Drunken Noodles With Pork Crumble
Rice noodles, dried pork, and a sauce mixed at home. Basil goes in dry and wakes up in the pot.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 120
- protein
- 30 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 8 min
- total time
- 13 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Dairy free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dried medium rice noodles | 3.5 oz | the thin flat kind, not the wide ones |
|---|---|---|
| Dehydrated cooked pork | 2 oz | lean loin, cooked and dried at home; jerky chopped fine also works |
| Soy sauce | 2 tbsp | in a leakproof dropper bottle |
| Fish sauce | 1 tsp | |
| Oyster sauce | 2 tsp | |
| Sugar | 1.5 tbsp | |
| Garlic granules | 1 tsp | |
| White pepper | 1/2 tsp | |
| Dried Thai chili flakes | 1/2 tsp | optional |
| Dried basil leaf | 2 tbsp | whole leaf, not powder |
| Dried bell pepper and snow peas | 1/2 cup total | |
| Canola or peanut oil | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Put the pork and the dried vegetables in the pot with 250 ml of cold water. Leave them twenty minutes while you set up camp. This soak is what makes them chewable later.
- Add another 350 ml of water and bring it to a boil.
- Break the noodles in half and push them under. Cook three minutes, stirring so they do not weld to the bottom.
- Kill the heat. Pour in the sauce bottle, the sugar, and the spices. Stir hard.
- Scatter the dried basil over the top, put the lid on, and wait two minutes. Stir in the oil and eat.
The original is a wok dish: high heat, hard sear, everything moving. None of that survives a backpacking stove, so this version trades the sear for a soak. Pork dried at home and rehydrated for twenty minutes gets close enough, and the sauce carries most of the flavor anyway.
Sugar is not optional. Drunken noodles run sweet against the salt of the soy and fish sauce, and without it the whole pot tastes flat and briny. Dried basil is a real downgrade from a cup of fresh leaf, but adding it off the heat under a lid gets more out of it than boiling it would. Note this is not vegetarian or gluten-free: pork, fish sauce, and oyster sauce all stay in, and soy sauce contains wheat.
Packing
Sauce ingredients get combined into one small bottle at home, sugar dissolved in. Noodles, pork, and vegetables share a bag. Basil rides in its own small bag so it does not get crushed to dust.
Variations
- Swap the pork for a foil packet of chicken and skip the twenty-minute soak.
- Leave out the fish and oyster sauce, double the soy, and use dried mushrooms instead of pork for a version without meat.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/drunken-rice-noodles-with-pork