🇸🇬 SingaporeCatalog recipe · Tiong Bahru
Springy noodles tossed in vinegar-chili oil with minced pork, pork liver, crispy lard and fish cake — a hawker-counter order so specific that regulars recite it by heart.
For 4 servings.
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Render the lard in a dry pan until crisp and golden; drain the cracklings and keep the fat separately.
Fry the garlic in the reserved fat until deep gold and crisp; drain and keep both the crisp garlic and its oil.
Poach the ground pork in gently simmering water until just cooked through, breaking it into small crumbles, about 3 minutes; do the same with the liver a minute more, then the fish cake.
Blanch the noodles in the same pot until just tender, about 2 minutes, then drain well.
Whisk the black vinegar, chili oil, soy sauce, sugar and a spoonful of the garlic oil in each serving bowl; add the hot noodles and toss until glossy and evenly coated.
Top with the pork, liver, fish cake, cracklings and fried garlic, then scatter spring onion and cilantro.
💡 Bak chor mee is ordered dry or in soup — keep back a ladle of the poaching liquid to serve alongside if you want it wet.
Teochew hawkers built the dish around whatever cuts were cheap — minced pork, pork liver, pig fat rendered into cracklings — tossed with noodles in vinegar and chili rather than a heavier sauce. Ordering it is its own small skill in Singapore, with regulars specifying noodle type and whether they want it 'dry', with a side bowl of soup, or ladled wet. It remains one of the dishes most argued about at hawker food competitions, where stall rivalries run deep.
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