Chinese Chicken & Noodle Salad from Eating Well Reviewed

• Estimated Cooking Time: 30 minutes
• Actual Cooking Time: 29 minutes

This was not the perfect Chinese chicken noodle salad that I'm able to get in the stores, but with a little tweaking, I think I could get it right. Despite not being “perfect”, it was really tasty, and worth learning so you can cook it on the fly. The ingredients are really simple, and most of the time required to cook is just cutting stuff up. You can also save time by skipping the roasted noodles and nuts part, and just buying pre-roasted nuts and not roasting the noodles.

Surprisingly, they just ask for boiling the chicken with some bits of ginger. That's simple enough! When it comes time to shred the chicken, if you're strapped for time, be careful because it'll be hot. I soaked it in cold water for a bit before shredding to speed up the cooking process. I wasn't worried about washing away any flavor because there wasn't anything on there but salt and ginger, and we'll be adding sauce later.

This was my second try at roasting the noodles and nuts. Actually, I didn't need to do this but did it just to follow the recipe and see how things turned out. They looked pretty tasty just sitting on the baking sheet like this! What happened to the first attempt? See below!

While the noodles are roasting, make the sauce.

Oops, I forgot the noodles and burnt them. Better try again.

This time I got spooked and didn't cook them enough. Oh well, they still tasted fine. I didn't use the ramen noodles as suggested, but found some crispy noodles that were good enough. They were probably too crunchy, but since I ate most of this on the second day, they had softened by then and were very tasty!

I think the start players of any good Chinese chicken salad are going to be cabbage, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Sesame oil really makes a big difference and carries that “Asian cuisine” flavor very well. The ginger infused chicken was really tasty as well. Get the original recipe from Eating Well or browse more quick original recipes for dinner from foodfornet.com