Just ain’t the same…

I got this from my cousin who was home recently from Melbourne, Australia…

This is beef stock, something like Bovril but it is made in the land Down Under and contains beef extract (23%) unlike most of the Bovril that we can get from the shops around here, all yeast and suitable for vegetarians.

If I just take a bit of it to sample, I would say that it tastes more or less the same. However, this one is more jelly-like…

…(the texture of fruit jam) unlike Bovril which flows more easily (thick like condensed milk).

Anyway, I decided to try it out with my mee sua the other morning so I fried some sliced shallots in a bit of oil…

…along with some sliced garlic this time around for additional fragrance and taste in the oil to be used. Once golden brown, you may want to remove them from the oil and let them stand on some kitchen towel to soak out the oil. Later, you can sprinkle them on top of your noodles…and you can enjoy the nice and dry and crispy/crusty bits of shallots and garlic when you eat your noodles. I did not bother to go through the trouble of doing that though and just left them in the oil.

I added a spoonful of Bonox to it as well as some soy sauce and also a bit of pounded chili…

Nope, no msg is required…unless you insist on adding a bit of that. It will be very tasty already as it is.

Somebody commented on my Facebook photo asking if it would be too salty, considering that mee sua is already salty. What I usually do is to boil a lot more water than is necessary to cook the mee sua so that the salt will be lost into the water and the starch from the mee sua as well. After the mee sua is cooked, I will rinse it in cold water to remove any more salt and starch in the noodles – this will also prevent the mee sua from sticking together in one lump when it has cooled. Having done that, I put it back into some hot water and let it heat up a bit – you would not want to eat cold noodles, would you?

Having done all the above and draining away all the water, I put the noodles in the pan with all the ingredients and tossed everything together really well so that everything would be evenly mixed together…

Then, I dished out the noodles and served…

I had some leftover chicken drummets that my missus had cooked the previous day – marinated with terrayaki honey sauce and oven-baked so I heated those up and had them with the mee sua…

Of course it was nice, very very nice!

But between the two, I certainly would not say that they’re the same, more or less as I feel that Bovril has a stronger, heavier taste and fragrance and I would say that I prefer it more…but of course, it is all up to one’s personal preference and taste. I, for one, know that there are people who do not like Bovril because it has what they call “a rusty taste” and some would not touch Marmite while on my part, I  love them all!!!