Today for lunch we made dan dan noodles (dàndàn miàn, 担担面). We were after a quick dish to prepare for lunch because we spent the morning at the Midtown DMV where I took and passed my road knowledge test, or as I like to say “I am success!” The excursion took longer than anticipated because I forgot to bring my I-94 (immigration arrival record) to the DMV so we had to return home to get that.
We really enjoy making and eating dan dan mian. I especially enjoy eating peanut butter in a dish that is not a sandwich or out of the jar in a spoon. This dan dan noodle recipe yielded us a little too much sauce and I personally prefer a thicker sauce consistency anyway so I guess next time we will use a little less stock. It’s still a great dish though.
Dan dan noodle makes a good meal all by itself. You don’t need really any sides. For extra asian bonus points, have a few pieces of fruit afterwards.
Ingredients
Serves two. Ready in about 10 minutes.
- chili oil
- sesame oil
- 4oz ground pork
- 1 onion
- a few cloves of garlic
- a bit of ginger
- 3 Tbsp peanut butter (crunchy or smooth, we had smooth in the fridge)
- 1.5 Tbsp spicy fermented bean paste (là dòubànjiàng)
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 Tbsp shaoxing wine
- 2.5 cups of stock (or water)
- 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorn
- dry wheat noodles
Mise en place
-
Chop the garlic, ginger and onion.
-
Mix together the peanut butter, soy and bean paste.
-
We decided to grind the sichuan peppercorn today to try and get rid of the gritty texture that can result from whole peppercorn. It did cut down on a lot of the grit, but Paul thinks the tradeoff is that you then miss out on the bursts of flavour in your mouth when you bite into a whole peppercorn. Add the peppercorn to the stock and shaoxing.
-
Boil your kettle for hot water and put that into a separate pot ready to cook the noodles.
Preparation
-
Add the chili oil and a dab of sesame oil into a pot to heat. Add the pork and fry until almost cooked.
-
Add the garlic, ginger and onion and fry this until soft. We like to let ours go until it is really soft with a bit of char on it.
-
Add the peanut butter, soy and doubanjiang mixture and stir this all in. Fry this off a little as well to release some of the smell of the doubanjiang.
-
Add the stock and shaoxing mixture to the pot and bring to a boil. Go ahead and add your wheat noodles to the pot of boiling water to cook those as well. It was at this point that we realised we had made too much sauce so we reduced our mixture down a little by keeping it on a boil until it looked a little more reasonable. This did make it more salty, but you can go ahead and use a low-sodium broth (that we did not have) - remember, you get plenty of salt from the soy sauce.
Serving
When the noodles are done, divide those into two bowls. I like to use tongs or chopsticks to pick up the noodles from the pot and into a sieve to drain a little before dumping out into bowls. I prefer to do this rather than drain the entire pot into a sieve/colander in case you want to make more noodles (which in our case we did, as we had a little bit too much broth)!
Ladle the dan dan sauce over the noodles. Drizzle with a little more chili oil if you wish.
Eat!
