Category: How to Cook With Tianmianjiang

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Dried Chilies / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Plant / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Cured Pork Belly Stir-fry (Chao Larou, 炒腊肉)

Once-Cooked Pork, Revisited This pork belly stir-fry pays homage to an old series on the blog, Cooking with Pixian Doubanjiang. Longtime readers may notice the similarity to “once-cooked pork” in Sichuan bean sauces. While that used bacon as a stand-in for Chinese cured pork belly (腊肉, làròu), this features the real deal—if you missed it, big news! Kathy has been teaching readers how to make their own Sichuan wind-cured pork belly. Last month, we presented seven ways to smoke, boil, steam and stir-fry the finished product. Now, we’re bringing you the eighth way....

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork

Sichuan Spareribs With Mala BBQ Sauce (Mala Paigu): Cooking With Grace Young

Happy Year of the Pig! I can’t help myself each year from trying to match a recipe with the Chinese New Year animal. Some years are a stretch—dragon, monkey—but pig, the meat supreme of China, has to be the easiest. Chinese spareribs are a pork dish I’ve never tackled, so I went whole hog, calling on Chinese food authority Grace Young for some guidance on Chinese BBQ and making oven-roasted Sichuan spareribs two distinct ways. We have Grace to thank for this wet-rub rib based on Cantonese barbecue spareribs. She...

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 Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / North (Shanxi, Beijing) / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible

Eddie Huang and Tianmianjiang Pork (Jing Jiang Rousi, 京酱肉丝)

On Immigrants and Chinese Food: ‘No Coupons’ The National Immigrant Integration Conference came to Nashville this past weekend, and one of my favorite immigrant writers showed up to give the opening talk. The one and only Eddie Huang—Taiwanese-Chinese American chef, author and provocateur  of Fresh Off the Boat and Huang’s World fame—was in fine form (and even wore a suit!), giving a speech he wrote called “No Coupons.” I dragged my little Chinese immigrant along with me, hoping she would take to heart what he had to say.  He talked about...

How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Stir-Fried Bacon in Sichuan Bean Sauces (Chao Larou, 炒腊肉)

Chengdu Challenge #20: Once-Cooked Pork Stir-fried bacon in Sichuan bean sauces is a cousin to 回锅肉 (huíguōròu), or twice-cooked pork, and in many ways, the more appealing cousin, because A) you only have to cook it once; and B) it’s bacon! It may be the less popular cousin in Sichuan, but it’s definitely a Sichuan native, and I’ve had it there several times, made with the highly smoked, supremely rich local bacon (larou). For authentic twice-cooked pork, you have to boil a pork belly, chill it, slice it and stir-fry it. For...

Twice-cooked pork (hui guo rou)

Chinese New Year / How to Cook With Doubanjiang / How to Cook With Douchi / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Pork / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Chengdu Huiguorou, Twice-Cooked Pork (回锅肉)

Chengdu Challenge #8:  Pork Belly, The Secret to a Long Life Though 回锅肉 (huíguōròu) is actually quite easy to make, it challenged me more than any other dish so far. I had to test it so many times that “twice-cooked pork” became dozen-times-cooked pork before I got it right. But just as I did, I was rewarded with this news story about Sichuan’s oldest living resident, a 117-year-old woman who attributes her longevity to three meals a day of huiguorou. Pork belly and Pixian doubanjiang is really all it takes to make...

Dan dan mian

How to Cook With Chinese Black Vinegar / How to Cook With Sesame / How to Cook With Soy Sauce / How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / How to Cook With Yacai / Noodles / Restaurant Classics / Sichuan Pantry Compatible / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sichuan Dandanmian ft. Yacai (Dandan Noodles, 担担面)

Chengdu Challenge #1: First Love Dandanmian was the first real Sichuan dish I ever had, when Grand Sichuan International, the first real Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan in decades, opened close to my home in Chelsea in the mid-’90s. I’ll never forget the moment when they sat it on the table. It looked like a plain bowl of boiled noodles with some ground pork on the top, but then I realized I needed to stir it up myself and began to turn the noodles and crispy pork  over in the pool of...

How to Cook With Tianmianjiang / Southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan)

Sourcing Tianmianjiang (Sweet Wheat Paste, 甜面酱)

Tianmianjiang, or the Glory of Sichuan’s Fermented Sauces This unassuming little ingredient is way more powerful than it lets on. Called sweet wheat paste or sweet soybean paste, 甜面酱 (tiánmiànjiàng) is yet another member of the family of fantastically tasty and useful Asian bean sauces. Don’t even get me started on the glory of fermented bean pastes… other than to say my pantry and fridge include four kinds of Chinese bean sauces (sweet bean, chili bean, yellow bean and hoisin) as well as two kinds of Korean and two kinds of...