Mee Pok substitute

Best substitute

Fresh Flat Wonton Noodles or Hong Kong Flat Egg Noodles

Use the same amount by weight, boiled 45 to 60 seconds as the mee pok you are replacing

Best for bak chor mee

Close match

The same family of noodle from a neighbouring tradition, sold fresh in the chilled section of most Chinese groceries in nests or coils. Look for the flat ribbons rather than the round threads.

Other mee pok substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Dried Linguine, With Baking Soda in the Water
Different taste
Use the same amount by dry weight, cooked 1 minute under the packet time, with ¼ tsp baking soda per litre of water
The supermarket answer, and better than it sounds.
What changes
Linguine is already flat and firm, and the small amount of baking soda pushes the cooking water alkaline, which firms the surface and gives the noodle a slippery, faintly yellow, distinctly Asian chew.
Best for
bak chor mee at home, dry tossed noodles, when no Asian grocery is nearby
The width and the flat face are right, and the baking soda trick gets you surprisingly close on bounce. What is different is flavour and finish: durum wheat tastes cleanly of wheat where mee pok tastes faintly eggy and mineral, and linguine stays smoother and less slippery, so it grips sauce a little less. Do not exceed the baking soda quantity, because too much makes the noodles soapy and slick.
3Fresh Fettuccine or Tagliatelle
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight, boiled 2 to 3 minutes
The right shape and roughly the right width, and it is made with egg, which is a genuine point of overlap with mee pok.
What changes
Fresh, not dried, is the one to buy.
Best for
bak chor mee, dry tossed noodles, mee pok soup, family cooking with what is on hand
Distinctly softer and more tender, with a richer eggy taste and a porous surface that soaks up sauce instead of wearing it. The bowl still tastes good, but it loses the specific springy resistance that makes mee pok satisfying to eat, and it can go limp if it sits. Toss it with the sauce and eat it immediately, and cook it a minute shy of tender to keep some backbone.
4Fresh Ramen Noodles
Close match
Use the same amount by weight, boiled per packet, usually 60 to 90 seconds
Alkaline wheat noodles, which is exactly the family mee pok belongs to, so the chew and the faint tang are right.
What changes
Buy the fresh or frozen kind, or use a packet of instant ramen and throw the seasoning sachet away.
Best for
bak chor mee when chew matters most, dry tossed noodles, quick weeknight versions
The bounce is the best of any easy substitute, because ramen and mee pok are made the same way. The problem is shape: ramen is round and often wavy, so it tangles into a bundle and the sauce pools at the bottom of the bowl rather than clinging to the noodle. If you use instant, expect a slight fried-noodle flavour from the way it was dried, and rinse it after boiling to lose some of the oil.
5Yakisoba or Chow Mein Noodles
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight, loosened in hot water for 30 seconds
Sold in vacuum packs, already steamed, and needing only a rinse in hot water to separate.
What changes
Convenient and consistently available in most large supermarkets.
Best for
quick dry tossed noodles, weeknight bak chor mee, when nothing else is stocked
Alkaline and springy like mee pok, but round, thinner, and coated in oil from the packet, which makes the sauce slide and mutes the vinegar. They are also often pre-seasoned, so taste one before you add salt or soy to the bowl. Rinsing them in hot water and draining hard removes most of the oil and improves the result a lot.
6Fresh Flat Rice Noodles (Kway Teow)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by weight, briefly loosened in boiling water
Not a compromise so much as a legitimate variant.
What changes
Every bak chor mee stall in Singapore offers kway teow as an alternative to mee pok, and plenty of people prefer it, so ordering the dish this way at home is not a downgrade.
Best for
bak chor mee kway teow, gluten-free versions, soup versions
Completely different in the mouth: soft, slippery and yielding with no spring at all, so the dish becomes silky rather than bouncy and the vinegar reads sharper against it. Rice noodles are also fragile, so fold rather than stir when tossing, and handle them warm because refrigerated fresh rice noodles crack until they are gently steamed back to life.

What is Mee Pok?

Mee Pok is Mee pok is a flat, pale yellow Singaporean and Teochew wheat noodle made with egg and an alkaline solution, which is what gives it its springy bite and its ability to hold a thin sauce along its broad surface.

Cooking tips

Cook the noodles for under a minute, then shock them and reheat them. The hawker technique is to boil the mee pok for about forty seconds, plunge the basket into cold water, then dip it back into the boiling pot for a few seconds before tossing. The cold shock firms the surface and is the difference between a springy bowl and a soft one.
Have the sauce in the bowl before the noodles come out of the water. Mee pok tah is a dry tossed noodle, and the sauce is usually pork lard, dark and light soy, a hard splash of black vinegar or chilli sauce, and a little of the noodle water. Drained noodles clump within about thirty seconds, so the sauce must be waiting for them, not the other way round.
Fat is not optional in this dish. A teaspoon of pork lard per bowl, or a neutral oil with fried shallot if you would rather, is what stops the strands sticking and what carries the chilli and vinegar onto the noodle. Bowls made with no fat taste flat and sticky no matter how good the noodle is.
Do not rinse away all the surface starch, and do not save the cooking water for other things. A spoonful of the cloudy noodle water added to the bowl emulsifies the lard and soy into something that coats rather than pools, which is what makes a good bowl look glossy.
Buy less noodle than you think. About 100g of fresh mee pok, or a single nest, is a full portion, because the noodle is dense and the toppings of minced pork, liver, fishball and pork crackling are half the dish. Overfilling the bowl is what makes homemade versions taste like plain noodles.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between mee pok and mee kia?

Only the shape, and the difference matters more than you would expect. Mee pok is the flat ribbon and mee kia is the thin round version of the same dough, and stalls sell both from the same tray. Flat noodles wear the sauce on their surface, so a mee pok bowl tastes more strongly of vinegar and chilli, while mee kia is springier and lighter and lets the pork and broth come forward. If you find round noodles and not flat ones, you have not lost the dish, you have ordered it the other way.

Can I use dried instant ramen from a packet?

Yes, and it is one of the better emergency options because instant ramen is an alkaline wheat noodle, so the chew is genuinely close. Throw the seasoning sachet away, boil the block for slightly less time than the packet says, and rinse it briefly to wash off some of the oil left from frying during manufacture. What you cannot fix is the round wavy shape, which holds sauce less well than a flat noodle, and a faint toasted flavour that a fresh noodle does not have.

Can I just leave the noodle out?

Not really, because in bak chor mee the noodle is the dish rather than a component of it. What you can do instead is serve the minced pork, liver, fishballs, mushrooms and crisp pork lard over rice with the same vinegar and chilli sauce, which makes a good rice bowl, or turn the whole thing into a soup and skip the starch entirely. Both are worth eating. Neither is mee pok, which is fundamentally about tossing a springy flat noodle in sharp, fatty, savoury sauce.

Is mee pok the same as regular egg noodles?

They overlap but they are not the same. Ordinary Western egg noodles are made with egg and wheat flour and are soft and absorbent, whereas mee pok also contains an alkaline solution, which tightens the protein and gives that distinctive slippery spring and pale yellow colour. That is why simply boiling supermarket egg noodles gives you a soft, floury bowl. Adding a pinch of baking soda to the cooking water closes some of the gap by making the water alkaline.

Why did my noodles turn out gummy and stuck together?

Three usual culprits. They were cooked too long, which is easy since fresh mee pok needs well under a minute. They sat in the colander while you assembled the sauce, so the surface starch set into glue. Or there was not enough fat in the bowl. Boil them last, have the lard, soy and vinegar already mixed in the bowl, toss the instant they are drained, and add a spoonful of the noodle water to loosen everything.

Related substitutes

More pasta & noodles substitutes

Mee Pok substitute

Other mee pok substitutes

2Dried Linguine, With Baking Soda in the Water

3Fresh Fettuccine or Tagliatelle

4Fresh Ramen Noodles

5Yakisoba or Chow Mein Noodles

6Fresh Flat Rice Noodles (Kway Teow)