This Fujianese Dish Is a Staple Across the Chinese Diaspora

Once upon a summer in college, I spent a dreamy couple of months at a friend’s family home in Xiamen, Fujian, where I fell in love with one of the dishes they cooked and ate almost every day: stir-fried rice vermicelli (chǎo mǐfěn, 炒米粉).

Made with delicate strands of sun-dried rice noodles, the dish arrived at the table laden with slivers of pork, earthy mushrooms and crisp seasonal vegetables. It was almost always the main carb of the evening, a hearty base for a convivial, family-style spread of dishes like steamed shrimp, stir-fried cabbage, tea eggs and oyster omelettes. Unlike the drier, more restrained versions I grew up with in Taiwan, this Xiamen rendition was bolder—glossy with two different types of soy sauce and heady with aromatics. 

I’m not the only one to have fallen for this dish. It is so popular that it has spread outside of mainland China, particularly through the Hokkien diaspora, and is now often found in places like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. A staple that originated right where I first had it, in the eastern Chinese province of Fujian, this rice noodle is thought to date back to the 4th and 5th centuries, when northern Han Chinese migrants brought their noodle-making traditions down south and adapted them to the region’s abundant harvest of rice. Today, it is common all throughout the Chinese-speaking world, though specific regional differences are hard to pinpoint since most modifications are based on personal preferences.

I cannot in good conscience call the version that I make at home (and share here) a Fujianese-style dish; I did not collect a large enough sample size from different restaurants or home cooks to declare that. It is merely my attempt at recreating what I ate many summers ago at my friend’s home by the sea. I remember it being substantial and hefty, more savory than sweet and really generous with all the meat and vegetables. 

From the generous portion of noodles to the abundant toppings and rich sauce, nothing about this dish holds back.

Perfectly Al Dente Rice Noodles

Traditionally, this dish is made with sun-dried noodles crafted from pure rice, a rarity outside of its place of origin due to its short shelf life. Today, most globally available rice noodle brands have starch added inside, which gives them a subtle firmness while also improving their durability for transport.

There are a lot of differing opinions on how best to reconstitute thin rice noodles. Some, like my mother, insist on soaking the noodles in water for a couple of hours before cooking them. Others toss them straight into the wok with a splash of chicken broth to coax them into tenderness. The first method tends to make the noodles brittle, leading to excessive breakage, while the second results in unevenly cooked strands, with some still unpleasantly raw.

I’ve found that the best technique is to quickly blanch the noodles in boiling water for no more than a minute before adding them into the wok with all the aromatics. This brief but necessary step makes the noodles tender enough to soak up the sauce but leaves them firm enough to withstand the vigorous tossing in the wok. You’ll know you’ve nailed it when the noodles lift out in long, unbroken strands.

Pro-Tip: Pre-Cook the Pork Before Adding It to the Noodles

Traditionalists will usually just make this dish in one go. They’ll add in the aromatics, toss in raw marinated pork, add the noodles, add sauce and call it a day. While efficient, this method often results in stringy, overcooked pork and a marinade that bleeds into the other ingredients rather than sticking to the meat. 

I prefer to partially cook the marinated pork ahead of time by giving it a quick, high-heat sear in a wok. This locks in all the meat juices. Then, I return the meat to the stir-fry toward the end of the cooking process, where it finishes cooking with the rest of the ingredients. This ensures that the pork remains tender and the marinade stays on.

Nailing the Aromatics in Stir-Fried Rice Vermicelli

Much like the flavors of mapo tofu come from a base of peppercorns, doubanjiang and douchi, this dish has a foundation of carefully layered aromatics that set the stage for depth and richness. Here, dried shiitake mushrooms and tiny dried shrimp create earthy and briny notes that imbue everything else in the dish with lots of flavor. A fixture in the province of Fujian, the dried shrimp used here bring a punchy salinity—assertive at first but mellowed in cooking, much like a well-aged fish sauce or pure oyster sauce, which coastal Fujian is also known for. For some, it is an acquired taste. For others, this dish would be nothing without it. 

This dish uses the dried version of each of these ingredients, because the drying process amplifies their flavor, deepening the mushrooms’ umami richness and sharpening the shrimp’s oceanic intensity. Even after rehydration, they hold onto that concentrated depth, and it is gradually released into the noodles as everything is cooked.

After the aromatics are stir-fried in oil, you can add whatever vegetables you’d like to include in your noodles. I prefer a generous mix of julienned carrots and Taiwanese-style cabbage (the variety is more delicate than similar species, like savoy cabbage, and wilts swiftly in the wok). High-quality dried wood ear mushroom (rehydrated with the shiitakes) add a pleasant crunch. 

Make sure to toss the vegetables thoroughly when you add them so that they’re completely coated with the aromatic oil.

Adjusting the Sauce

The biggest difference between the plates of rice noodles I had in Xiamen as a child and the versions I’m used to finding in restaurants in Taiwan, where I live, is that the former was much saucier. It could have just been that my hosts were heavy-handed with the seasoning, but renditions that I’m used to in Taiwan are considerably milder across the board. 

I find that I prefer the version I first fell in love with, so the sauce in my recipe is intentionally bold, combining light soy sauce for flavor, dark soy sauce for color and a splash of Zhenjiang black vinegar for acidity. A few extra tablespoons of low-sodium chicken broth give it a well-balanced finish. You don’t have to take my word for it: Mix the sauce up before you cook anything, taste and adjust to your personal preferences.

Once you have a sauce with a flavor you like, and you’ve built a base of aromatics and vegetables in the wok, you pour the sauce right into the wok and immediately plop the blanched noodles on top, stirring constantly until the noodles shift from a pearly, incandescent off-white to a light brown. That’s when you know the flavor of the sauce has completely permeated through. 

For more delicious noodle dishes, check out Kathy’s Ants Climbing a Tree (Mayi Shangshu, 蚂蚁上树) and Wuhan Reganmian Hot Dry Noodles (热干面), Michelle’s Yunnan Liang Mixian (Cold Rice Noodles, 凉米线) and Taylor’s Yibin Ranmian, 燃面 (Burning Noodles From Yibin, Sichuan).