Dan Dan Noodles

Spicy Chinese noodles with minced pork, tahini, soy, chili oil and peanuts.

Here is a really yummy Chinese noodle dish that may require a visit to an Asian store, but I think it's worth trying.

Chili oil is an important ingredient and even though you can buy it, I choose to make it myself. The oil brings out the classic spices like Sichuan peppercorns and chili flakes, which is what gives this dish some of its heat and special flavor. It may seem a bit messy to make, but chili oil can be used in lots of other dishes too, so I think it's worth spending some time on.

This variation of dan dan noodles is based on a really good recipe that I modified a bit. Among other things, I doubled the amount of meat mix and reduced the amount of chili oil. The latter was mostly because it's easy to add more chili oil if you want a hotter dish. So this variation is definitely not as spicy initially to be able to fit more people and at the same time it is of course up to each person to add how much or little chili oil they want. The spicyness of chili oil can also vary quite a bit, so I choose to go the more cautious route and let people add more heat if necessary.

I also use fresh spinach instead of bok choy or choy sum - mostly because it is much easier to get hold of nice spinach in the local area. I choose to blanch the spinach a little quickly, but instead of making it complicated, I simply place the spinach leaves in the sieve I use to strain the cooked noodles. That way I don't have to wash another saucepan. :)

Another ingredient that I initially used and which is also visible in some of the pictures below was "sui mi ya cai" - preserved mustard leaves with sweetener. It was a bit of an adventure to find, but in the end I found a small 100g package in the Asian store in town. I sautéed half of it in a little rapeseed oil for a few minutes and put it on top of the noodles when serving. Personally, I wasn't entirely happy with how this tasted so I'll skip it in the future, but if you want to be more authentic, you can try it.

Another substitution was the noodles themselves. Mostly because I couldn't find exactly the right noodles in the store and classic egg noodles from Santa Maria can be found everywhere. However, I chose to increase the quantity a bit - the finished portions are around 60g in their package but I think a portion should be around 100g instead of fitting the increased amount of meat.

Just like previous Chinese recipes, Chinese cooking wine is used, which can be really hard to come by here. So I simply use some cheap dry sherry instead.

Ingredients

Directions