About Char Kway Teow
Char Kway Teow is a popular stir-fried noodle dish from Malaysia, known for its rich, smoky flavor. The dish features flat rice noodles stir-fried with ingredients like prawns, Chinese sausage, eggs, bean sprouts, and chives, all cooked in a savory sauce made from soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sometimes chili paste.
Historical Background
The dish was often sold by fishermen, farmers and cockle-gatherers who doubled as char kway teow hawkers in the evening to supplement their income. The high fat content and low cost of the dish made it attractive to these people as it was a cheap source of energy and nutrients.
Despite its Hokkien name, the stir-fried noodle dish is associated with the Teochew community and is believed to have originated from Chaozhou in China’s Guangdong province. Char kway teow began as a simple meal for the ordinary man, an uncomplicated dish of rice noodles fried with lard and dark soya sauce. Rice vermicelli was added to the original flat noodle dish, but this was later replaced by yellow wheat noodles.
The dish is sometimes called kwetiau goreng or kuetiau goreng in Malay, which conveys the same meaning. In March 2021, Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka (DBP), Malaysia's authority on standardised Malay, formally declared that the proper spelling of flat rice noodles in Malaysian Malay is kuetiau. In Indonesia, the dish is generally called kwetiau goreng, although some regions use the term mitiau instead of kwetiau. Conversely, kuetiau is rarely used in Singapore, with kway teow being used instead.
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