Mee Siam (Singapore Style)

Name: Mee Siam (Singapore Style)
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Singaporean (Malay)
Ingredients: 300 g Rice vermicelli (bee hoon); 3 tbsp Taucheo (fermented soybean paste); 3 tbsp Tamarind pulp; 10 Dried chillies; 10 Shallots; 4 cloves Garlic; 4 Candlenuts; 2 stalks Lemongrass; 3 tbsp Dried shrimp; 12 Prawns; 150 g Fried firm tofu (tau pok or tau kwa); 3 tbsp Palm sugar or brown sugar; 5 tbsp Neutral oil; 900 ml Water or prawn-shell stock; 4 Eggs, hard-boiled; 200 g Bean sprouts; 1 small bunch Garlic chives (ku chai); 2 Limes; 1 tsp Salt

Rice vermicelli under a thin, orange, sweet-sour gravy built from fermented soybean paste and tamarind, finished with halved eggs, bean sprouts, garlic chives and a hard squeeze of lime.

Source

Recipe by Singapore Malay kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · Malay household and stall cooking in Singapore — Geylang Serai, Kampong Glam and the hawker centres

Singapore Malay dish · hawker and home cooking — An ownerless dish shared with Malaysia, so no cook is credited and no country is claimed as inventor. The canonical reference confirms the name translates as 'Siamese noodles' after Thailand's former name; that in Singapore it is 'served with spicy, sweet and sour light gravy' built on a rempah with tamarind and taucheo (salted soybean); and that it is garnished with hard-boiled eggs, bean sprouts, garlic chives and lime. It also records the Malaysian variants — dry-fried in Johor, wet in Malacca — which is why this entry is labelled the Singapore style rather than the definitive one. Quantities are ordinary home proportions written for this book.

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⏱ 70 min🍽 4 servings🔥 470 kcal🇸🇬 Singapore🌶️🌶️

HalalDairy-free

Steps

Blend the soaked chillies, shallots, garlic, candlenuts, lemongrass and drained dried shrimp into a paste. Add a splash of water if the blades stall.
Fry the paste in the oil over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. It will darken from bright red to a deep brick and a slick of oil will separate at the edge of the pan. That separation is the signal to move on.
💡 Stop early and the gravy tastes raw and rasping no matter how much sugar you add later. There is no shortcut past this twenty minutes.
Stir in the taucheo and fry 2 minutes more, then pour in the tamarind water and the stock. Add the palm sugar and salt, and simmer 15 minutes.
💡 Taste for the three-way balance now: sour first, then sweet, then salty, with the heat sitting underneath. Adjust with more tamarind or sugar, a spoonful at a time.
Drop in the prawns and tofu strips and cook 3 minutes, just until the prawns curl and turn opaque. The gravy should stay thin — pourable, not clinging.
Blanch the soaked vermicelli for 30 seconds in boiling water, drain hard, and divide between four bowls. Ladle the hot gravy over so the noodles are half-submerged.
Top each bowl with prawns, tofu, a halved egg, blanched bean sprouts and raw garlic chives. Put lime wedges on the side and squeeze one over just before the first mouthful.
💡 Squeeze the lime yourself at the table, not in the pot. Cooked lime juice goes flat and bitter; raw juice is what makes the bowl snap.

💡 Tips

Halal as written — no pork, no alcohol. Check that your taucheo brand carries halal certification if that matters for your table.
The name means 'Siamese noodles' — a reference to Thailand's old name — but it is a Malay dish of Singapore and Malaysia, not a Thai one. Nobody has satisfactorily explained the name.
Overlap worth knowing: Malaysia has its own mee siam, including a dry-fried Johor version and a wet Malacca version. This bowl is the Singapore one — wet, light and sour-sweet.
The rempah freezes beautifully. Fry a triple batch, portion it into an ice cube tray, and mee siam becomes a twenty-minute dinner.