This Borderland Soup Tastes Like Pho With Chinese Characteristics

Travel out toward the borders of Yunnan, and the food you’ll find starts to feel decidedly non-Chinese. In the north, where the province sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, much of what you’ll eat is essentially Tibetan cuisine, from the momos and yak hotpots in tourist restaurants to the fried meats and flatbreads made in family homes. Out west, you’ll find Burmese-style chickpea curd (often referred to as Shan tofu when made in the U.S.) and twists on the idea of tea-leaf salad. And down south, if you know where to look, you might just find a beef and rice noodle soup (niúròu mǐxiàn, 牛肉米线) that tastes decidedly like the pho served just a few miles away in northern Vietnam.

I first encountered this soup in the small town of Ming Jiu Zhen, a Miao minority enclave in the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, about an hour outside the city of Mengzi. Ironically, I was actually in the area specifically to learn about a different rice noodle soup: crossing the bridge rice noodles (guò qiáo mǐxiàn, 过桥米线). This dish, perhaps Yunnan’s most famous, originated in the city of Mengzi, and like many of the area’s tourists, I had driven down from Kunming (or, rather, had hired a car and driver) specifically to learn more about this classic and taste it in its hometown. (Spoiler: It’s a lot better in Mengzi than anywhere else!) 

But even with a mission as enticing as eating a lot of crossing the bridge rice noodles, there’s really only so much time you can spend hopping from one noodle shop to the next. So, when we weren’t eating, my husband and young daughter and I (and our lovely driver, Mr. Wu) explored the area’s other sights, including the restored remains of the French train station opened in 1909, when there was lots of cross-border trade from this part of Yunnan down into Vietnam, and as many local temples and other sights as we could cram into our schedule. 

On this day, we had traveled to Ming Jiu Zhen to see the Guanyin Cave Temple, a small but beautiful (and very quiet!) complex of temples built into the mountainside during the Qing Dynasty. After exploring for a bit, we walked into the barely noticeable town center and stopped at the only restaurant we saw, an empty noodle spot called Tuanshan Guolian Beef Noodles. After many meals of guo qiao mixian, I was curious to see what the area’s other noodle traditions brought to the table. What I was not expecting when I took my first sip was a bowl that tasted so much like Vietnamese pho. 

While Yunnan, as a whole, has its fair share of beef-based noodle soups, ranging from Tibetan hand-pulled noodles to Hui brisket-laden bowls, none of the others I’d tried had the kind of subtle, aromatic flavors I found in this bowl. The broth was rich but light and subtly redolent of spices. While it didn’t offer exactly the same flavors as the pho broths I’d had in Hanoi and Saigon, it came very close. The rice noodles, though the round kind favored in Yunnan, had the tender chew of a flat rice “stick.” In addition to slices of cooked beef, the soup also featured thin slices of beef that had been added raw and were gently poaching in the still-hot liquid—a method common in pho but uncommon in Yunnan’s noodle soups (with the notable exception of crossing the bridge noodles). In fact, it wasn’t until I started adding some of the optional toppings arrayed on the counter—branches of fresh mint, clumps of blanched garlic chives, chili oil, Sichuan pepper powder, fermented pickles and more—that the soup started to feel like it belonged in Yunnan at all.

When we’d finished our lunch, I approached the owner/cook, Wan Yan Po, to ask what was in the broth, and, sure enough, she showed me a handful of spices that were very similar to flavorings I’d seen in pho broths. There was star anise, which I don’t usually see in Yunnan broths, and two big white cardamom pods, a spice that is far more common in Vietnam and Thailand than in China. There were also a bunch of fennel seeds, another ingredient I don’t usually see in the area. The one really Yunnan-specific ingredient in the mix was black cardamom, which lends its smokey, piney flavors to soups all across the province.

Looking at the pot of fragrant broth in the restaurant’s tiny kitchen, I was reminded (as I often am in Yunnan) of how strange borders can feel from a non-governmental perspective. The Miao community that made up much of this town’s population was ethnically the same as the Hmong communities on the other side of the Sino-Viet border (though they likely had divided into different cultural sub-groups). Their natural environments were essentially the same as well (tree, plant and insect species don’t stop at borders) as were the available foodstuffs—though the governments of China and Vietnam had likely supplied the populations with differing food staples in times of hardship (or to foster a shared national identity). In fact, the local populations probably have plenty of informal ways to cross the border to visit friends and relatives on the other side. So, it was natural that many of the two areas’ classic dishes would be the same. The real question was not why a soup in Yunnan tasted so much like pho but why I hadn’t expected it to.

Spices in Yunnan Beef Noodle Soup Broth

This soup’s beef broth is both very rich—full of protein and thick with collagen and marrow—and also very light, as are all beef broths that don’t start with searing the meat or adding lots of vegetables (both of which produce the Maillard reactions that give foods savory flavors). Most of the nuance in this broth’s flavor actually comes from its aroma. And a lot of the nuance of this aroma comes from the spices that are cooked in the broth for hours and hours.

One of the most prominent flavors in the broth is the smokey pine-like note that comes from black cardamom. This isn’t an ingredient you’re likely to see in a pho broth (though if you look in Vietnamese towns near the border with China, I imagine you might find it!) but it’s standard in almost all broths in Yunnan. A more subtle addition to the flavor comes from white cardamom, a cousin of the black variety (and the green variety often used in the West). In China, white cardamom is usually used for medicinal purposes, but in Vietnam, Thailand, and other parts of Southeast Asia you’ll find it in broths and stews. (It’s sometimes even sold as “Thai cardamom.”) 

This soup also features star anise, a classic ingredient in Vietnamese pho. While star anise is also popular in Chinese cooking, I’m used to seeing it in braises in other parts of China. It’s an ingredient you won’t often see in Yunnan’s soups, and its presence in this broth is one of the things that really gives the finished product a pho-like feeling. Lastly, Wan Yan Po adds a big pinch of fennel seeds to her broth. Their flavor is very mild, but they add a subtle note to the medley of aromas in the finished soup.

Prepping the Meat for Yunnan Beef Noodle Soup

Like a classic pho bo, this soup includes two different kinds of beef: the stewed meat from the broth and raw beef added to the soup at the last minute, so that it cooks in the hot liquid. In this case, the stewed beef is shank (the same thing you’d use in an Italian osso bucco, which is how the cut is often labeled in the US), rather than the brisket advertised in pho shops. If you cook your broth for only 4 hours (the minimum time I recommend to get good flavor), you can slice this meat after you strain it from the soup. But if you cook your broth for longer—I like a total of 8 hours, for maximum flavor—the meat will start to fall apart in the pot and you can just pull chunks out to add to the finished soup.

For the raw beef, you’ll want something pretty tender. I like sirloin tip, because it’s less expensive than similar cuts, and since I’ll be slicing it up anyway I can cut around any remaining sinew. You’ll want to slice the meat as thin as possible, so that it cooks quickly. If you want your meat cooked all the way through (the preference in China), let it come up to room temperature before serving it. If you like your beef a bit on the medium side (as many Americans do), you can add it to the soup while it’s still a little bit cold in the center.

Tricks for Cooking Rice Noodles

There are lots of schools of thought about how to best prepare dried rice noodles. For Thai- and Vietnamese-style rice noodles, for instance, many cooks prefer to soak them in hot water, rather than boiling them. Their argument is that the noodles should only be par-cooked because they’ll finish up in the hot soup (or pan, if you’re stir-frying).

Dried mixian, however, are firmer than these other rice noodles. Soaking them won’t rehydrate and soften them nearly enough to make them edible (whether you plan to put them into hot soup or not). They need to be boiled to be edible, and they actually cook for a fairly long time.

When preparing these noodles, I always follow a method I learned from our former contributor Michelle Zhao: First, boil the noodles until they’re nearly finished but still have a little bite in the center—if you pull a noodle, it should stretch rather than break. Second, take them off the heat but let them keep soaking in the hot water, so that they finish cooking gently without turning to mush. This gives you a tender, bouncy texture similar to what you’d get if you had fresh rice noodles. For The Mala Market’s rice noodles, boiling them for about 12 minutes, then resting them for 5-7 minutes works well in my kitchen (I check their progress a couple minutes ahead of schedule to be safe). As Michelle notes in her recipe for Yunnan Cold Rice Noodles (liang mixian, 凉米线) you can prepare them a day ahead of time, rinse them under cold water and refrigerate them overnight. 

Toppings for Yunnan Beef Noodle Soup

The toppings in this soup are what really make it taste like Yunnan. In fact, Wan Yan Po’s topping options included pretty much every classic Yunnan soup topping I’d ever seen. I don’t use quite this many things when I’m making the soup (I don’t always have them all on hand), but you can include a combination of any of the following items:

• Fresh mint—This is a classic soup topping in shops in southern Yunnan and it adds great, fresh flavor to everything you put it in.
• Blanched garlic chives—Garlic chives are a very common ingredient in central Yunnan; to use them here, blanch them in hot water until just tender (to moderate their strong flavor), then cool them in a bowl of cold water, squeeze them out and cut them into 1″–2” pieces.
• Scallions—Thinly slice both the white and green parts.
• Minced ginger—Peel the root before mincing.
• Minced garlic in water—Covering minced garlic in an inch of two of water, and letting it sit and melt for a while, mellows the allium’s bite and also flavors the water itself.
• Ground Sichuan pepper—I make mine the way I was taught in Yunnan, but toasting peppercorns lightly in a pan and then grinding them in an electric spice grinder; the fresher the powder, the better.
• Dried chili oil—I make my own Yunnan-style oil by cooking equal parts ground chili and neutral oil in a small pot with a pinch of ground Sichuan pepper until the chili flakes are sizzling, then pour the mixture into a heat-proof container. Pre-made chili oils will also work well here.
• Dried chili—I wouldn’t use this and chilies in oil together, but Wan Yan Po had a big container of ground chili on the table; use whichever one will give you a flavor you like.
• Pickled greens—Yunnan suancai is a classic addition (I always have some in the back of my fridge), but a similar pickled green like zhacai would also be fun here.
• Pickled chilies—Minced lacto-fermented chilies (just a mix of salt and chopped chili pepper) is a common soup topping.
• Soy sauce—Because this broth is very light, a touch of light soy sauce will help round out the flavors.
• Vinegar—Zhenjiang vinegar (or similar Yunnan styles of vinegar) are popular additions to noodle soups all across the province.

For more recipes featuring Yunnan’s delicious, bouncy rice noodles, check out my Shaguo Mixian (砂锅米线) Yunnan Clay Pot Rice Noodles (which Taylor featured a few years ago) and Michelle’s Yunnan Liang Mixian (Cold Rice Noodles, 凉米线).