炸酱面
炸酱面 is one of my dad's favorite dishes, and he would (and still does) make it every weekend for lunch. It's probably not one of the most well-known noodle dishes out there, but the result is absolutely delicious. I definitely still have a lot of room for improvement (my sauce ended up being both slightly too salty and sweet, but not quite the same savoriness that my dad's sauce provides); will look to try this again soon.
Active Time: 20 min
Total Time: 30 min
Ingredients
- Noodles
- Pork (I typically use belly, but other cuts work also)
- Vegetables (I typically use bean sprouts)
- Garlic, cilantro
- 干黄豆酱, 豆瓣酱
- 花椒, potato starch
- Oil, water, soy sauce
Instructions
1. Prepare your sauce mixture. Depending on how dry/thick your 黄豆酱 is, you may or may not need to add some water and dilute the mixture. Mix it in with a small amount of 豆瓣酱 for body and flavor. Adjust for seasoning if necessary with soy sauce.
2. Peel and thinly slice several cloves of garlic. Slice pork belly into small pieces - either small thin slices or cubes are fine. Thoroughly coat the pork belly with potato starch.
3. In a wok with lots of oil (be very generous with the oil), stir-fry the garlic and pork belly pieces until golden brown and the pork belly gets a bit of color. Add lots of 花椒粉 and mix.
4. Add the sauce mixture to the oil, and turn the heat down to medium. Stirring every minute or two, cook the sauce mixture for around 15-20 minutes.
5. In the meantime, boil a pot of water. First blanch your vegetables, and remove. Then use the pot of water to boil your noodles until cooked through.
6. To serve, place your noodles at the bottom, top with your vegetables, add some sauce on top, and top with a bit of cilantro. Serve and enjoy!
Notes/Tips:
> Traditionally, 炸酱面 is served with thinly sliced cucumbers, but I personally am not a big fan of that. Cucumbers are best served cold, but the warm noodles and sauce heat up the cucumbers and cause it to become limp, taking away the crisp texture. I also don't really like cucumbers very much in the first place. I would personally recommend serving with bean sprouts, which doesn't have the same problem but still has a nice, crisp texture to contrast the noodles and sauce.
> Traditionally, the meat in the sauce is sliced into small cubes, but I've found that cutting it into small slices works fairly well also.
> Be generous with the oil! The oil is critical to getting that savory feel to the sauce.
> The instructions I gave are really vague, mostly because I don't know them myself! This was my first time and it was a bit of an experiment.