Zha Jiang Mian - 炸酱面 (Soybean sauce noodle)

Today, you are about to experience a very popular home style dry (in contrast to soup) noodle in northern China. If you love Chinese food, you must try Chinese noodle; if you love Chinese noodle, you must try Zha Jiang Mian.

You will need:

Chinese style Dry Noodle (a handful is enough for 2 servings)
Sweetened Soybean Paste (甜面酱 tián miàn jiàng)
Ground pork (猪肉 zhū ròu) (half Lbs)
Cucumber (1)

Green onion (1), Ginger (1 inch cube), finely chopped
Chinese style cooking wine (2 table spoon)
Oil (2 table spoon) (油 yóu)
Corn Starch (maybe)

1. Stir fry pork.

Heat up the pan, add oil, and spread the oil by turning the pan. Add ground pork and stir fry it on Medium fire for a minute. After the ground pork break into little pieces, add cooking wine, and keep on stir frying until it is almost cooked. Add ginger, green onion, and keep on stir frying until it is fully cooked.

2. Add about 1 cup of Sweetened Soybean Paste into the cooked pork, and cook the mixed sauce on medium-low fire for about 5 - 10 minutes. Stir the sauce and scrub the bottom, in case it stick on the bottom and get burnt. Have a taste, see if it's too sweet or too salty for you. Add water or more paste, or even sugar, salt to adjust.

3. Boil water and cook Dry Noodle in a sauce pan, then drain it.

4. Thin slice cucumber.

5. Serve.

Mix your noodle with certain amount of sauce, according to your taste, and add cucumbers for refreshing. Done.We don't have cucumber today, so we fried bean sprout and snow peas. Still good!

I am really upset about the quality of Sweetened Soybean Paste you get in US. Some brands are too sweet, some are too salty (The original Chinese style 甜面酱 should have little taste. Although 甜 literally means sweet, it really means "not salty" here). So, if you are using a strong taste brand, and end up having to add a lot more water to blend the taste, you can always use Corn Starch to make your watery sauce thicker. Good luck!

Learn Chinese:

noodle = 面 = miàn
sweet = 甜 = tián
sauce = 酱 = jiàng
oil = 油 = yóu
pork = 猪肉 = zhū ròu

Zha Jiang Mian also appears in many movies. Like this one, Call for love (爱情呼叫转移), about a white collar, who got a magic phone from an angle, claiming the phone will let him experience different types of girls. His ex-wife is famous for her Zha Jiang Mian. Ironically, this is one of the reasons he left her.