Mie ayam

Preparation and serving

The yellow wheat noodle is boiled in water until it achieves an al dente texture and mixed in a bowl with cooking oil, soy sauce and garlic. The oil coats the noodle in order to separate the threads. The oil can be chicken fat, lard, or vegetable oil. The chicken meat is diced and cooked in soy sauce and other seasonings including garlic. The chicken meat might also be cooked with mushrooms.

The seasoned chicken and mushroom mixture is placed on the noodles, and topped with chopped spring onions (green shallots). Bakmi ayam is usually served with a separate chicken broth, boiled chinese cabbage, and often wonton (Indonesian: pangsit) either crispy fried or in soup, and also bakso (meatballs). While Chinese variants might use pork fat or lard, the more common Indonesian mie ayam uses halal chicken fat or vegetable oil to cater to Muslim eaters.

Additional condiments might include tong cay (salted preserved vegetables), bawang goreng (fried shallots), daun bawang (leek), kulit pangsit goreng (fried dumpling skin), acar timun cabe rawit (pickled cucumber and birds eye chilli), sambal and tomato ketchup.

Mie ayam "chicken noodle" can be served in two different variants, which are the common savoury or salty noodle (mie asin) and sweet noodle (mie manis). The sweet variant is often also called as mie yamin. For the sweet noodle, the cook will put additional sweet soy sauce kecap manis, so the appearance will be a little bit brownish.

Variants

Other types of noodles such as bihun (rice vermicelli) and kwetiau (flat noodle) might be served in the same recipe instead of the bakmi. Kwetiau ayam (chicken kway teow) and bihun ayam (chicken bihun) refer to almost exactly the same recipe with mie ayam by replacing yellow wheat noodle with flat noodle or rice vermicelli. In Indonesia, the name is shortened to mie ayam or mi ayam. In Indonesia chicken noodles is often seasoned with soy sauce and chicken oil, made from chicken fat and spices mixture (clove, white pepper, ginger and coriander), and usually served with a chicken broth soup. Different with Indonesian chicken noodles, traditionally in Singapore, curry powder was added to the stock, and the soup enhanced with oyster sauce and green onions. Also, fish dumpling and mushroom were added.