One of our favorite dinners is pancit bihon, which is a Filipino stir fried rice noodle dish. {By the way, if anyone knows why Filipino is spelled with an “f” and only one “p” and Philippine is spelled with a “ph” and a double “p”, we would like to know. So far we’ve made up all kinds of silly reasons, but it would be nice to know the reason.
There seems to be as many recipes for pancit as there are recipe writers. I like those kind of recipes. The first time I made pancit bihon was a couple of years ago. I checked out some books from the library, Filipino Cuisine and The Philippine Cookbook, and read this pancit recipe and then kind of did my own thing. Which, apparently is very common.
One of the things I love about pancit is that is seems that people just kind of use whatever they had available. Don’t have chicken? Use shrimp. Don’t have zucchini? Use broccoli.
Pancit Bihon
This is not an exact recipe and it makes quite a bit, so adjust for your family.
Ingredients
- chicken, pork or shrimp (approx 1/4lb per person)
- 6 mushrooms
- a small head of cabbage
- a 4-5 carrots
- 2 summer squash
- 2 medium onions
- soy sauce
- fish sauce
- 2-8 oz packages of rice noodles
Instructions
- In a medium pot, cook chicken water with 2 tbsp of fish sauce and 2 tbsp. of soy sauce until done. If you're using a whole chicken, remove the chicken from the water after it's cooked. Remove the skin and debone the chicken. Set meat aside to add to vegetables.
- In a large skillet, saute the onions, cabbage and carrots using some of the broth.
- After a few minutes add in the squash and mushrooms.
- When done take the veggies out of the pan and into a large bowl.f
- Add the cooked meat to the bowl with the vegetables.
- Put the two 8oz packages of rice noodles (the really thin ones) and the rest of the broth along with some more fish sauce and soy sauce in the large skillet to cook.
- It will take about 5 minutes for the noodles to cook.
- Mix the cooked noodles in with the vegetables and meat.
- If you are doing a smaller amount, you can do it all in one pan.
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Josie
Thursday 6th of November 2014
Hi, you're very good at what you do. Thanks. There is no letter F in the Pilipino alphabet. Many words are spelled wrong because of the Spanish influence when words are Spanish but spelled the Pilipino way or just left as is. Example: silla, Spanish for chair is spelled silya in Pilipino. Older Pilipinos may spell it in Spanish but the younger ones may spell it "silya" because they may no longer speak Spanish. The Philippines was named after Spain's Philip & there are 2 Ps just because it is the right spelling.
Andrea
Wednesday 5th of November 2014
This is my kind of recipe! I will definitely be trying it.