Dan Dan Noodles – Culinary Seasons Style – Culinary Seasons

Dan Dan Noodles is a dish from the province of Sichuan, China. The dish name Dan Dan translates to “carrying pole noodles”. The dish was served by street vendors who would carry noodles and sauce on a pole and would serve to order.

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The city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, is known for spicy foods. Traditionally this dish can be prepared with Sichuan pepper and chili oil to give the dish it’s spicy bite. Sichuan pepper is not actually a peppercorn, they are a berries of the prickly ash tree. The sichuan pepper gives a mouth numbing lingering heat. Other traditional ingredients are preserved vegetables and chinese mustard greens added to the sauce.

Traditional vs Variations

I came up with this recipe as a hybrid of some traditional techniques and some ingredients that create a lingering heat. Pork is traditional as the meat for Dan Dan Noodles but, chicken or ground beef could be used instead but I would keep with pork or chicken personally.

You can make this dish Vegetarian by using vegetarian oyster sauce and using vegetable broth and omitting the meat.

I used some classic Chinese sauces in this recipe that may or may not be traditional such as mushroom soy and oyster sauce but the end result is a well balanced sauce with the garlic & chili spike that gives a great mouth feel of heat. Mushrooms in this dish is not traditional but hey, you need to use what you have sometimes. Plus mushrooms adapt well to this dish.

The addition of cold cucumbers gives a nice cooling aspect to the dish, mix them into the noodles and sauce and you get a cooling crunch with the spice of the sauce.

Dan Dan Soup a Pleasing Variation

Dan Dan Noodles can be served as a soup as well. Just add heated broth seasoned as you like to the bowl and top with the Dan Dan Sauce as pictured below. Mix the sauce into the broth and noodles and eat as a soup.

Enjoy!

~ Dan Dan Noodles is a easy to make, premixing the sauce makes cooking quick as you won’t have to stumble through measuring the sauce while sauteing the other ingredients.

~ You can pre cook the ground meat and keep in the refrigerator, making the dish at a later time.

~ Taking another step to make assembling the dish easier. Pre-cook the dry noodles and cool on a sheet pan in the refrigerator coated in vegetable oil, careful not to over cook the noodles doing this method. Just blanch the pre-cooked noodles into boiling water for a few seconds and plate.