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 to be totally underwhelming. Disappointed, we stepped out the door and into the street and, mid-complaint, I noticed it: a Yibin Ranmian joint right across the street. I had heard of these famous “burning noodles” for some time but had never eaten them, so I insisted we go in and try them, despite being totally full. My reluctant family turned out to be glad they acquiesced, because these noodles saved the evening, their nutty, savory, fast-food glory providing the thrill that I had expected from the restaurant in a totally unexpected place.

Then and every time since then that I’ve had Yibin ranmian—always in Chengdu, because, unfortunately, I still have never been to Yibin, the city south of Chengdu where these noodles originate—I vowed to recreate them. But then when it came down to it, I rarely even tried, because I knew I had not cracked the code.

Two of the three things that make this noodle dish unique are fairly obvious, displayed as they are in piles on top of the noodles when they are served: Yibin’s famous preserved mustard-stem pickle, yacai, and crushed, toasted nuts. It was the third crucial element—the intriguing sauce that envelopes them—that was the elusive part of the recipe. Despite the name, the sauce was not particularly hot, nor was it numbing or sweet or sour. So what was it that made it so alluring?

Recipes available at the time, in either books or online, were of no help. I could tell that the one recipe I could find for these noodles online would not produce anything special, and even Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe in the authoritative Land of Plenty seemed to be lacking. Plus, the recipe didn’t appear at all in my Sichuan cooking bible, published in Chengdu in 2010.

It wasn’t until quite recently that I found recipes that looked like they would produce what I had eaten in Sichuan, with Fuchsia’s update of the dish in The Food of Sichuan and, in video form, on the YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified. If you don’t know it, CCD is without doubt the best Chinese-cooking video series in English if you like a helping of science and history with your authentic recipes. (And by authentic I mean made in such a way that they would be recognizable to a person in their region of China, not that there is only one authentic recipe for any given dish.)

The History of Yibin Burning Noodles

Yibin’s famous noodles are “dry” noodles, vs. soup noodles, and CCD’s video about burning noodles jumps right in with an exploration of southwestern China’s dry noodles, pointing out that most of them—from Yibin ranmian to Chongqing xiaomian to Wanzhou zajiangmian to Wuhan reganmian—originated along the Yangtze River. Hmmm. What was it that made these river folk prefer dry noodles over soup noodles? The video points to the totally sensible theory that soup noodles were not ideal for the working men eating on river boats.

Chengdu’s dry dandan noodles are conspicuously absent from this theory, but in Chengdu dandanmian is more of a snack anyway and Chengdu cooks have adopted zajiang noodles—distinguished by a minced pork topping—as their most common dry noodle. Whatever the reason that this region excels in noodles swathed in sauce vs. swimming in broth, I am happy to finally know the links between all my personal favorite noodles. (Though we like the same flavors, I always order my noodles dry and Fongchong always goes for soup.)

The creators behind Chinese Cooking Demystified are Stephanie Li and Chris Thomas, a couple—Steph from Guangzhou and Chris from the U.S.—who live in Shunde, outside Guangzhou. Shortly before the COVID-19 outbreak, they were in Yibin, tracking down this recipe among others, and have added it to their now-extensive video series that ranges the country. If you hadn’t heard of them before, you may have recently discovered them via NPR or The New Yorker, both of which reported on Steph and Chris’s posts on cooking through the lockdown, as they have been making the culinary best of being confined to their apartment much longer than we in the West have.

I have been in touch with them for a few months, since we came together over our mutual love of Sichuan’s erjingtiao chilies and caiziyou, two ingredients that are very hard to find outside of Sichuan but which they frequently use in their videos and we import for The Mala Market. We decided to collaborate on introducing and promoting caiziyou in the U.S.

Key Ingredients for Yibin Ranmian

Literally, caiziyou means vegetable oil, but in Sichuan that means roasted rapeseed oil, derived from the seeds of the yellow-flowering, ultra delicious youcai, or yuchoy, plant. Its unfortunate English name makes it a tough sell, but we don’t care! While Canada stripped the oil of its color and flavor and called it Canola, Sichuan continued to roast the seeds before pressing to make caiziyou even more dark and flavorful. It is THE missing taste of (almost) all Sichuan food in the U.S., so take our word for it, it’s great.

Please watch this excellent explainer video about caiziyou that Chris and Steph made for our collaboration. They were so effective that we quickly sold out of our test run of imported bottles. However, we have already reordered. In the meantime, make this recipe with flavorful Chinese peanut oil if you can and await the real deal. Roasted rapeseed oil is only one of the key ingredients of Yibin ranmian’s alluring sauce. The other two turn out to be lard and walnuts. Yes, that’s right. Lard and walnuts.

The sauce is mainly a highly fragrant chili oil (xiangyou) made from roasted rapeseed oil, lard, spices and walnuts. Steph and Chris make theirs by grinding whole dried erjingtiao and facing heaven chilies and adding one whole, shell-on walnut to steep with the spices in the oil. I use our Mala Market Fragrant Hot Ground Chilies, a mix of erjingtiao, facing heaven and xiaomila chilies toasted and ground in Chengdu, and follow Fuchsia’s lead by adding chopped walnuts to the simmering spices. The walnuts add a distinct flavor to the oil.

The traditional nuts piled on top seem to be some combination of walnut, peanut and sesame seed. I had no peanuts, so used cashews to dreamy effect. Whatever nuts you choose, I would recommend adding walnuts. I don’t even like walnuts, but in this case they totally work.

Though I’ve always had Yibin ranmian served with a small pile of flavored minced pork amid the other toppings, you absolutely don’t need it. The combination of the creamy, spiced chili oil, the Yibin suimiyacai and the nuts makes for a complete experience in both texture and taste. And if you replace the lard with additional peanut oil or neutral oil then it also makes a unique vegetarian noodle. Chris says that the yacai is generally rinsed and cooked before using, but that he doesn’t bother to cook it as they like the taste as is. We agree, and in fact we don’t even bother to rinse it, as we do not find it too salty. You should taste it first and decide for yourself.

As for lard, make sure you use a good one. I buy ours from a local farm that renders it from the fat of their Mangalitsa pigs. While CCD calls for half caiziyou, half lard, I cut the proportion of lard down a bit. I made a few other tweaks to their recipe as well—just as I expect you to make tweaks to mine.

And as for the noodles, Steph and Chris made their own alkaline wheat noodles in the video. Fortunately for you and me, The Mala Market imports a dried alkaline noodle that is ideal for ranmian (and dandanmian). Unlike most dried Chinese wheat noodles, these have added alkaline for springiness and chewiness and hold up better to sauce and broth.

So, if you too are in the dry-noodle camp, you’ve got to try Yibin burning noodles. And, oh yeah, “burning” doesn’t mean they are burning hot, it just means they are dry enough that they could be lit on fire. But, as Chris says, don’t waste good noodles testing that.

After you make these, do check out the other videos on Chinese Cooking Demystified. Once you see how inspiring and helpful they are I hope you’ll support Steph and Chris with a small donation each month on Patreon so that they can continue to produce this great work. As a patron, you will get both insider access to additional recipes and personal feedback as well as an ongoing 10 percent discount on ingredients at The Mala Market so you can make their (and our) recipes the way they’re meant to be made.

Despite the lockdown, it’s a great time to be alive, as we can still access hyper-regional dishes like Yibin ranmian from our homes via video and its ingredients through e-commerce. Let’s remember to be grateful for what we do have.

Don’t miss China’s other favorite dry noodle, also using these bouncy alkaline noodles, Wuhan Reganmian Hot Dry Noodles (热干面) ft. Dried Jianshui Alkaline Noodles. Or, if you prefer a dry stir-fried noodle, check out our new wide rice noodles that make an excellent Cantonese Steak Chow Fun (Ft. Dried Ho Fun Noodles)!