Dan Dan Noodles

I'm so excited to share my Dan Dan Noodle recipe with you today! This particular recipe features my handmade noodles recipe, but you can always use a dried or fresh noodle from the Asian market. Dan Dan noodles is a soupless, spicy, tangy Sichuan noodle dish with a nut-based sauce, usually either peanut or sesame. It is a popular street food, and is enjoyed with ground pork and veggies.

You can easily substitute the meat with a protein of your choosing too. For my recipe, I use ground pork mixed with sweet preserved Chinese radish, Chinese broccoli and some Korean kimchi. ​The radish is optional, but the sweetness, slight tang and crispness of the preserved radishes add a great variety of texture to the dish and complements the pork nicely. I absolutely love this sauce--the nuttiness of the peanut and sesame paste mixed with savory soy sauce, the slight acidity from black vinegar and the a heat kick from the chili flakes, chili oil and my favorite, the prickly ash oil--all mixed together, coats the noodles in a blanket of exciting flavors that dance in your mouth. Prickly ash oil is made from hua jiao pepper, a Sichuan peppercorn that mala Chinese dishes attribute their "numbing" qualities from. 

I found this dish stay at home friendly because the sauce can be made from pantry items that you can stock up on and use for any Chinese/Asian dish, and the handmade noodles only involve 3 ingredients: flour, water and salt. Even if you don't have the specific veggie and ground pork, you can always pair the noodles with whatever you have on hand. Quarantine cooking really is like an episode of Chopped in the kitchen, make something out of what you got chefs!

To learn how to make the handmade noodles, visit my handmade noodle post here.

After mixing the sauce, I place a dollop of it in the bottom of my serving bowl, add noodles and then add the toppings. Lastly, I garnish with sesame seeds and drizzle more chili oil and prickly ash oil on top! Honestly, it doesn't matter how you layer your ingredients, since you'll be mixing it all up to eat anyhow. To each their own!

INGREDIENTS:
​
Toppings

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lite soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine or rice wine
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• Chinese sweet preserved radish, minced (optional)

Other toppings

• Chinese broccoli or bok choy
• Kimchi (optional)

Dan dan noodle sauce

• 2 tbsp peanut butter or 2 tbsp sesame paste
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1.5 tbsp lite soy sauce
• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine or rice wine
• 1 tbsp black vinegar, rice vinegar or white vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/4-1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tbsp spicy Chinese chili bean paste or just Chinese bean paste if you don't do spicy.
• 1 tbsp crushed red pepper
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp prickly ash oil
• 2 teaspoon sriracha sauce

Handmade noodles (2-3 servings)​ or store bought noodles of your preference

​DIRECTIONS:
Sauce

1. In a mixing bowl, mix all the sauce ingredients together with a whisk. Add the water little by little until you reach the consistency of pancake batter. Taste as you go, and once it's perfect, add about 3-4 tbsp of the sauce to the bottom of your serving bowl. If you can't do spicy, omit the spicy bean paste, chili flakes, sriracha sauce, chili oil and prickly ash oil.

Toppings

1. Marinate the pork with the dark and lite soy sauces, oyster sauce, rice wine, white pepper, ground ginger, cornstarch and sugar together. Mince the pickled radish and add to the pork mixture. (This ingredient is optional) Marinate for at least 10 minutes.
2. After marinating, stir fry the ground pork until cooked through.
3. Add salt to a pot of boiling water and boil the Chinese broccoli or bok choy until desired doneness.  Remove and set aside.

Put it all together

1. Prior to serving, flash boil the noodles again to get them warm, or if you prefer your dan dan noodles as a cold noodle dish, leave as is.
2. Place the noodles on top of the sauce in your bowl, then put the pork and vegetables on top. If you like spicy, you can also drizzle some chili oil and prickly ash oil! ​

This is a great dish to assemble and enjoy, and I love that it can be prepared relatively quickly (unless you are making the handmade noodles, which takes a little more waiting time). For me, I always have soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine and assorted spices in stock since they are staples in our home, which makes this dish that much easier to make. Plus they are versatile and used in many other Asian dishes, so it's a win win for us! We hope you enjoy this noodle dish!