Lo Mein Noodles

1. Garlic - don't use jar paste or a garlic press, makes garlic watery = spits & burns when it hits the oil. Finely chop it - even sliced is enough.

2. Proteins - how to cook & cut:

Beef, pork, turkey - slice and cook per recipe Ground / mince meat - cook garlic and onion per recipe, then cook ground / mince. Once cooked, add 1 tbsp sauce, stir, then proceed with next steps in recipe. Hard tofu - cut into 1 x 4cm / 1/3 x 1.5" batons, cook per recipe. Prawns/shrimp - use small peeled, cook per recipe. More veggies - use another 2 1/2 cups chopped veggies.

3. Lo Mein noodlesare fresh yellow noodles(usually labelled "egg noodles") that are about 3mm / 1/8" thick, sold in the fridge section of grocery stores.

Dried noodles -use 200g/8oz uncooked ramen noodles or other dried noodles. They will increase in volume and weight once cooked per packet.

Note - Lo Mein is still delicious made with ANY type ofnoodles - thick, thin, fresh, dried, egg or rice - or ramen noodles, or even spaghetti or other long pasta (trust me, no one will know!).

4. Soy Sauces:

Dark soy sauce is labelled as such, provides colour and gives more flavour to the sauce than other soy sauces. Sold at Aussie grocery stores nowadays. Fallback: sub with more ordinary or light soy (below) Soy Sauce - ordinary all purpose soy sauce, they just say "soy sauce" on the label (eg. Kikkoman). Can also useLight soy sauce- bottle is labelled as such.

5. Chinese cooking wine("Shaoxing wine") is an essential ingredient for making truly "restaurant standard" Asian noodles. Substitute with Mirin, cooking sake or dry sherry.Non alcoholic sub- sub both the cooking wine AND water with low sodium chicken broth/stock + reduce light soy sauce to 1.5 tbsp.

6. Sesame oil -toasted sesame oil is brown and has more flavour than untoasted (which is yellow). Default sesame oil sold in Australia is toasted, untoasted is harder to find.

7. Servings - makes 3 servings.