Chop suey is a Western-Chinese (mostly found overseas) dish consisting of meat and/or seafood stir fried with vegetables and bound in a starchy sauce. It literally translates to ๆ็ข (‘za sui’) which means an assortment of small, miscellaneous things. I must say a chop suey is really an ideal way to turn the odds and ends and leftovers in your fridge into a proper dish. And that’s exactly what I need to do at the end of each week – clear out my fridge before new supplies go in while reducing food waste! ๐
Ingredients Are Substitutable
There are no specific ingredients in a chop suey but I do notice the choy suey we get from Chinese takeaways in America and UK often come with pork, shrimps and bean sprouts. Everything is substitutable so use whatever meat, seafood and vegetables you like or have.
As chop suey is rather saucy, I highly recommend that you serve it with steamed rice so you can douse all that savoury sauce over the rice. It’s a quick and easy-to-make one-dish stir fry, perfect for weeknight dinners. Give it a try! ๐
- 250g lean pork, sliced
- 1 large squid, cleaned, sliced & butterflied
- 12 prawns, peeled
- 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- pinch of sugar
- 1 tbsp corn flour
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled & minced
- 200g fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
- 4 stalks leek, sliced diagonally (separate stalks from leaves)
- 1 carrot, sliced into strips
- 250g bamboo shoot, sliced
- 250g bean sprouts
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 500ml chicken stock
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- corn starch solution (mix 1 tbsp corn flour with 2 tbsp water)
- chopped spring onions as garnish