Dan Dan Noodles
Wheat noodles dressed in a sauce built from sesame paste, soy sauce, black vinegar, and chili oil, topped with pork mince cooked until slightly crispy and a scattering of crushed peanuts. This is the street food that gave Sichuan cuisine its international reputation. The heat is real, the numbing tingle from Sichuan pepper is the point, and the sauce comes together in the bowl — not in a pan.
Ingredients
- 400 gwheat noodles
- 300 gground pork
- 1 tbspvegetable oil
- 2 tbspsoy sauce
- 1 tbspShaoxing wine
- 1 tspdark soy sauce
- 4 tbspChinese sesame paste
- 3 tbspchili oil
- 2 tbspsoy sauce
- 1 tbspChinese black vinegar
- 1 tspSichuan peppercorn, toasted and ground
- 1 tspsugar
- 3 garlic cloves
- 80 mlhot noodle cooking water
- 2 tbspcrushed roasted peanuts
- 2 scallion stalks
- 200 gbaby bok choy or spinach
Method
- Cook the pork first: heat oil in a wok or pan over high heat. Add the pork and press into a single layer. Leave untouched 1–2 minutes until the bottom browns and crisps. Then break apart and stir-fry, adding soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and dark soy sauce. Cook until the liquid evaporates and the pork is deeply brown and slightly crunchy at the edges — about 8 minutes total. Set aside.
- Build the sauce in each serving bowl — not in a pan. Per bowl: 1 tablespoon sesame paste, thinned with a tablespoon of hot water first until smooth. Then add chili oil, soy sauce, black vinegar, ground Sichuan pepper, sugar, and minced garlic. Stir to combine. The sauce should be liquid enough to coat noodles but not watery.
- Cook the noodles according to package directions. Reserve 80 ml of noodle cooking water. In the last 30 seconds, add the bok choy or spinach to the boiling noodle water and blanch briefly. Drain everything.
- Add 2–3 tablespoons of the hot noodle water to each bowl of sauce and stir — this loosens the sesame paste and warms the sauce at the same time. Add the drained noodles and vegetables on top.
- Spoon the crispy pork over the noodles. Scatter with crushed peanuts and green onion. Bring to the table and toss everything together right before eating — the sauce should coat every noodle completely. Adjust chili oil and vinegar at the table.
FAQ
Two things define dan dan noodles as Sichuan rather than generically spicy: the mala profile created by Sichuan peppercorn (numbing tingle alongside heat) and the sesame paste base that gives the sauce its richness and depth. Regular spicy noodles use chili without the numbing element and often lack the sesame layer. Authentic dan dan also uses ya cai — Sichuan preserved mustard greens — in the pork topping, which adds fermented funk. The combination of sesame, chili, vinegar, and Sichuan pepper in those proportions is what makes it distinctly Sichuan.
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Comments (2)
担担面的芝麻酱要用好的，便宜的花生酱替代不了。面条煮到刚好有嚼劲最好吃
Finish cooking the wheat noodles in the sauce, not in the water. Those last 2 minutes of simmering together create a bond between grain and sauce that plating separately never achieves.