Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat
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This Panda Express chow mein copycat version can be made in just 20 minutes right at home (and it tastes so much better than the original!).
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Why you’ll love Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat
- Lightning fast recipe. This is a speedy 20 minute recipe start to finish. It’s so much faster than delivery or takeout using Yaki-Soba noodles, onion, celery, cabbage, and an easy stir-fry sauce.
- Uses better-quality ingredients. You can use high quality oils and avoid unwanted sodium and preservatives, loading this up with all the feel-good veggies, perfect for those picky eaters!
- So customizable. Making this at home allows you to completely customize this dish with what you have on hand, adding in leftover proteins (for example, rotisserie chicken) and lingering veggies to transform this into a hearty main dish.
What is chow mein?
This is a popular Chinese dish that translates to “stir fried noodles” in Cantonese. The noodles are stir fried or pan-fried, resulting in a crispier texture in a light sauce whereas lo mein noodles are softer and fully boiled with a richer sauce.
Key Ingredients
- Noodles: Yaki-Soba noodles, ramen noodles, or fresh Chinese egg noodles
- Vegetables: onion, celery, and cabbage
- Sauce: soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, ginger, and white pepper
How to make Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat
- Cook the noodles. Boil the Yaki-Soba noodles until loosened, about 1-2 minutes, rinsing with cold water to halt the cooking process.
- Prep the stir fry sauce. Combine the soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, ginger, and white pepper.
- Stir fry the vegetables. Cook the onion and celery in a large cast iron skillet over medium high heat until tender, then stir in the cabbage until softened.
- Combine and toss. Stir in the Yaki-Soba noodles and stir fry sauce until the noodles are evenly coated in the sauce.
What to serve with Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat
Tools For This Recipe
Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat: Frequently Asked Questions
Yaki-Soba are ramen-style noodles and can be found in the refrigerated aisle of your local grocery store.
Ramen noodles (without the seasoning packet) and lo mein noodles are both excellent substitutes.
Their chow mein includes a simple trio of onion, celery, and cabbage.
Absolutely! This recipe is incredibly flexible and forgiving, and it’s the perfect opportunity to use up leftover protein (chicken, steak, pork, or shrimp) and veggies (carrots, mushrooms, bell peppers, or bok choy).
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days, reheating on the stovetop over medium heat in a skillet or wok with a splash of water or broth for 3-4 minutes (to restore its original texture).
Panda Express Chow Mein Copycat
Video
Ingredients
- 2 (5.6-ounce) packages refrigerated Yaki-Soba, seasoning sauce packets discarded*
- ¼ cup reduced sodium soy sauce
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed
- 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
- ¼ teaspoon white pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 ribs celery, sliced diagonally
- 2 cups shredded cabbage
Instructions
- In a large pot of boiling water, add Yaki-Soba until loosened, about 1-2 minutes; rinse with cold water and drain well.
- In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, ginger and white pepper; set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Add onion and celery, and cook, stirring often, until tender, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in cabbage until heated through, about 1 minute.
- Stir in Yaki-Soba and soy sauce mixture until well combined, about 2 minutes.
- Serve immediately.
Equipment
Notes
- Prep beforehand. This recipe comes together quickly. Have all the ingredients and sauce ready to go prior to cooking.
- Use reduced sodium soy sauce. Reduced sodium has less sodium and less salt without compromising flavor.
- Cook until al dente. Cook the Yaki-Soba noodles just until al dente as they will continue to cook when stir-fried.
- Rinse noodles with cold water. This will stop the cooking process to tighten the starches and keep the noodles from clumping.
- Reheat on the stovetop. Reheat the leftover noodles in a skillet or wok to prevent soggy noodles and to revive the original crisp texture.
Did you make this recipe?
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious!
This is the BEST chow mein noodle recipe. I started making it about a year ago and my family loves it. The sauce is perfect…not too sweet or salty. And I make sure the noodles get to the nice, crispy brown stage.
Easy and SO delicious! One of the rare times my whole family gave a thumbs up. I added some shredded chicken.
I watched them make chow mein and saw them put a scoop of something in that l could not make out. I asked what it was. They said “wine”. Unknown what kind of wine. Just an input here.
Made this tonight with the chicken peanut lettuce wraps – absolutely delicious! The whole family enjoy our Asian inspired dinner tonight. Thanks for the recipes!
So happy to hear it! Thanks for sharing.
This is my new favorite recipe site!!! Oh my gosh. You are amazing. Your videos really did me in. I want to cook everything on your site!
I use the low main noodles you can get in the Asian section of HEB and it’s just amazing. It is an outstanding dish especially with the sweet and sour glazed pork chops except I use that recipe wih chicken and it turns out amazing! I’ve made this dish multiple times for my family and friends and my boyfriends family and they all just love it!
Thank you so much, Aspen! Happy you liked it.
Great recipe & family loved it!
I have a crazy busy household with a teen + tween in 2 different sports, so training/practice 6 days and packed weekend for games. I have no time to chop & used 4C frozen stir fry veggies. Boiled noodles, doubled sauce and dinner served within 30 min!! Love it!
I will be making double the recipe over the weekend, as kids asked to eat this for lunch at school. Can’t get any better for our budget, thank you again!
That’s amazing! So happy this works out so well for you.
Panda Express does not use Ginger in their recipe or pepper. Just noodles, cooking wine, celery and cabbage with soy sauce then sesame oil at the very end before serving. It’s that simple.
No. Garlic or brown sugar either
I know nothing about Panda Express but have been looking for a good chow mein sauce for ages.
I had condiments & noodles in the pantry and went to the fridge for whatever vegs needed to be used up…thought of adding shrimp from the freezer but didn’t want to waste them on yet another disappointing recipe.
This was incredible! There was so little sauce but it was all that was needed. I put in a grocery order tonight and just can’t wait to try it with all the different ingredients I ordered. Yes, I signed up for your recipes because this winner was “damn delicious”!
So happy to hear it!
This was very tasty! I used udon instead of yakisoba and ground ginger. I think i added a bit too much ground ginger so be careful on the ginger, maybe add it to taste. I cooked it in sesame oil and I think that really made the dish, highly recommend using it. This was very easy and especially filling if you use udon
Great substitutions! Glad you liked it.
Made exactly as stated, very tasty. Similar to Panda Express, but not exactly. Their noodles are more chewy and larger maybe? I was even able to find the exact refrigerated yakisoba noodles by maruchan. However, I like a noodle with more tooth. These noodles I felt were too thin and springy. I simmered for 1 minute and drained well and still they had no texture. What other more “substantial” noodle would be a good substitute? Not udon, as too big! Would a dried noodle be better so you can control the texture? A Shanghai noodle perhaps? Thanks!
Shanghai noodle sounds amazing!
Delicious pasta, I loved the recipe, it looks very tasty.
Just made this today, delicious, thanks!
So says the partner:
“Just use SPAGHETTI”. I only had linguini, and thought I could adjust the amounts. YIKES! Albeit delicious, this made a LOT of noodles, which is no problem for us! 3 stalks of celery became the entire bunch of celery.
On the other hand? I cooked a LOT of Asian inspired dishes the week I made this. Another winner kiddo! :))
Wow. That was incredible. I cannot thank you enough for sharing it. We had some Ram-Yun noodles we thought it would be fun to use up, so I looked up how to doctor up ramen and came across this recipe. It’s funny because I’ve actually made this before, but I used powdered ginger instead of fresh and thought it tasted alright. Today while I was at the store I decided to buy some fresh ginger and see how it tasted. Oh man. I cannot stress enough how important it is to use FRESH GINGER. It completely changed the dish! Absolutely incredible! I want to eat it every day forever! We also added green beans and white mushrooms for fun and it was great. Really such an amazing dish.
I have been having a hard time getting the refrigerated noodles to break up before adding to the dish, or maybe I haven’t been breaking them up correctly. What technique do you use to make them separated strands of noodles, rather than a clump still in the shape of the package?
The noodles are loosened up in step #2:
In a large pot of boiling water, add Yaki-Soba until loosened, about 1-2 minutes; drain well.
Followed recipe exactly. I wouldn’t consider this Panda Express chow mein at all. It does have a slight hint that reminds of it but if I was given this without knowing I would not associate it with Panda Express.
Tried this and it was a little to ginger-y. I found a 1 pound bag of yakisoba in a little Saigon store. I’ll try it again but with less brown sugar and ginger.
How about replace 1 tablespoon brown sugar by 1/2 tablespoon of honey? Instead of using packages refrigerated Yaki-Soba, should i use spaghetti squash or fried eggs noodles for this panda express chow mein copycat?
Yes and yes! 🙂
Okay I made this today from the online recipe and it was delicious, I have to say that I cut the ginger in half because I am not a huge ginger fan. I also purchased and received your book in the mail yesterday and I was noticing in the book the brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic cloves, grated ginger, and white pepper amounts are doubled for this recipe . So my question is, it it a typo on this recipe or in the book?
Carla, it is not a typo actually. Either of the measurements will work. It’s just that some of the recipes in the cookbook have been tweaked a bit after further recipe testing but I prefer less garlic, ginger and sugar personally! It all depends on personal preference. Hope that helps!
I can’t wait to try your recipe! If I can’t find the noodles that this recipe calls for I will use Barilla Pronto half-cut spaghetti. I used them for a teriyaki chicken & noodles recipe I found online and discovered that the taste and texture of these noodles are exactly, in my opinion, like lo mein noodles.