45 recipes. Page 1 of 2
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The name echoes the loud sizzle the batter makes when it hits a hot, oiled pan. In southern Vietnam this turmeric-yellow crepe, crisp and lacy at the edges, is torn into pieces, wrapped in lettuce with mint and perilla, and dipped in nuoc cham.
Dried fuzhu, folded sheets of bean curd skin, need at least 2 hours of soaking, so this dish starts well before the wok is hot. Once softened, their spongy layers soak up the store-bought mala sauce, numbing and chili-hot, and turn chewy.
On the domed jingisukan pan, lamb fat and juices run down the grooves into the bean sprouts, onions and squash ringing the edge. This Hokkaido style skips the marinade and dips the lamb after cooking in a soy-vinegar sauce made with grated apple, pear, garlic and ginger. The fattiest pieces cook first in the center, and their rendered fat coats the grooves so nothing sticks without added oil. Everyone eats as things cook, lifting off meat and vegetables as they are ready, with potatoes and squash taking the longest. Hokkaido began eating lamb when sheep were raised for wool in the Taisho era, and the dish is now cooked at home year-round and outdoors at spring blossom parties and summer barbecues.
Despite a name that means water-boiled fish, the bowl arrives under a layer of red chili oil. Thin slices of white fish, coated in starch, poach gently in a doubanjiang broth so they stay tender inside all that heat. Hot chili oil poured over Sichuan peppercorns at the end sizzles and releases the numbing aroma, and bean sprouts underneath catch the broth. It is intense enough that rice on the side is not optional.
Ground mung bean batter, mixed with kimchi, bean sprouts and pork, is fried in small rounds the way market stalls do it, with no holding back on the oil. Well-fermented kimchi gives it a sour edge, and it is dipped in soy sauce cut with vinegar.
Brisket simmered in plain water, with the foam skimmed off, makes a clear broth that a spoonful of gochugaru turns spicy. The 250 g of mung bean sprouts go in at the very end for two minutes at most, which keeps them crisp against the soft beef. It is ladled hot over rice.
Fat from the thin brisket slices melts down into the bean sprouts underneath, so even a bite of sprouts alone tastes rich. The dressing is light: soy sauce with garlic, a little sugar and sesame oil.
Halved onion and ginger, charred black in a dry pan, lose their raw bite and lend a caramel sweetness to an otherwise clear broth. Thin slices of Korean chadolbaegi brisket go into the bowl raw and cook only from the boiling broth poured over them, staying soft and juicy. The thinner the slices, the better that brief heat reaches the middle. The marbled brisket fat adds more body than standard pho, landing somewhere between Korean gomtang and Vietnamese pho. Bean sprouts, cilantro, and lime on the side let each person tune aroma and acidity, with the cilantro added just before eating so its scent stays fresh.
Chewy-crunchy slices of pig's ear, crisp bean sprouts and cucumber get coated in a thick dressing of peanut butter, white miso and vinegar. Despite the word sashimi in the name, nothing is raw: the term refers to the vinegared dressing, and the ears are bought precooked and sliced.
There are no noodles in this high-heat stir-fry of chicken breast, bok choy, carrot, mushrooms, and bean sprouts; it sits beside rice, with a light brown sauce that coats rather than pools. The carrot is cut thinner than the softer vegetables so everything finishes at once while the bok choy stems keep their crunch.
Water from the bean sprouts is what most easily turns this stir-fry thin. They are drained well, added only in the last minute or two, and the whole pan goes onto a plate as soon as the heat is off.
The broth starts from brisket browned in sesame oil, yet the sprouts keep it from feeling heavy. Cooked too long, mung bean sprouts give off a raw smell. The heat goes off while their heads still snap.
The batter is nothing but soaked, ground mung beans, no wheat flour, which makes it dense and nutty, and each round goes into the pan a full 1.5 cm thick, so one is a meal. Blanched mung bean sprouts give the thick middle some crunch.
Thin-sliced woosamgyeop, fatty beef brisket, is fried with garlic until its fat runs, and the chili flakes and soup soy sauce are toasted in that fat before any anchovy stock goes in. That is where the red, slick broth comes from. Two cheongyang chilies make it properly hot, and the bean sprouts go in last and come out still crunchy.
Spicy pork and bean sprouts, usually a stir-fry, are steamed in this version, which uses no oil and lets the gochujang and gochugaru seasoning come through more directly. As the sprouts wilt under the lid they release water that turns into a light broth and carries the seasoning into the pork shoulder, while their remaining crunch eases the heat. Spreading the meat thin and low over the sprouts lets it cook at the same pace throughout. The dish is served as soon as it is done, before the sprouts give off too much water and turn limp. Rice or thin somyeon noodles stirred into the leftover broth finish the pot.
The broth gets its heat from dried chilies and smells of lemongrass, with a salty depth from fermented shrimp, and the noodles are bún, thick rice noodles that are round in cross-section. Bean sprouts and lime go on the side, and a few slices of cooked pork blood sausage bring the bowl closer to how it is served in Hue.
In American Chinese cooking, egg mixed with vegetables is fried into small patties, and a brown gravy made separately is spooned over just before eating. This version has no meat, only mushrooms, bean sprouts, onion and scallion, and it is pan-fried instead of deep-fried, which leaves the edges brown and the middle soft.
The bean sprouts are not pulled after 30 seconds but cooked through, which makes this a soft stir-fry rather than a crunchy one. The oyster mushrooms are torn along the grain instead of cut, and the seasoning is soup soy sauce and salt.
Instead of stirring chili straight into the broth, this spicy beef soup seasons each strand of shredded brisket with chili flakes, garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil, so the heat clings to the meat itself. The clear brisket broth turns red as the seasoned beef simmers in it, with fernbrake (gosari, a chewy dried fern), bean sprouts, and plenty of long-cut green onion filling the bowl.
No flour or egg goes into this batter; the starch in the ground mung beans is what holds each pancake together. Soaking the beans yourself takes more than 6 hours, and that time has to be planned in. Pressed over medium heat, the outside forms a golden crust around the pork and kimchi.
Cao lau belongs to Hoi An, where the noodles were traditionally made with water from an old Cham well and lye from the ash of trees on the nearby Cham Islands, giving them a dense chew; at home, thick rice noodles stand in. It is not a soup: only a few spoonfuls of the sticky soy and sugar pan glaze are poured over the noodles, so the bean sprouts, herbs and crumbled fried wonton skins keep their own textures.
Through the softened rice paper you can see pink shrimp and green mint, and since nothing is fried, the rolls eat light. Poached pork belly and shrimp share the wrapper with rice noodles, lettuce, and bean sprouts, while the peanut sauce on the side carries most of the seasoning.
Once the beef is in the pan this is done in a few minutes, so the onion, garlic and soy sauce are lined up next to the stove before the heat goes on. The bean sprouts come off while their stems are still white and crisp.
Penang hawkers built this dish for laborers who needed a cheap, filling plate cooked fast, and its flavor depends on wok hei, the charred breath of a wok heated until it smokes. Wide flat rice noodles, prawns, egg, bean sprouts and Chinese chives move through the pan in a few minutes, while dark soy and oyster sauce stain the noodles a glossy brown. Drying everything and lining it up within reach before the burner is lit keeps stray water on the noodles or prawns from dropping the wok temperature and steaming the food instead of searing it.