I like bean sprouts.

What you need:

1/4 of a package of rice noodles.

a boneless meat or poultry or a shellfish of you’re choosing. I’m using chicken. or, vegetables that you like if you’re a vegetarian (broccoli works well).

an egg.

2 shallots or an onion. shallots are preferable.

4 cloves of garlic.

vegetable oil.

1 1/2 tablespoons of white vinegar.

1 1/2 tablespoons of fish sauce. a staple ingredient in thai food. you can get it at most any grocery store in the “thai table” section, but asian grocery stores have better brands. Generally the lighter color the stuff is, the better the flavor- really anything will do though.

1 teaspoon of ketchup.

1 tablespoon of sugar.

green onion (optional but good)

bean sprouts (optional but really good)

a lime (optional but really good)

sriracha or chili garlic sauce, the hot sauces with the green caps. (optional but practically mandatory)

Instructions:

1. Soak the rice noodles. Believe it or not, this is the hardest part of this whole dish. Before you can fry them, the noodles need to be pliable and barely soft, but still basically uncooked. There is an ideal way and a passable way to do this. If you have the time, soak the noodles in a bowl of room temp water for about 2 hours before hand. If you don’t have time, boil some water, add the noodles, and turn off the heat immediately. Stir them around for a bit, maybe 3 minutes, before removing. Again, you want them to be totally pliable but barely soft. It’s hard to really explain this, but the ideal texture for frying them is firmer and less cooked then you would think. When they fry with the liquid they soften really fast. Once you have you’re noodles, put them in a bowl of cold water so you can work on the short list of ingredients.

2. Chop the shallots/onion and mince the garlic.

3. Cut up whatever meat you’re using into pieces of relatively similar size and thickness.

4. Combine the vinegar, fish sauce, ketchup and sugar.

5. This is ideally done in a wok, but don’t worry about it. Coat the bottom of a pan with vegetable oil and toss in the minced shallots/onion and garlic.

6. When you start to see some browning, toss in whatever meat or vegetable you’re using. Stir fry this for a few minutes, but don’t cook it completely through, it’s still going to be in the pan for a bit.

7. Once your meat/ vegetable is almost cooked, take drain the noodles out of cold water they’re in and toss them in. Stir things around.

8. Add the sauce you mixed and stir to coat things evenly. After a minute of everything frying all together, judge the texture of the noodles. Are they too hard or soft? It really depends on the success of the soaking process, but you can adjust things. If they’re too soft, they wont be absorbing any more of the liquid sauce you added, and you can drain some of it out without sacrificing flavor. If they’re too hard, add a few more dashes of all the sauce ingredients, and a very small about of water. You’re creating steam to soften them.

9. Once the noodles are a good texture, push them aside in the pan and crack in an egg.

Let the egg fry until almost full cooked, then mix it up with the noodles.

10. Transfer everything into a bowl, and top with green onion, bean sprouts, a bit of lime juice, and some hot sauce. I like to eat mine with a little extra fish sauce added at the end as a condiment.