There are many versions of this dish, but generally this no-soup noodle dish is served with meat on top, aromatic chilli oil — sometimes with peanuts in the oil — spring onions on top and if you wish, mustard greens on the side. This recipe is one I’ve worked on for restaurants in the past and one I use often at home.
For this dish, if you have a wok to use it will get the best result, but if not, a large non-stick pan will work as well. I haven’t for the picture but if you’d like to make a larger meal out of this dish, feel free to blanch some greens as well and add to the side. It does make a lovely addition.
Serves 4 — easy dinner meal
Ingredients
1 pack egg noodles
1 carrot
1 stem of celery
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic
800g pork mince
1 tsp canola or vegetable oil
4 Tbsp chilli oil — Lao Gan Ma works well
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp mirin
1 Tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine
1 tsp white pepper
4 stems of spring onion greens
2 Tbsp fried shallots
Method
Start by prepping your vegetables by dicing the carrot, celery and shallots into small pieces, crushing your garlic with the back of your knife and finely slicing into a crush consistency.
In a small bowl add your soy, mirin, Shaoxing, white pepper and 1 Tbsp chilli oil. Get your wok or pan extremely hot on high heat, and add a little oil once you can see it is nice and hot. Add your vegetables and garlic to the pan. Saute the vegetables until they’ve melted down nicely and have gone slightly brown. Add your mince. You want to dry out your pork mince with the heat of the pan, cooking it down so that there is no moisture left and the meat has gone crispy brown — this will add lots of flavour.
Once you’ve browned off your meat, add the sauce that you mixed in a bowl earlier. Cook this out for another 5 minutes or so. While that’s cooking out, get a medium saucepan full of hot boiling water — add some salt and oil to this pot and bring it up to a rapid boil.
Add your noodles to the boiling water and cook for around 8-10 minutes. Drain in a colander over the sink and add a little oil to stop the noodles from sticking.
Once your sauce has cooked out in your dandan mix, add the rest of your chilli oil, give a minute in the pan and then remove from heat. Add even amounts of noodles into your serving dishes and top with your dandan chilli meat.
Finely slice your spring onion greens to garnish the dishes and sprinkle with your fried shallots.
