooking facilities of all four American military services also leaves the noodles out. It is served over steamed rice, and a single batch feeds 100 people.

  So how does a dish named for noodles lose them? This documentary follows chow mein from its name in several Chinese dialects to the cans on American shelves. It then travels through Canada, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Peru and beyond. Along the way it asks who changed the recipe, why they changed it, and what each place chose to keep.

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• 2. A Name From Taishan

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  The earliest Chinese immigrants to reach the United States came mostly from Taishan, and their speech shaped the English word. The Taishanese pronunciation, chāo-mèing, influenced both the spelling and the sound. The written term first appeared in American English as chow mien in 1890. The current spelling, chow mein, is recorded from 1903. Mandarin says chǎomiàn and Cantonese says cháau-mihn, so neither matches the English form exactly.

  Each half of the name is simple. Chow is written with the character 炒 and means stir-fried or sautéed. Mein is written 麵 in traditional characters or 面 in simplified ones, and means noodles or flour. Together they mean nothing more than stir-fried noodles.

  The dish itself crossed the Pacific with immigrants from Guangdong who arrived in the California gold rush era. They brought Cantonese cooking with them. Back in China, chǎomiàn had spent centuries developing in many regions, with several methods of frying the noodles and a wide range of toppings. In the United States, that Cantonese style soon settled into two separate versions, one crisp and one soft.

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• 3. Crispy Versus Steamed

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  Two types of chow mein sit on the American market, and the difference begins with the noodle. Crispy chow mein uses fried, flat noodles. Steamed chow mein uses long, rounded noodles and has a softer texture. The crispy kind either includes onions and celery or is served strained, with no vegetables at all.

  Steamed chow mein carries more variety. Onions and celery are the usual vegetables, and carrots, cabbage and mung bean sprouts sometimes join them. Crispy chow mein usually wears a thick brown sauce. Steamed chow mein is mixed with soy sauce before it reaches the table.

  On the East Coast, the name always means the crispy kind. Some restaurants there deep fry the noodles until they are as crisp as canned noodles, or as hash browns. A few serve it over rice. The soft-noodle style is a separate dish there, called lo mein.

  On the West Coast the rule flips. Chow mein there is always the steamed style, and the term lo mein is not widely used. The crispy version has also appeared as a chow mein sandwich, served in a hamburger-style bun. Cities in the middle of the country would rewrite the rules again.

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• 4. City by City

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  Order chow mein in some Chicago restaurants and a diner might receive chop suey poured over crunchy fried noodles. In Philadelphia, the Americanized version tends to resemble chop suey, with crispy noodles on the side. It has plenty of celery and bean sprouts, and it is sometimes accompanied by fried rice.

  Minnesota drew the sharpest words. Jeremy Iggers of the Star Tribune described Minnesota-style chow mein as a green slurry of celery and ground pork topped with ribbons of gray processed chicken. Bay Area journalist William Wong made a similar comment about what is sold as chow mein in places like Minnesota. A published Minnesota recipe calls for generous portions of celery and bean sprouts. Another Minnesotan variant uses ground beef and cream of mushroom soup.

  Food historians and cultural anthropologists have noticed a pattern. Chinese American restaurants far from any significant Asian American population serve dishes very different from those in China, heavily modified for the local majority. Around Fall River, the chow mein gravy is closer to local New England cooking than to traditional Chinese cooking. One manufacturer took the same logic national and put it in a can.

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• 5. The Can

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  In 1946, Chun King became one of the first companies to sell chow mein in a can. Its creator was Jeno Paulucci, the son of Italian immigrants. He built the recipe mostly on Italian spices, aiming it at European immigrants and Americans of similar backgrounds. The creator of canned chow mein admits this himself.

  To keep costs down, Paulucci replaced expensive water chestnuts with cheaper celery stalks. Those stalks had originally been destined for cattle feed. The business grew so successful selling canned chow mein and chop suey that President Gerald Ford praised it with a joke. He said, "What could be more American than a business built on a good Italian recipe for chop suey?"

  By 1960, Paulucci was telling The New York Times that Chun King made a stew-type chow mein. He guessed this type had been around for thirty, maybe forty, years. All the meat, seasonings and vegetables went into a kettle and simmered for hours until everything was cooked.

  Paulucci sold Chun King in 1966. The company changed hands several more times before it was dissolved in 1995. Across the border and across the Pacific, other cooks were making very different adjustments.

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• 6. Canada and Australia

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  A chicken chow mein recipe printed in a major Melbourne newspaper in 1963 called for a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup and a can of pineapple pieces. Cooked noodles or macaroni went in with them, and the whole mixture was baked in an oven. Outside Asian communities, many Australians appear to confuse chow mein with chop suey. The most common Australian version contains minced beef and curry powder, and is sometimes served over rice. The Australian Institute of Sport, ABC radio and a popular women's magazine have promoted it since the mid-1960s.

  Canadian westernized Chinese restaurants may offer up to three kinds of chow mein, none identical to either American type. The Cantonese style has deep-fried golden egg noodles, green peppers, pea pods, bok choy, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. It also carries shrimp, char siu roast pork, chicken and beef in a thick sauce. Plain chow mein has far more mung bean sprouts, and some regional recipes replace the noodles with sprouts completely.

  The coal mining town of Cumberland, British Columbia, gave Canada another version in the nineteenth century. Cumberland was the first site of significant Japanese immigration into Canada. The Japanese Canadian chow mein, sometimes called Cumberland Chow Mein, might include dried seaweed and pickled ginger and could be served in a bun.

  In Newfoundland, chow mein has no noodles. Cabbage cut to resemble noodles takes their place. No one knows exactly why, but it is believed that the island's remoteness limited access to ingredients from the rest of North America and Europe. The Caribbean offers a warmer story.

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• 7. Caribbean and Latin America

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  Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica both have significant ethnic Chinese populations, and chow mein has spread well beyond those communities into West Indian cooking. Guyana and Suriname cook it in a similar way, and in Suriname the Dutch-influenced spelling is tjauw min. The usual ingredients are green beans, carrots, peas and onions. Chicken is the main meat, though pork or shrimp appear, and the Surinamese version may use a pork sausage. Local spices are added, and the dish is often served with hot Scotch bonnet peppers or pepper sauce.

  In Havana, local Chinese restaurants offer a distinct Cuban style. The foreign-owned tourist hotels, by contrast, often serve Western-style Chinese food.

  Panama prepares chow mein with onions, peppers, celery and carrots, plus pork or chicken, stir-fried with noodles. Another Panamanian recipe adds canned corn. In El Salvador, the dish may contain carrots, cabbage or broccoli, and another recipe uses potato and chayote. Guatemalans, who also write it chao mein, usually cook it with chayote and carrots and serve it on a corn tostada.

  Mexicali, a city in Baja California, is known for a distinct style of chow mein. Chinese immigrants who settled the area adapted the dish, using Mexican ingredients in place of traditional Chinese ones. Northwestern Mexico received waves of Chinese immigrants, and the dish gained popularity there.

  In Peru, Chinese food is called chifa and is now part of mainstream Peruvian culture. Peruvians know chow mein as tallarín saltado, meaning sautéed noodles. It may contain peppers, onions, green onions and tomatoes, with chicken or beef as the favored meats.

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• 8. Across Asia and Mauritius

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  Tibetans who settled in Nepal during the 1960s introduced chow mein there, and it is now a popular fast food. The Newari people of the Kathmandu Valley use water buffalo meat and chicken in their cooking. Nepali chow mein is therefore often cooked with onion, vegetables and buff, the local name for water buffalo meat.

  In India, the Chinese of Calcutta introduced the dish. Indian chow mein always means soft, boiled noodles. When the noodles are lightly fried, it is called Hakka style. Crispy fried noodles are often available too, but they go by the name chop suey or American chop suey. The vegetables always include cabbage, bamboo shoots, pea pods, green peppers, chilli peppers and carrots. Chicken and scrambled eggs are the common proteins, and around New Delhi paneer sometimes joins the mix.

  Kolkata is the home city of Indian-Chinese cuisine. Thousands of street carts line its neighborhoods selling the dish, often spelled chowmin and made with plenty of green chilli and garlic. The Pakistani version uses carrots, cabbage, peppers, spring onions, chilies and ginger garlic paste.

  Indonesia has two versions. One is mie goreng, a sometimes spicy stir-fried noodle dish. The other is a crispy noodle dish under sauce, found in virtually every Chinese restaurant in the country. It is called ifumi or mi siram, meaning drenched noodle. Ifumi usually comes in a thick egg sauce with cauliflower, broccoli, mushroom, chicken, and either kekkian or prawn cake. Vegetarian and seafood versions also exist, and diners often confuse the dish with lo mein.

  In Mauritius, chow mein goes by several spellings, including mine frire and mine frit. The name joins the Cantonese and Hakka word mein with the French word for fried. Chinese immigrants, mostly from Cantonese regions in the southeast of China, likely brought it at the end of the nineteenth century. Today it is a very common street food, sold in almost all restaurants on the island. All Mauritians eat it regardless of ethnicity, even though the Chinese are one of the island's smallest communities.

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