61 recipes. Page 3 of 3
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Thick black-bean sauce made from chunjang (Korean fermented black bean paste) coats chewy wheat noodles, with diced pork, onion, potato and zucchini giving it body. Simmering until the potato turns half translucent lets the vegetables sweeten the salty paste. In Korea it is the go-to delivery meal on moving day or after a graduation, and it tastes best mixed the moment the hot sauce lands on the noodles.
Under a thick coat of coarse panko is a mix of ground pork and beef much like a hamburger steak, and cutting in lets out the juices the crust held. In Tokyo, neighborhood butchers have long fried them every day for the display case, and eating one hot from the paper bag on the street is an old habit.
Curry roux dissolved into dashi instead of water gives this bowl a savory, brothy depth that curry rice does not have. The roux turns the stock into a thick gravy that clings to fat udon strands and comes up with every lift of the noodles.
Five-spice powder, with its cinnamon and star anise, perfumes the soy broth, which sets moo palo apart from a plain soy braise even though both turn the same deep brown. Thai home cooks simmer pork and boiled eggs together for a long time and ladle the braise over warm rice with plenty of broth.
No broth at all: hot, thick noodles are tossed with chili-oil pork, chives, scallion, fish powder, and a raw yolk until everything coats the strands. The noodles skip the cold rinse so they reach the bowl hot and the yolk loosens into a sauce. The pork must be cooked down until no thin liquid remains in the pan; otherwise water pools at the bottom and the mix turns uneven. Spreading the toppings in a ring instead of one pile keeps the flavor from bunching up when everything is mixed. Fish powder and nori bring the savory depth a soup would normally supply.
The cabbage mixed into the ground pork gives off its water, keeping the filling juicy inside the fluffy steamed dough. The filling is seasoned with ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and a little sugar makes the dough faintly sweet.
Turmeric and fish sauce tint the pork yellow and season it before it ever meets the pan, and that colored fat ends up in the broth. Mi quang, from Quang Nam province in central Vietnam, uses only enough of that concentrated broth to moisten the noodles, so the bowl eats more like dressed noodles than soup. Shrimp cooked separately and briefly stays tender, and bean sprouts with peanuts added at the last moment keep their crunch against the soft rice noodles.
Chopped shrimp in the pork filling gives these dim sum a springier bite than pork alone. The wrapper is pressed up around the sides and left open on top, and by the time they come out of the steamer the thin skin has turned translucent.
Pork, shrimp, squid, and clams are stir-fried hard with cabbage and bean sprouts, then simmered with thick champon noodles in a chicken-based broth seasoned with oyster sauce and sake. There is no chili; the flavor comes from the seared seafood and the sweetness of the vegetables. Kamaboko fish cake and shiitake round out a bowl that is mostly toppings. Serve as soon as the noodles have soaked up the broth and the cabbage still has some bite.
Unlike the glossy, starch-thickened black bean noodles found in Korean Chinese restaurants, this Beijing version gets its body purely from reduction: pork and fermented bean paste cook down until a spatula leaves a brief trail through the sauce. Doenjang mixed into the sweet bean paste pushes the flavor toward salty and funky, with a spoonful of sugar to soften the edge. The thick sauce sits on chewy fresh wheat noodles alongside crisp cucumber and bean sprouts, all tossed together hard right before eating.
Crisp fried thin noodles are buried under a hot, glossy sauce of pork, shrimp, squid, and vegetables thickened with potato starch. Chen Pingshun of Shikairo created it in 1899 as a soupless version of champon. Nagasaki still distinguishes the original thick-noodle style from the thin, crunchy style most people eat today, and this recipe follows the latter with store-bought fried noodles. Kamaboko, bean sprouts, and shiitake are added late so the sprouts keep their snap. Where the sauce soaks in, the noodles soften, and the rest stays crunchy.
Glass noodles, shrimp, squid, pork, napa cabbage, and wood ear fill a clear chicken broth, finished with half a hard-boiled egg on top. The dish came from Fuzhou in China's Fujian province, where it was a celebration food, and reached Kumamoto by way of Nagasaki in the late Meiji era. Today it appears at Chinese restaurants and home tables in central Kumamoto as lunch, dinner, or a meal after drinking. The seafood is added only after the pork and firm vegetables have cooked, which keeps the shrimp and squid from turning rubbery. To keep the broth clear, the glass noodles are boiled and rinsed separately, warmed in the soup only at the end, and the heat is cut as soon as the sesame oil and scallion are added.
Chunjang black bean paste and ground pork cook down into a thick, waterless sauce, spooned over fresh noodles and tossed just before eating. With no added liquid, it catches on the pan quickly unless it reduces over low heat with constant stirring. Frying the chunjang first drives off its harsh raw smell and brings out a shine. Ground pork has to reach 71°C, not just lose its pink color. Crisp cucumber strips cool down the salty, dense sauce.