Food Quest #1 Korean Sweet Potato Noodles Jap Chae(Part 1)

Note: I didn't make this exact one, but my goal is to make it something
like this. Hopefully. taken from google pics.

Jap Chae! It's something that I've always loved eating in a Korean restaurant. Non spicy! my favourite. So here's to me trying out this awesome dish, and giving you some tips and notes that I've made, so hopefully it'll help you with the other recipes you can find online.

The first site that caught my eye when I googled it was this . I don't know, Perhaps I should check out other sites just in case there are simpler ones, but this one looks pretty good.

OKAY. Overall, most of the recipes have similar ingredients, only varying with vegetables and meat. So I guess you could use the Vegetables that YOU like, and the meat that YOU would want to eat. That way, it'll be your own dish, and it's a hell lot easier too. Alright?

Anyway, Here's a list of vegetables/meat/other stuff that I found in most Jap Chae dishes, besides the noodles. They would probably work in any combination and amount, so treat it like an ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Buffet. You might want all of them or just one.

Vegetables You Could Use:
-Onions
-Spring onions/green onions
-Carrots
-Shitake mushrooms (does that count as vegetables?)
-Cucumber skins (Might as well throw in the rest of the cucumber)
-Peppers (Red, Green or Yellow)
-Seaweed
-Spinach
-Scallions
-Garlic
-Toasted sesame seeds (Makes it look a lot more professional)

If you want it to look like Jap Chae, I suggest slicing everything you have into long, thin, shredded sticks. I guess the reason behind it is that it'll be easier to eat them sliced like that with noodles and chopsticks. 

*Jap Chae's supposed to be a vegetarian dish but I've seen variations with meat, which I suppose works either way

Meat That's Most Common In Non-Veg Jap Chae:
-Beef, Sliced (Best choice in my opinion, since it goes really well with the sauce)
-Minced chicken (Soaks up the sauce pretty well)
-Shrimp/Prawns

Now, the sauce for Jap Chae's pretty easy. Almost all of the recipes online give these three main ingredients:

Sesame oil
Soy Sauce
Brown Sugar

It's like the super combo pack of Jap Chae. So long as you've got these on your plate, it'll have more or less a similar taste to that of Jap Chae. That sweet, salty, homey taste. If that helps. Add salt and pepper to your own liking, but keep in mind that soy sauce is salty enough without any extra help. 

So here's a shopping list summary of the things you'll need. Just cancel out the stuff you already have.

Things to buy
1) Your choice of Vegetables
2) Your choice of meat
3) Sesame Oil
4) Soy Sauce
5) Sugar
6) Korean sweet potato noodles
    (Or Vermicelli as it's sometimes packaged in, also another great alternative if you can't find Jap Chae noodles specifically.)
7)Pepper/salt
8)Sesame seeds

Cooking's pretty self explanatory, boil the noodles, fry the vegetables, mix the sauce, add the sauce, stir fry the whole thing together. But here's a collection of useful tips I found:

1) Boil the noodles in salted water to give it more flavour
2) Remember to cut the noodles so that they're easier to slurp up
3) After boiling the noodles, drain and rinse under cold water before tossing them with sesame oil for flavour. Kinda like meat marinating, just that's it's noodles. So start with the noodles first so that they've got more time to soak in all them goodies. Also, it prevents the noodles from sticking together.
4)Dissolve sugar in soy sauce before adding it to your noodles. This way, you won't get the sugar scattered unevenly and all over the place.
5) Prepare your meat in bite sized slurpable portions. Chunky stuff just gets in the way from enjoying the wonderful slurping of noodles.

Here's the best site, and the easiest to follow (with step by step pictures), that I found, and would probably be following myself. Hope that saves you some time from scavenging in the mess of sites online. But if you're all smart and hardworking, This one's pretty detailed too. After all, the best recipe's the one that you yourself would put together with your own little tweaks and adaptations, so, GOOD LUCK! I'll be back with my finished product, which I'm going to be cooking for dinner with my family. I do hope they'll like it.