This week I made the Zhajiang Miàn (Beijing “Fried Sauce” Noodles) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

The sauce for this dish is made of Sichuan peppercorn, star anise, ground pork, garlic, ginger, tianmianjiang, dark soy sauce, and chicken stock. I had used tianmianjiang previously in Sichuan Double-Cooked Pork Belly. I can’t imagine I used it up, but I couldn’t find it in my fridge. I was at a new-to-me grocery checking out their fresh noodle selection, and tianmianjiang remained difficult to identify. I finally found a couple of brands of it by comparing the kanji on the packaging with those on its wikipedia page and The Woks of Life. I ended up getting the Szechuan brand pictured in The Woks of Life article.

The Sichuan peppercorn and star anise are infused into some cooking oil (I omitted the star anise as Megan and I don’t care for anise flavor). The pork, garlic, and ginger are then stir-fried in that oil until crips. The tianmianjiang and soy sauce are added and cooked until the oil separates, then chicken stock is added and simmered until the sauce is thick.

Kenji notes that the usual noodle for this dish is “relatively thick, sturdy wheat noodles with a rectangular cross section” sometimes labeled as “cumian” and suggests udon as a suitable. I found some noodles that seemed to fit the bill labeled “Daxibei Gungun Noodles.”

The cooked noodles are mixed with the sauce, blanched mung bean sprouts, blanced edamame, cucumber, carrot, and radishes.

We thought that the noodles were just fine. The flavor wasn’t as strong as I expected and I thought that the pieces of pork were the most flavorful part of it. Perhaps a bit more salt would have helped it out? My son said he didn’t particularly care for the noodles, but they were better than the plain noodle alternative I had for him and my daughter.

If I make this again I’ll try finishing it with a bit of salt to bring out a bit more flavor.

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