Category: Noodles

Yunnan Liang Mixian (Cold Rice Noodles)

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Sesame / Noodles / Plant / Poultry / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

No Sweet Sour: Yunnan Liang Mixian (Cold Rice Noodles, 凉米线)

Pretend You’re South of the Clouds Here’s a recipe for Chinese cold rice noodles from the land where they do liang mixian best, plus a trick for making dried rice noodles taste like the thick, bouncy fresh ones of Yunnan. Text and photos by Michelle Zhao Cold rice noodles (凉米线, liáng mǐxiàn) is a summer dish that Yunnan people are especially fond of. Every city has its own style of liang mixian, but my top three are from Yuxi, Dali and Kunming. The distinguishing characteristic of Yuxi cold rice noodles is...

Yibin Ran Mian

How to Cook With Caiziyou / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Yibin Ranmian, 燃面 (Burning Noodles From Yibin, Sichuan)

Noodles via Chinese Cooking Demystified I am so happy to report that I have finally conquered Yibin ranmian (燃面, ránmiàn), a noodle I’ve been longing for and one of the best noodles you have probably never heard of. I’ve been promising to develop this recipe for many years, ever since the first time I had Yibian ranmian in Chengdu. It was 2014, but I remember it like it was yesterday. We (Craig, Fongchong and I) had just eaten a full meal at a famous restaurant that we had nonetheless found...

Sichuan sesame noodles

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Sesame Noodles in “Strange Flavor” Sauce (Guaiweimian, 怪味面)

Sesame Paste—Not Tahini or Peanut Butter—For the Win “Strange flavor” truly is the strangest name for the super Sichuan sauce on these guaiweimian noodles. If I were naming it, it would be glorious flavor, or addictive flavor, or just best flavor, because it takes the standard sauce for Sichuan cold dishes—chili oil, Sichuan pepper, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic—and adds nutty, toasty Chinese sesame paste, hitting every note in the Sichuan flavor spectrum in one life-changing pantry sauce that can be thrown together in minutes. Despite what McDonald’s would have...

suan la fen

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Huajiao / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Chongqing Suanlafen (酸辣粉) Sour and Spicy Sweet Potato Noodles

Lameizi’s Noodles: A Spicy Girl Graduates Suanlafen, or sour and spicy soup with sweet potato noodles, always makes me think of Fongchong. We share a belief that spicy and sour, in that order, are the two best tastes, and nothing embodies those tastes better than suanlafen. Not only is it my daughter’s go-to soup in Sichuan restaurants, but one particular memory of her having it in her homeland always makes me smile, reminding me that my spicy girl (lameizi, as they’re known in Sichuan) knows her own mind and will always...

Cold Dishes / Non-Spicy / Noodles / Plant / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Sichuan Fava Bean and Radish Noodle Salad

Green Salad or Noodle Salad, You Choose After Jordan Porter wrote a piece for this blog about the bounty of Chengdu markets in the spring, I got to thinking about fava beans in a new way. I mean, I often think of fava beans, or broad beans as they are also known, since they are one of the main components of Pixian doubanjiang. They are the “bean” in that chili bean paste, and therefore the umami backbone of a great deal of Sichuan food. The broad beans in doubanjiang start...

Big Plate Chicken

Braises / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Poultry / Restaurant Classics

Xinjiang Big Plate Chicken (Dapanji, 大盘鸡) | Sarah Ting-Ting Hou

Big Plate, Big Flavors While dapanji is not a Sichuan dish, Big Plate Chicken, as it’s translated in English, is very much at home in Chengdu and has several ingredients in common with Sichuan stews and braises. It gets a bit of heat from Sichuan pepper and doubanjiang but also shows its Xinjiang roots by featuring smoky cumin and fat  wheat noodles.  This recipe was created by Sarah Ting-Ting Hou, a restaurant professional who moved from Beijing to Nashville a couple years ago. Like all Chinese-food lovers here, she has...

Beef, Lamb & Game / Braises / How to Cook With Chinese Spices / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Instant Pot-Friendly / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Red-Braised Beef Noodle Soup (Hongshao Niurou Mian, 红烧牛肉面) Using the Instant Pot (or Not)

The Chinese Instant Pot~~ The Sichuan version of China’s (and Taiwan’s) beloved red-braised-beef noodle soup (hongshao niurou mian) is—you guessed it!—spicy hot with the addition of Pixian doubanjiang (chili bean paste), Sichuan pepper and chili oil. So you know it’s the best version! (Says an avowed lover of spicy.) In my quest for the perfect bowl of niurou mian, I’ve had two major decisions to make: Should all the major seasonings be cooked into the broth OR should some of them be added to the serving bowl instead right before...

Yunnan clay pot mixian

Noodles / Plant / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Shaguo Mixian (砂锅米线) Yunnan Clay Pot Rice Noodles with Pork and Spicy Pickled Greens

The Magic of Mixian In my personal pantheon of noodles, Yunnan mixian ranks up there pretty high. There are two main reasons for this: rice noodles and pickles. Since my discovery of pho a couple decades ago, I’ve preferred my soups with rice noodles vs wheat, mainly because of their springy texture and lightness. But when you take a soup that does in fact resemble pho (Yunnan borders Vietnam, after all, and food traditions don’t respect borders) and add spicy pickled mustard greens to it, along with fresh greens, a...

Chinese New Year / Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Plant / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) / Vegetarian

Liangfen of Happy Tears (Shangxin Liangfen, 伤心凉粉) From NYC’s Málà Project

Great Sichuan Restaurant Recipes: Tears of Joy or Heartbreak?  A Controversial Jelly Noodle Have you ever been to a Sichuan restaurant and seen a bowl of something that looks like big fat noodles but on closer inspection is actually jiggly strands of jelly? Ranging from translucent to opaque white or yellow, they usually glow with a chili-oil sauce and fresh and crunchy garnishes. When you manage to capture these slippery guys with your chopsticks, they slither down your throat so easily. They are an enigma, at once hot and spicy...

Chengdu zajiang mian

How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Noodles / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Introducing Zajiang Noodles (Zajiangmian, 杂酱面), Chengdu’s Favorite Noodle

Just Don’t Call It Zhajiangmian As we learned in a guest post from Chengdu Food Tours’s Jordan Porter, zajiangmian is one of Chengdu’s most popular noodles. It is a heartier big brother to the diminutive dandan noodles, which is generally served in a small snack size, making the meal-size zajiangmian the more-common and more-loved noodle in modern Chengdu. But first, I want to share my closer-to-home inspiration: the zajiangmian at Mian, a real-deal Sichuan/Chongqing noodle shop in L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley. Opened by Tony Xu, chef-owner of the incomparable Chengdu Taste, it has...

How to Cook With Chinese Spices / Noodles / Pork / Soups & Stews / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Pork Rib Noodle Soup in Sichuan Broth (Paigu Mian)

Chengdu Challenge #26: Paigu Mian, My Favorite Mistake This is one of those recipes that is the result of a beautiful mistake. I was merely attempting to make Sichuan-style stock when I ended up with an entire soup. My daughter has been mostly deprived of one of her favorite foods—homemade soup—because I don’t particularly like or crave soup and just don’t ever think about making it. She grew up in China eating freshly made wonton soup every morning for breakfast at school. I grew up in Oklahoma eating Campbell’s chicken noodle...

Cold Dishes / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / Noodles / Poultry

Jisi Liangmian (鸡丝凉面): Cold Noodles ft. Shredded Chicken

Chengdu Challenge #19: Jisi Liangmian, White Cloud in a Perfect Storm Fongchong’s latest obsession is these 鸡丝凉面 (jīsī liángmiàn), Cold Noodles With Shredded Chicken. It’s a regretfully boring name for something so singularly, aggressively tasty, so you’ll have to take my word for it—you really want to try this. Liangmian with chicken totally deserves a more poetic name, like Ants Climbing a Tree, another beloved Sichuan noodle. Something like, perhaps, White Cloud in a Perfect Storm. Or maybe not. But just don’t let the boring name fool you. Especially since cold...