Dan Dan Noodles

You need to make Dan Dan sauce before starting this recipe.

For this dish, you’ll need some pickles, in China they use mustard greens, though you can use kimchi, sauerkraut or anything sort of sour.

For the mince:

• 2 tsp sesame oil or vegetable oil

• 60g spring onion chopped (save some of the green ends for garnish)

• 20g garlic finely chopped

• 20g ginger peeled and finely chopped

• 400g mince or 120g dried soy mince

• 10g chilli flakes (optional)

• ½ tsp Szechuan pepper chopped (optional)

Fry all the ingredients together until mince is cooked, then add…

• 100g kimchi or mustard green pickles finely chopped

• 1 tbsp soy sauce

• 1 tbsp black vinegar

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp Chinese five spice

You can replace the soy, vinegar, sugar and five spice with 45ml of Homemade Szechuan Sauce.

Mix all these together and cook until everything darkens, and then to thicken, add 10g corn starch and 20ml water dissolved in water.

You should be left with something that looks like mince before you add tomatoes. Now for the noodles.

Preparing the noodles…

• 350g spaghetti or any alt. noodles cook for the time is says on the packet

• 100ml Dan Dan sauce

• 1 tbsp Sriracha or chilli oil (optional)

Mix the noodles with Dan Dan sauce and chilli sauce.

To serve:

Split the spaghetti into portions sizes, portion the dan dan mince on top of your noodles, and to garnish, add…

• Sesame seeds

• Spring onions (green part) finely diced

Alternatively, make some ramen noodles

To serve, split the noodles into equal sizes, for four portions add:

• 1-2 vegetable stock cubes & 300ml water boil the water

• Pak choi boiled for 1 minute (optional)

• Chinese cabbage (optional)

• Kimchi (optional)

Separate into equal portions and add:

• Spring onions (green part) finely diced

• Bean sprouts (optional)

• Dan Dan mince