Prima Taste’s Mee Siam Sauce Kit

I am a big fan of Prima Taste Meal Sauce Kits. I loved their Singapore Curry the best!

The other day, we had a craving for Mee Siam and got one package from Prima Taste.

Mise en place for Mee Siam.
We had to top up with some more chilli, dried shrimps, tamarind and taucheo (fermented salty soya bean paste).

Hawker standard Mee Siam do not or seldom have prawns.
You find prawns more often in a hotel’s coffeehouse (or middle ground f&b establishments).
Fish cake is our own addition as we found it can complement this dish.

“Mee siam, which means “Siamese noodle” in Malay, is a dish of thin rice vermicelli popular in Singapore and Malaysia.

In Singapore, it is served with spicy, sweet and sour light gravy. The gravy is made from a rempah spice paste, tamarind and taucheo (salted soy bean). Mee Siam is typically garnished with shredded omelette, scallions, bean sprouts, garlic chives, and lime wedges. In Malaysia a “dry” version is more commonly found, which is essentially stir frying the rice noodles with the same ingredients used in the Singaporean version.

In Thailand a very similar dish is known as mi kathi (noodles with coconut milk), a noodle dish popularly eaten as lunch in the Central Region. It is made by stir frying rice vermicelli noodles with a fragrant and thick sauce that has a similar taste profile as Mee Siam. The sauce is made from coconut milk mixed with minced pork, prawns, firm bean curd, salted soy bean, bean sprouts, garlic chives, and tamarind. It is served with thinly sliced egg omelet, fresh bean sprouts, fresh garlic and banana blossom.” – Wikipedia

While we had to tweak the sauce kit , our mee siam dinner was still enjoyable.

Prima’s Mee Siam Sauce Kit did not quite match up to our expectations as it was overly sweet and one kit is only barely enough gravy for 3 portions of standard servings. We had to top up with more ingredients i.e. dried shrimps for frying the beehoon, (assam juice and taucheo) to compensate the adulterated gravy. We managed to salvage the citrus sour but did not have additional rempah so our mee siam was not as spicy as it should be. Overall, we did enjoy our dinner after some meddling.

I would say this kit is good for those living overseas and cannot find ingredients to make the rempah needed for mee siam. The kit is quite complete with sambals for frying the beehoon (rice vermicelli), the gravy and also for garnish. You will need to buy beehoon, chives, onions (cook in the gravy sauce), eggs (hard-boiled or omelet strips), calamansi limes, soybean product of your choice (i.e. fried taukwa or taupok), and prawns and fish cake for garnishing, if you desire. Follow the cooking instructions on the box.

Happy cooking, eating and bonding!

P.S. Dry Mee Siam makes a good potluck dish.