What is the dish?
Tuaran mee is a Nanyang-Chinese fried “egg noodle” hawker dish from Tuaran in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. It most commonly refers to the fried version, but it is also used to identify egg noodles that are made in Tuaran. A typical plate consists of fresh egg noodles, an egg, char siu, pork egg roll, and choy sum.
What’s the history?
According to a famous heritage vendor, Tuaran mee in its modern form began to replace the traditional ‘knife-cut’ noodles sometime in the late 1970s. With the introduction of noodle machines, the strands became thinner and more uniform. Up until the mid-1980s, fried noodles in Sabah were simply called “Chao Men” in the Hakka dialect. This began to gradually change, as the Hakka people outside the area started labeling the fried noodles in Tuaran “Tao-Ah-Lan Men,” or Tuaran mee. This was so that locals could differentiate it from noodles from other towns like Beaufort, Tamparuli and Sandakan. So the name Tuaran Mee is the result of this retro name-calling that went viral, and it has stuck for more than 30 years!
What does it taste like?
A good plate of fried Tuaran mee should be fragrant, very eggy, delicately springy, savoury, wavy and slightly smoky from the charring of the hot wok. The aftertaste should pleasantly confuse you with an unexpected hit of egg umami. It should also be incredibly moreish; you’ll be sliently eating until you find yourself picking up the remaining bits on your plate, giving up only when your chopsticks skills fail you. Fatty pork makes it taste even better!
How is it served?
It is plated directly from wok-to-dish, then topped with your protein of choice. Tuaran mee tastes best eaten hot, and it goes really well with chilli sauce. Some shops will fry and fold the proteins into the noodles to incorporate the flavours together.
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Anything extra?
You can choose from a variety or combination of pork, beef, chicken, and/or seafood. Just make sure you tell the waiter what you want, or you’ll get the shop’s default signature plate with an egg, char siu and the local pork egg roll called Choon Ken. If you’re the adventurous type, try having it with a dash of Lihing (yellow rice wine) for that sweet twist of alcohol!
Why should someone try it?
It’s delicious! Strand-for-strand sans sauce, it is quite possibly the most flavourful egg noodles on earth. You can’t find this outside of Sabah, except for an odd shop in Kuala Lumpur. In the olden days, local food lovers would travel from near and far to Tuaran to have some of this eggy goodness. It’s more convenient now, as Tuaran Mee is quite accessible in the capital city of Kota Kinabalu. So if you’re in town, it’s a must-try!
What’s the bill?
Pretty inexpensive. A plate costs between RM6.50 - RM9.00 (£1.10-£1.60), depending on the topping and combo of your choice.
Where can you get it?
In Tuaran town, Lok Kyun, Tai Fatt, and Tuaran Mee Restoran are quite popular. In Kota Kinabalu, the favorites are Seng Hing Sinsuran, Sin Fatt Hing in Likas, and Tuaran Mee Restoran in Inanam.
Can you make it at home?
Technically yes, but it’s a challenging dish to make (see below). To get the flavours right, you’ll need to have access to or make the freshest Tuaran-style egg noodles yourself. Then you’ll need to use the right utensils, roaring high heat, and ninja cooking skills. We’re talking an impeccable sense of timing, and the dexterity to respond correctly in the rapid distribution of heat. That’s if you want your end product to taste like authentic Tuaran Mee. Failing any of that, your creation will just be “Wannabe Tuaran Mee,” or worse, “Just Not Tuaran Mee”.
What does this dish say about your home city?
It shows that Sabahans are a harmonious bunch, and that we are quite happy to hold on to our heritage while we cross-pollinate our ideas to create something just a tad bit different or better. The dish came into existence out of the collective input of three generations of peoples with Hakka, Hainanese, Hokkien, Fuchow, Cantonese, and Kadazan-Dusun ancestry. It’s fusion history on a plate, and everything we love about Nanyang Borneo.
And finally ... how to make ‘almost’ Tuaran Mee
To learn more about the authentic cuisine of this region, check out Jackie Miao’s website Jackie.my. And if you want to have a go at recreating Tuaran Mee – not easy! – here is a recipe developed and tested by our food editor, Eve O’Sullivan. By adding an extra egg to the noodles and frying in a very hot wok until crispy, you can hope to get a sense of how good the real thing tastes. You will need to prepare the pork the night before, or swap it out for prawns or chicken.
Serves 2
3 tbsp vegetable oil
300g fresh thin Hong Kong or wonton egg noodles
2 eggs, beaten
2 pak choi, roughly chopped
Soy sauce
Ground black pepper
Chilli sauce, to serve
For the char siu pork
300g pork fillet medallions (not lean)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
½ tsp chilli flakes
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tsp yellow bean sauce (optional)
1 To make the pork, put the meat in a shallow dish, then mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the meat. Cover, then leave to marinate for at least 4-6 hours, or preferably overnight.
2 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4, remove the meat from the marinade (reserving it for basting) then put in a roasting tin. Brush liberally with the marinade, then roast for 10-12 minutes, checking halfway through and brushing with more marinade. Keep warm while you assemble the noodles.
3 Heat the vegetable oil in a wok until almost smoking, then throw in the noodles – you are looking to crisp them at this stage, as opposed to fully cooking them. Move around the pan to avoid too much sticking, then once parts of the noodles have turned crispy (around a minute), remove from the pan.
4 Add the pak choi to the hot wok, then cook until almost wilted (no more than a minute) and remove from the pan. Next, add the beaten eggs, and when almost cooked, throw the noodles back in. After a minute or two, return the pak choi to the pan with some soy sauce and black pepper, then add the pork and a drizzle of marinade. Serve immediately.
Jackie Miao is currently working on a book of authentic recipes from her hometown. For more information, visit her website Jackie.my
