#la choy

[cosmicretreat]

Delbert, the La Choy Dragon, plus Jim Henson's original design sketch of the character. The La Choy commercials are some of Henson's most notable ad work.

[balthazar-sketti]

1967 La Choy Chow Mein ad

[misforgotten2]

Yum. MSG flavored with food.

[contac]

[retropopcult]

Presentation made for La Choy canned chow mein ad campaign featuring a dragon mascot designed and voiced by Jim Henson - (1966)

[muttonchopsalley]

La Choy Chinese food dragon puppet offer (1966)

[man-e-spells]

I feel like

Delbert the La Choy Dragon would be fun to play, in concept. Kool -Aid -Manning my way thru someone's wall in a fursuit, lighting their kitchen on fire, and handing them food has been a dream of mine ever since less than an hour ago

[thecurioustale]

La Choy Chicken Chow Mein Trade Secrets Thief

When I was a kid, one of my favorite meals was that canned chow mein from La Choy or Chun King, with matching crunchy chow mein noodles and Minute Rice. I absolutely loved it!

(Tangent Time! Americans in the 21st century have become such snobs against food like this. It's "not authentic" or whatever. Boo hoo! For one thing, food can be delicious and desirable in its own right regardless of whatever its real or projected social context is. For another, that old canned chow mein is what made me a fan of "Asian food" in the first place, early in life, and eventually led me to expand my tastes into more authentic, socially-respectable-in-the-eyes-of-priggish-progressives food, once I learned of its existence and moved to a city that widely served it. I have very little patience for moralistic social posturing that seeks to belittle people for eating whatever food they eat. Stop doing that!)

Anyway, the point of this post: I unintentionally recreated the flavor profile of this chow mein sauce perfectly tonight! I was fancying going out for some chow mein, but money is too tight, so I decided I would make some lo mein at home with pasta and leftover chicken. I wasn't thinking of the old La Choy stuff at all, let alone aiming for it. Rather, it was the serendipitous consequence of all the ingredients I used.

To the new sauce mixture I added soy sauce, oyster sauce, ginger, rice vinegar, mirin, which is completely normal for me. But things took a different direction: I used a lot of black pepper, which I have recently gotten back onto after mostly avoiding it for several years after I had been having tolerance issues with it. I also diced some Cora "Oh So Hot" Cherry Peppers (which actually are extremely hot), which I recently rediscovered hiding in my fridge after forgetting about them for a few months. And, probably most importantly, the chicken I used was leftovers, and it already had seasoning: potassium salt, Slap Ya Mama spice mix (a salt base with garlic and hot pepper plus a few other things), Italian seasoning, more black pepper, and maybe one or two other seasonings I am forgetting. I also used some of the schmaltz and gelatin from the chicken.

When I tasted what I'd made, the sauce's flavor profile was EXACTLY like the La Choy. Like, spot on perfect. I haven't had this stuff in a few years because, for one thing, my salt tolerance has gone way down and that stuff is so salty that it makes me sick now, and, for another, WinCo stopped selling it. (End of an era! 😭😭😭) But I would know that taste anywhere.

I am thinking that the keys here were the chicken gelatin (and all of the chicken flavor from the gelatin and the fat), the ginger in particular, the hot peppers and the little bit of hot pepper oil and vinegar from their brine, the black pepper, and the unholy amount of salt from using soy sauce (low sodium but still), oyster sauce, and previously-salted chicken leftovers that were themselves already fairly salty. I don't made food this salty anymore unless I am doing Asian stuff, because soy sauce, fish sauce (not used today), and oyster sauce are just too delicious to give up completely.

Anyway, if you're not in your thirties or older, you probably have no idea what "La Choy canned chicken chow mein" even is, but I for one was psyched to get to take an unplanned trip down memory lane! I really miss this kind of food sometimes. None of the new Asian restaurants tend to cook stuff like this, but the old school Asian-style buffets and the old chop suey houses still do. I think it's ripe for a comeback! But maybe that's just wishful thinking.