Perhaps Lo Mein is close to what you are seeking? The recipe in the link gives you the option to add vegetables if you wish.

The sauce I always use for Lo Mein is Jane Brody's 1-2-3 sauce:

3 TB soy sauce
2 TB hosin sauce
1 TB toasted sesame oil
a pinch of sugar

Mix all together in a small bowl. Pour over lo mein noodles in wok and toss together well.

You could always add 1/2 t. of cornstarch to the sauce if you want it thicker.

Teresa

Here is a link that might be useful: Mr. Food's Lo Mein noodles

Yeah I call them Lo Mein but I don't think everyone calls them that. I don't much care for the taste of sesame oil, I used that in the PW recipe and it's all I can taste. I think a small amount would be OK but I'm just not a big fan of the taste and my husband isn't either. I think chicken or beef broth is an ingredient too?

I'm looking at this one in link below...sounds about right

Here is a link that might be useful: lo mein recipe

The recipe in the link sounds similar to what I do, but I do not use the honey, curry powder or cayenne. Instead I would add a small amount of minced fresh chillies and a couple of tablespoons of Thai sweet chilli sauce. If you don't like spicy omit the fresh chillies. Also I would not use spaghetti but Hokkien style noodles, which you refresh in warm water and rinse well before adding to the remaining ingredients.

Sesame oil comes in 2 kinds....toasted and light. The toasted has a stronger flavor then the light....more of the taste of toasted sesame seeds.
also sesame oil will go rancid. Perhaps you have had it too long? or perhaps it sat too long on the shelf in a store.
If you don't hate the taste of a sesame seed bun, than sesame oil shouldn't taste awful to you.

No the sesame oil is not bad, I just bought it then put it in the fridge. It is the same tasting as it was when it was new. I just don't like that toasted sesame taste in Chinese food. OH and the oil is dark so I guess I need light but it's not that easy to find around here. But anyway, it's definitely not rancid tasting at all. I think I just need to stay away from recipes that include S.O. or just leave it out from any recipe...maybe try the light. I just know that when I get that in a restaurant, I don't taste a sesame oil taste. I also feel like that recipe called for way too much SO in relation to other ingredients.

Thanks for the help!

Arkansas girl, I understand what you're talking about when it comes to sesame oil. I actually really like the flavor, but only in small doses. I also made a recipe recently that had an overpowering flavor of toasted sesame oil, and I didn't enjoy it. I like the flavor stronger in an Asian salad dressing but not so much in hot dishes.

I kind of think it's like liquid smoke, it's ok if you don't put too much otherwise it tastes nasty and you taste it for the rest of the day. The PW recipe called for 3 tablespoons in this dish which I think should have been more like 3 teaspoons or in my case maybe just one!HA!

Below is a link to her recipe and everyone seems to love it but it just wasn't for me. One other thing I can't stand the taste of is fennel. Others love it though...

Here is a link that might be useful: This was the original recipe I used

I love sesame everything. LOL When I lived in Greece they sold a little hard candy that was in small bars and wrapped in cellophane. It was firm and was mostly sesame seeds and the small amount of candy that held the seeds together tasted of honey. It's been years since I have had one, but just talking about it makes me want one.

I love the taste of sesame oil, but arkansas girl, I agree on the fennel.

When people are making Chinese at home and thinking it doesn't taste right, the missing factor is often MSG. You can buy it powdered, or you can buy some oyster sauce containing it. I like it mixed with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar, sesame oil, and sometimes sriracha.

No it's not the MSG that was missing in the recipe it was the entire flavor was totally off. At my Chinese Buffet(MSG free) I go to, the sauce has no vinegary flavor at all and it doesn't have that toasted flavor of the sesame oil either. I blame myself for not realizing before I made it that it couldn't be right but reading some of the reviews, people were saying how it tasted just like what they get at the restaurant. Also, I made the recipe exactly as she wrote it, I wanted it to be exact. I think I'll be better off just creating something in my head...HA! A bit of chicken broth, some soy sauce and a bit of sugar and veg. oil and see how that goes.

A while back I had a thread like this going at another forum and everyone said I needed Oyster Sauce so I bought that...WRONG-O...HAHAHA!

Cooking down the stir fry sauce until thick and syrupy can change the flavor a lot- it tastes much less like the components. There's also a vast difference between kinds of oyster sauce. But, you know best what taste you're looking for.

My niece told me what to do; go to the restaurant and buy a package of take-out! HA! Thanks, so helpful! She says ethnic foods never taste right when she tries to make her own so she's just resolved herself to buying it take-out.

I like this one a lot. Omit or reduce veggies to your taste. I sometimes add shrimp or pieces of chicken.

Vegetable Lo Mein

2 Tbl vegetable oil
1 Cup snow peas, halved on a diagonal
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into match stick size
1/2 Lb assorted mushrooms chopped
4 scallions, thinly sliced on a diagonal
2 Cup (about 4 handfuls) fresh bean spouts or Chinese cabbage
2 inches fresh ginger root, minced
4 Cloves garlic, minced [ I use Less]
1 Lb lo mein noodles cooked, drained well
1/2 Cup aged tamari soy sauce

Heat a wok-shaped skillet or large non-stick skillet over high heat. When pan is very hot, add oil, (it will smoke a bit) then, immediately add the snow peas, pepper, mushrooms, scallions, and bean sprouts. Stir fry for 1 minute to flavor the oil, then add the ginger and garlic, and stir-fry 2 minutes. Add the cooked noodles and toss with to combine. Add the soy sauce and toss the ingredients to coat noodles evenly with sauce.

Transfer the lo mein to a serving platter and garnish with a drizzle of toasted sesame oil if desired.

A variation on the above. Use Asian egg noodles. Partly cook in boiling water. Drain well, pat or spin dry, as dry as you can. Toss in a little salt. Then stir fry the par cooked noodles in vegetable (not sesame) oil, using highest heat, until a bit browned and getting a bit crisp, how much is up to you. Fry in smallish batches for best results.

I don't use much sesame oil. For a whole dish for four, maybe 1 or 2 tsp. If I didn't have any, it wouldn't matter. I also don't use too much soy sauce. In the recipe above, I'd personally use at most 1 tbsp.

Try this. Get 1/2 cup of stock, thicken with cornstarch. Stir fry veggies as above, with only a small amount of soy sauce, and plenty of vegetable oil. Remove the stir fried veggies and set aside. Put the stock in the wok or pot, cook it down for a few minutes to pick up the flours of the veg just cooked and to thicken. Then add back the veg and mix it all up. Then add the previously stir fried noodles and toss to combine, no longer or the noodles will get soggy.

If you go to a Chinese store, you will find there are many kinds of soy sauce, 10? 20?

It is not easy to duplicate a dish's taste without knowing which kind.

dcarch

dcarch...you ain't a kiddin'(HA!)...actually when I had started my thread at another forum, this was my main question is what is wrong with soy sauce these days? To me it doesn't taste good like it used to taste or like what you get at the restaurant sitting on the table. After the thread had concluded, I had decided to try some tamari soy sauce so I bought San J reduced sodium and found it wasn't any tastier than the Kikkoman reg. soy sauce. I just remember always buying Kikkoman S.S. and it was really good but now it doesn't taste as good. When I was at the restaurant, I happened to see a big 5 gallon bucket of Kikkoman Soy Sauce so I'm assuming that is what they use but who knows? Maybe they dilute it down with water or broth?