Umami Oil (“XO Pepperoni Sauce”)

Last week I made the Umami Oil (“XO Pepperoni Sauce”) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. This is the first recipe of the Noodles section of the book and, specifically, the Hot Dressed Noodles and Pasta recipes. The first few recipes are for sauces with a note about making noodles with that sauce.

The Sauce

The ingredient list for the XO Pepperoni Sauce is lengthy. Among the umami-rich ingredients are chicken stock, dried mushrooms, pepperoni, bacon, anchovies, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and soy sauce. None of the ingredients are difficult to find or unusual this far into the cookbook.

Making the sauce is fairly straightforward. You fry the pepperoni and bacon in oil until crispy, add the anchovies, then add the aromatics and re-hydrated dried mushrooms. Spices are added, then Shaoxing wine and chicken stock, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar. All that simmers until the water has mostly cooked off and a meaty jammy mixture is left. The hardest part of making the sauce was finely mincing the pepperoni and bacon. Kenji suggests freezing them solid and sending through the grater of a food processor. I don’t have that, so I minced by hand.

The Noodles

Looking for Noodles

In the introduction to the Noodles chapter, Kenji spends several pages talking about different kinds of Chinese noodles. Noodles have been one of my more frustrating experiences in cooking east/southeast Asian cuisine. I feel okay about rice noodles, but I remain confused around wheat noodles (with or without eggs).

Even with Kenji’s descriptions, and referencing Serious Eats and The Woks of Life, I can’t match what I read with what I see in the store.

I asked my local Asian grocery, First Oriental Market, about “fresh Chinese noodles” thinking that maybe I’ve been mistakenly looking among the dried noodles. They only had a five pound bag of frozen lo mein noodles.

I looked at Buford Highway Farmer’s Market, which is farther away but much larger and has entire aisles dedicated to specific countries. They had about half an aisle of refrigerated Chinese and Korean noodles, but they were pretty much all the same: wheat noodles in various thicknesses. Nothing with eggs and nothing labeled like Kenji’s information. They all seemed closest to The Woks of Life’s “fresh white noodles.” Where are the lamian, lo mein, chow mein, and wonton noodles Kenji describes? I don’t know. I’ll keep looking.

For Noodles with XO Pepperoni Sauce, Kenji instructs to top cooked noodles with soy sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, the XO Pepperoni Sauce, and scallions. You stir it up, and that’s the meal.

I used some fresh Chinese wheat noodles I found at the Buford Highway Farmer’s market, but I had some spaghetti on hand just in case. Kenji has a note about boiling Italian pasta with baking soda to get something close to Chinese noodles.

While the sauce took some time, the noodles came together quickly. I made the sauce early in the week, so this made an easy weeknight meal.

Other Uses

Kenji suggests several other uses for the XO Pepperoni Sauce. We tried it on roasted vegetables (one of Kenji’s suggestions) and on avocado toast (not one of Kenji’s suggestions).

Thoughts and Opinions

Reviews were mixed for the noodles. I thought they were delicious, and combined with how quickly and easily they come together (provided the sauce is already made), they seemed like a top-tier “make again” dish. Megan thought the noodles were just okay, but admits that she’s not big on noodles. My son liked the noodles. He thought the sauce was spicy at first, but it never got too spicy for him, and his critique was that he wanted more of the meaty sauce. My daughter tried the noodles with only soy sauce and ate about half of her bowl. She wasn’t a fan.

As a sauce, Megan’s opinion improved. She liked it on the roasted broccoli and cauliflower we had earlier in the week. I’m the only one that had it on avocado toast, but I thought it was a nice addition.

The sauce is surprisingly not salty. It is meaty, but not salty. That’s fine with me, because I can add salt along with the sauce as needed, but I expected it to be saltier.

I’ll make the sauce again, and perhaps make a bowl of noodles for my lunch every now and then.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.