Dan Dan Noodles Recipe That Will Change Your Life - The Best Sichuan Street Food

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Park's Kitchen. Today we're going to be making Dan Dan noodles. Dan Dan noodles came from the Sichuan province of China and it's quickly becoming one of the most popular noodle dishes throughout the world. So what makes this dish so special? Well, it uses that numbing Sichuan peppercorn, which gives you that weird numbing tingly sensation in your mouth. So it's going to be a pretty fun dish to eat. And also I'm going to be using some of my own homemade chili oil, which I made a couple weeks back. And so we're going to have some fun and let's get to cooking. I'll show you how to make Dan Dan noodles in three simple steps. Step number one, prepare the sauce. Step number two, cook the meat. And step number three, prepare the noodles and other condiments along the way. For the sauce, we need dark soy sauce, Chinese black vinegar, brown sugar, Sichuan peppercorns, and my homemade Sichuan chili oil I made two weeks ago. I put a link below in the description section for the recipe video for the chili oil. Lastly, we need a sesame paste. This is a Chinese sesame sauce, but it's exactly the same thing as tahini. Now we're going to grind a half a teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorn in a mortar. Then we're going to toast these ground peppercorn. The reason why I grind them first is to expose larger surface areas for the peppercorn for toasting. Toast your ground peppercorn in medium heat for about a minute or two. This is going to make your house smell so good by the way. Now put it aside in a small bowl and we're going to come back to this pretty soon. Pour three tablespoons of dark soy sauce on the heated pan and one tablespoon of black vinegar and one tablespoon of brown sugar and we're going to mix this around until the sugar is completely dissolved. Turn the heat down and we're going to come back to this pretty soon as well. Now we're going to need two tablespoons of Chinese sesame paste or tahini. This paste is kind of hard, so do your best. Now pour the soy sauce mixture we just cooked into the mixing bowl and add two tablespoons of Sichuan chili oil. Now throw in the toasted Sichuan peppercorn into the bowl and we're going to whisk it really good. The sesame paste is pretty thick, so just take it slow until the sauce develops a nice creamy consistency. Now step number two, we're going to cook some ground pork Sichuan style. Add two teaspoons of dou ban jiang into the ground pork and two tablespoons of dark soy. Sprinkle some Chinese five spice and we're going to basically marinate the pork in the room temperature for about 10 minutes. Just mix it around and set it aside for now. Finally chop some garlic. I'm using about four cloves of garlic and Sichuan dishes use plenty of garlic and spice, so don't be shy with the garlic. I'm also slicing ginger into small julienne pieces. Garlic and ginger will give such nice aromatics to the pork. I'm chopping some green onion now. This is not for the step number two, but it's the final garnish, but might as well get it done now. Also cutting and preparing bok choy into individual leaves. Now we have a mystery ingredient. This is called sumi yakai, which is a condiment consisting of fermented mustard greens native to the southeast Sichuan province. We're going to add this to the pork when we cook it and it's going to provide a nice crunchy pickly flavors and texture to the pork. If you can't find this, you can use kimchi or just skip it. Also chopping some peanuts here. This is for the final garnish and not for this step of cooking the pork. Now heat up your wok and pour some vegetable oil. First we cook the garlic and ginger with some Shaoxing wine, creating a beautiful aromatic to the dish. Shaoxing wine is a Chinese rice wine and for this purpose, we're going to need two tablespoons. Stir around your garlic and ginger as the wine cooks off in the heat. Now add the marinated pork and cook this in medium heat for about three to four minutes. Mix the pork around to make sure it gets mixed thoroughly with the garlic and ginger. Now towards the end, we add sumiyakai, the fermented mustard green, into the pork. Mix it around and cook it for about additional 30 seconds and the pork is done. And that's the end of the step number two. Step number three, the noodles. Use any medium-sized round wheat noodles thicker than salmon. I'm using fresh ramen noodles because I just couldn't find any round noodles that are thick enough. Before we cook the noodles, cook the bok choy and set it aside. This will be another final condiment that we're going to need when we assemble the noodles at the end. Now cook the noodles. You might be using different noodles from mine, so follow the instruction of your own noodles. When in doubt, use fresh ramen noodles because I like how the sodium carbonate in ramen noodles give you that body and bouncy texture. Now it's time for assembly. Pour a good amount of that sauce we made from step number one. I'm using about four tablespoons for half a pound of noodle. Now place your cooked noodles on top, nice and easy. I'm adding some ramen water here to make it easy to mix the noodles around. But did you know that Dandan noodles originally comes with more soup before it became a drier street food version? It's a fun fact, right? Now add the cooked pork. Well this almost feels like assembling a bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce, doesn't it? And now add your cooked bok choy. Gotta have some veggies, right? Sprinkle your crushed peanuts. And the final touch, the green onion. And you're done. I mean like, you're really done with Dandan noodles. If you enjoyed today's video, please hit that like button below. And if you're new to our channel, please subscribe for more delicious recipes. Thanks for watching.