Chinese Dan Dan Noodles

In this installment of our Takeout Fake-out series (a personal favorite) we’re taking a look at a wildly poplar Sichuan dish: Dan Dan Noodles. I’ve taken some liberties with tradition here, as I tend to do here on My Kitchen Little, in my attempt to keep things as easy, affordable and fast for you as possible without sacrificing flavor and all-around deliciousness. A noble quest if there ever was one, right? I spent a great deal of time studying Chinese Dan Dan Noodles. I tried to get to know the ins and outs of this dish’s layered flavors and worked to streamline it just a bit. So, here we’re honoring the classic while making it a little bit easier on the budget and faster for simple weeknight prep as well.

What Are Dan Dan Noodles?

“Dandan noodles or dandanmian is a noodle dish originating from Chinese Sichuan cuisine. It consists of a spicy sauce usually containing preserved vegetables, chili oil, Sichuan pepper, minced pork, and scallions served over noodles. The dish can either be served dry or as a noodle soup.”

Wikipedia

Okay, so! We’ve got a spicy noodley little number going on here, which to me, is one of life’s finer culinarily categories. It’s pretty tough to mess this one up, guys. get ready to meet one of your new favorite meals.

Want to learn more? Here are some great Chinese Cooking Resources

It’s my great hope that, in sharing some of my favorite dishes from around the world, I inspire you to learn and cook a little more from cultures and places whose flavors might be totally different that what you’re used to. You can learn a lot about a place by studying what it’s people eat, and I’ve made a pretty massive hobby (okay, job) out of doing just that.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chinese style noodle recipes like these DanDan Noodles, here are a few suggestions for you, to help you get started … to whet your palate.

Shop: Weee! is a great online grocery that can stand as a perfect resource if you’re looking to bolster and improve your Asian panty.

Read: A Very Chinese Cookbook and The Woks of Life.

Watch: Chinese Cooking Channel

Listen: A list of some great Asian food podcasts.

What You’ll Need

Building a proper bowl of Dan Dan Noodles is a decent commitment, of both time and money, to be honest. You need to create a highly flavorful, spicy chili oil that is used to flavor the broth in which your noodles and meat will rest. A sauce that is made from hugely aromatic ingredients like soy, chili paste, scallions, Chinese black vinegar, bean paste, five spice powder, garlic, etc. is cooked into the caramelized meat and, sometimes, also incorporated into the broth to build massive, knock-your-socks-off flavor in each and every slurp-able bite.

Sometimes you’ll see things like tahini (sesame paste) or peanut butter incorporated into the sauce, and it probably goes without saying that these are Americanized or Westernized twists. But delicious twists, nonetheless.

INGREDIENTS

• ¼ cup soy sauce, plus more for serving
• 3 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons store-bought chili oil or chili crisp (or less, if you want it a bit milder)
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 cup hoisin sauce (Chinese style barbecue sauce)
• 3 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1/3 cup peanut butter or tahini 
• 2 tablespoons canola, vegetable, coconut or other high-heat oil
• 1 pound ground pork
• 8 ounces sliced button mushrooms
• 1 small can water chestnuts, drained (about 1/3 cup)
• 1 shallot (or, ¼ of a large sweet onion)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 32-ounces chicken broth
• 1 pound Chinese-style egg noodles cooked according to package directions 

Serving suggestions: sliced scallions, chopped cilantro, chopped peanuts, toasted sesame seeds

How to Make this Dan Dan Noodles recipe

In this version, we’ll compromise between the soup-like kind of Dan Dan noodles you’ll find and the drier versions by creating a dish that falls somewhere in between. I like mine with the tasty broth, but I don’t drown my noodles with it. That said, you can build up your bowls however you like.

Quick-fix tips

To create our version of Dan Dan noodle bowls, we’ll compromise a bit on some of the labor/time/ingredient intensive steps and take a little help from the store and our food processor where we can. I opt for some flavorful hoisin sauce in my sauce mix here, as it really packs a punch in the flavor department and eliminates the need for a longer list of ingredients that, essentially, do the same thing. Also, instead of making a chili oil, we’ll just use a store-bought one (they’re very easy to come by – just look in the Asian foods section of your store). Also, if you want to just use Sriracha instead of the chili oil – if you happen to have that already – that would be a tasty, relevant swap and would work nicely.

I like to incorporate lots of veggies into the pork mix, to add depth of flavor and also a nutritional boost to the dish. But honestly, you can totally skip the vegetables/food processor part, and add the garlic into the sauce instead. You could make this a strictly pork thing, if you like. But I just love how the veggies work here, so I always add them in. We’ll use 8 ounces of pre-sliced mushrooms to a food processor, along with shallot or a little bit of onion and water chestnuts. This mixture will go right into a hot pan for a fast stir fry before adding in the pre-caramelized ground pork and the wonderfully delicious sauce.

For the Dan Dan Noodles sauce

Ohhhh, the sauce. All the sauce is, in this case, is soy sauce, water, hoisin, sugar, peanut butter or tahini, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar. Easy, fast and really balanced, flavor-wise, and it does double duty as it will help to flavor the chicken broth as well as the meat/veggie mixture. I like to pile up some noodles into big serving bowls, ladle in some sauce-spiked broth, and then top it with that caramelized, saucy pork. A shower of chopped cilantro, scallions, peanuts or toasted sesame seeds makes it all come together beautifully.

If you opt to use tahini in this sauce, you should also add a a little extra drizzle of toasted sesame oil to the sauce as well, as Chinese sesame pastes (zhī ma jiàng, 芝麻酱) are made from toasted white sesame seeds, whereas tahini is made from raw sesame seeds. So, to make up for that lacking flavor, a little bit of extra toasted sesame oil is really nice in this sauce. 

DIRECTIONS

1. First, make the sauce: In a medium bowl, combine the soy sauce, water, chili oil, sugar, hoisin, vinegar, sesame oil, and peanut butter or tahini. Whisk or stir the sauce until everything is smooth and well combined. If it’s too spicy for your taste, just add more of the soy, water, hoisin, and vinegar.
2. Add the chicken stock to a medium saucepan set over medium heat. Add ¼ cup of the sauce to the broth and stir to combine. 
3. In a large skillet or wok set over high heat, add the 2 tablespoons of oil and the pork. Allow the pork to caramelize and crisp up, undisturbed, until very brown before you turn it. Flip the pork and break it up with your spoon/spatula; cook until browned and no longer raw; about 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate/tray.
4. Place the mushrooms, water chestnuts and shallot (not the garlic right now) into a food processor and pulse until the bits are all relatively finely ground and somewhat uniform in size; about 25 to 30 pulses. Transfer this mixture to the pan in which you cooked the pork and cook, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes. If you need to, go ahead and add a little more cooking oil. Add the garlic in during the last minute of cook time, and stir to mix.
5. Once the veggie mixture has cooked down, add the pork back into the pan along with the sauce. Toss to combine.  
6. To serve, place some noodles in a large bowl and ladle some of the hot broth over top. Top with some of the caramelized pork and veggie mixture and sprinkle with chopped cilantro/scallions, sesame seeds or peanuts, if desired. Enjoy right away, with extra soy sauce and chili oil on the side.

If you like the looks of this Chinese Dan Dan Noodles recipe, you might also want to try:

Fried Chicken Noodle Soup

Chicken Khao Soi

Singapore Street Noodles

Honey Garlic Noodles with Toasted Peanuts

Thai Peanut Noodle Salad

Pad See Ew

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