Vegetarian and healthy Phad See Ew (ผัดซีอิ๊ว)
Our Phad See Ew recipe here reflects our strive for healthy cooking. This Chinese influenced noodle stir fry dish is traditionally done with copious amounts of oil and sugar, and rather few vegetables. The owners of street food stalls and restaurants soon realized, that Phad See Ew sells better like this. It tastes good but so does other junk food.
Doing some research I found this wonderful little video for preparing this dish which shows nicely what I mean:
Apart from the health aspect there is as well a little difficulty in replicating the shown way of preparing the dish. Watching the video I couldn’t help having an old song of Talking Heads in my head: Burning Down The House 🙂
We disagree that you need absolutely searing heat, Thai burners and the tin woks used in Thai street food stalls and restaurants to produce a tasty Phad See Ew. Our experience is rather, that for most westerners it is very difficult to get a good result with the traditionally used woks. These are very thin and light, and get hot very fast. If you don’t know exactly what you are doing, it’s a perfect recipe for disaster but not a very tasty dish.
We added a few more vegetables, reduced the use of cooking oil a lot and increased the cooking time just enough that someone who didn’t grow up using a wok can cope.
Have fun cooking and enjoy a tasty, healthy and fast to prepare meal!

Prep Time | 15 minutes |
Cook Time | 7 minutes |
Servings |
person
|
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp Dark soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp Soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp Oyster sauce
- Kale Chinese broccoli or Chinese kale
- Carrot
- Cabbage
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 Egg
- broad rice noodles
- Black Pepper
- Tofu replace with meat for meat lovers
Ingredients
|
![]() |
- Get your ingredients ready. Shown are ingredients for 1 portion. Don't do more than 2 portions at a time, otherwise the noodles will inevitably turn out soggy.
- Heat oil in a wok and start with frying the garlic
- Add tofu cubes
- Add egg and fry until a little solid
- Add the noodles
- Add soy sauce, dark soy sauce (not too much), oyster sauce, sugar and pepper
- Add vegetables and mix well. It's done when the vegetables are cooked (they still should have a good bite to it)
- Serve with lime and a bit of chilly powder