We always have a lot of leftovers in this house.  We purposely buy or make enough food to last for the next few days for lunches, and general laziness.  One such item that we always have too much of is BBQ pork.  Both when we buy it from a Chinese BBQ shop, or when we make it for things such as char siu bao, there’s always enough for the next couple of days.  Most people would just make fried rice out of it, however to mix things up, why not have it with noodles?  You can easily substitute ramen for the udon in this recipe, and make it vegan by removing the meat and adding tofu!

INGREDIENT LIST:

• Leftover BBQ meat [Vegan: Deep fried tofu]
• 1 L Chicken broth [Vegan: Vegetable stock]
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame Oil
• Cooking Wine
• Thumbnail of ginger
• 1 Garlic
• 1/2 Onion
• Chopped Parsley or Cilantro
• Shanghai Bok Choy
• 3 Mushrooms
• Eggs
• Hot peppers

First thing to do is prep all of your stock ingredients.   Mince the ginger and garlic, chop the cilantro and peppers.

Add in all of the broth and bring to a boil.

Slice the mushrooms, onions, and break off a few leaves of the bok choy, and add 1/2 of them into the mix.  The other half will be used as toppings for the finished udon dish.  Pour a tablespoon or two of soy sauce, and a teaspoon of sesame oil in.  Add about the same amount of Chinese cooking wine.

Boil until all of the flavours get infused with each other into the stock.  The longer you boil it, the more robust the flavour.  I like boiling a minimum of 30 minutes, however 1 hour leads to a fantastic soup base.

Next, grab your leftover meat.  In this case, we bought char siu from a meat shop, and it was sitting in the fridge.  The pieces were a little too think for my liking, so I sliced them thinner.  Since I’m not going to re-cook these separately as the soup will warm it up, the thinner the pieces are, the faster they’ll get warm in the broth.

Grab another pot, and start cooking your udon.  Boiled eggs go great in noodle soup, so add in a few at the same time.

When the soup stock is done, strain out all of the solids, so that you are left with a deep amber coloured liquid, with nothing else.  Pour into a bowl, and add in freshly sliced mushrooms, a few pieces of bok choy, the boiled egg, and your meat.

Ta da! there you have it!  An easily assembled dish where your leftovers are all used up!