Shaguo Mixian (砂锅米线) Yunnan Clay Pot Rice Noodles with Pork and Spicy Pickled Greens
Published Dec 06, 2018, Updated Mar 17, 2024
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 touch of meat and a lot of chili oil? Then you have magic.
With the publication of Georgia Freedman’s Cooking South of the Clouds: Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province, the first thorough, English-language cookbook dedicated to Yunnan cuisine, it’s now possible to make classic mixian and the pickled mustard greens (suancai) that top it as well as dozens of other dishes from the most biologically and culturally diverse region in China. It’s a thrill to be able to make it at home, since Yunnan is 8,000 miles away and Yunnan restaurants are few and far between in the U.S.
(In my previous blog post, I interviewed Georgia about Yunnan food and her cookbook and included a recipe for her naturally fermented mustard greens. Go there first for a tutorial on the province’s amazingly diverse food and to get your pickles started for this soup.)
There may not be many Yunnan restaurants in America, but their ranks are growing. One of my favorite restaurants of any kind is Little Tong Noodle Shop in New York’s East Village. The chef-owner, Simone Tong, has several different versions of mixian on her menu that are reflective of her travels in Yunnan as well as her high-end culinary training, including a stint at WD-50 with Wylie Dufresne.
“Mixian” means simply rice noodles, and mixian can range from the classic version with minced pork and suancai to soups with different toppings to dry noodle dishes. Chef Simone’s Grandma Chicken Mixian, for example, includes chicken confit, a tea egg and edible flowers. The Sichuan-born chef also does a mashup of Sichuan and Yunnan she calls Mala Dan Dan Mixian: ground pork, yacai, pickled celery and mustard seeds, green Sichuan pepper oil and spicy peanuts. It’s to die for.
I once had another transcendent mixian experience in Chongqing. The version I ordered at a mixian shop there featured braised beef, tofu skin, soybean sprouts, seaweed strips and not only suancai but zhacai, the pickle native to Chongqing. Zhacai was both in the soup and on the table, in case you wanted to add more. The mixian came to the table bubbling away in a hot pot, and while I ate it the waitress made chili oil in the back of the dining room just a few feet away, pounding mounds of just-fried chilies in a giant mortar and pestle. Top 5 Food Experience for sure.
Back in November I went to New York for Georgia’s book talk at the Museum of Chinese in America, where I was thrilled to meet both Chef Simone and Kian Lam Kho, the author of Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees and an authority on Chinese cooking techniques (see my take on his red-cooked pork belly here). Kian moderated a panel in which Georgia showed photos of Yunnan by her photographer husband, Josh Wand, and the three discussed what makes Yunnan food distinctly different from other Chinese cuisines: foraged mushrooms, cheese, glutinous rice cakes, fresh herbs, grilled meats.
The recipe I made from Georgia’s book is the classic Kunming-style mixian, with suancai and just a smattering of minced pork. However it is cooked and served in an individual clay pot so is called shaguo mixian. You should make it that way if you have individual sand pots (like this) or other clay pots (such as a Korean dolsot), as the pot keeps the soup steaming hot as you eat it. (I got my one-handled glazed pot at a Thai grocery.) But you can also make it in a sauce pan and transfer to a heated serving bowl. Either way, Georgia suggests cooking one serving at a time. Aside from that, this mixian has the wonderful perk of being quick and easy if you’ve got broth, pickles and chili oil on hand, which I strive to do at all times.
One necessity that may be harder to keep on hand is the right kind of noodles. Georgia says this soup can be ordered everywhere in Kunming with different size rice noodles and even wheat noodles. But the most common is a spaghetti-size, round rice noodle. As Simone discusses in this article, the noodles were what stumped her in recreating mixian true to form. Fresh mixian are just not available here, so she uses imported dried mixian. That’s what I use too. [As of January 2022, The Mala Market imports a dried rice noodle direct from Yunnan that is the ideal shape and weight for this recipe.]
The better the broth, the better the soup, of course, and Yunnan cooks make theirs from pork, ginger and caoguo, or Chinese black cardamom, to lend a smokey-camphor taste. (Georgia suggests making pork broth with meaty ribs; Kian with pork shoulder bones; and Fuchsia Dunlop with a mix of pork bones and chicken wings.) Any kind of long-cooked bone broth would be good, however, so use your favorite broth recipe, just make sure to throw in two or three caoguo. Also be sure to serve your mixian with black vinegar and extra chili oil at table.
After you’ve mastered this recipe, Georgia also has one for zajiang mixian breakfast noodles eaten along the Burmese border that includes flavor bombs like two kinds of doubanjiang, Sichuan pepper powder, cilantro and celery leaves, pickled chilies, and sesame seeds in oil. Oh, yeah. You need to get her cookbook for that one!
For more Yunnan noodles recipes, see our posts by contributor Michelle Zhao for her hometown flavors: a cold version of these mixian noodles, Yunnan Liang Mixian (Cold Rice Noodles, 凉米线); another type of hot rice noodle, Yunnan Small Pot Rice Noodles (Xiaoguo Mixian, 小锅米线); and Kunming Sour and Spicy Noodles (Suanlamian, 酸辣面)!
Shaguo Mixian (砂锅米线) Yunnan Clay Pot Rice Noodles with Pork and Spicy Pickled Greens
Ingredients
Ingredients per individual serving
- 3 ounces ground pork
- 2 cups pork broth
- ½ cup napa cabbage, thinly sliced
- 5 tablespoons Yunnan-style pickled mustard greens (suancai)
- fresh or dried round, medium-weight rice noodles (mixian)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 garlic chives (or scallions) cut in ½-inch pieces
- chili oil for serving
- Zhenjiang black vinegar for serving
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to boil. Place the pork in a fine-mesh metal strainer and lower into the pot, holding the meat under the water a few seconds until just cooked through. Remove and hold.
- If using dried rice noodles, add them to the pot of boiling water and cook until almost done. Remove to a colander and rinse with cold tap water.
- Add pork broth to a sand pot or other clay pot, or to a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Add the pork, napa cabbage and 3 tablespoons of the pickled mustard greens. Return to a boil and cook until the cabbage is softened, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cooked noodles or fresh noodles to the pot and boil briefly until done. Stir in salt and garnish with garlic chives (or scallions) and remaining 2 tablespoons pickled mustard greens and cook briefly.
- If using a saucepan, transfer soup to a warmed serving bowl. If using a clay pot, serve the soup in it— carefully, as it will be very hot! Serve with chili oil and vinegar.
Notes
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