Zha Jiang Mian literally means “fried sauce noodles”. It is also known as “dry noodles with minced pork and cucumber”, “dry noodles with meat sauce”, etc. This is my favorite kind of dry noodles and I always ask my mom to make it. In fact, I later realized that I simply love all dishes that is based on sweet bean sauce, such as shredded pork with sweet bean sauce. This is one of the few dishes that I learned from my mom. The beauty of this dish is that once you find your preferred sweet bean sauce, all you need to do is to pour your sweet bean sauce to your cooked ingredients and boom your Zha Jiang mian is ready! Therefore, I will rate this dish at beginner level! Come try this today!
Ingredients
- 1½ cup of ground pork
- 1 cup of chopped onion, about half of an onion
- 2 cup of chopped bean curd
- ½ cup of sweet bean sauce
- 1 cup of water
- 1 tbsp of cornstarch
- 1 tbsp of water
- 1 green onion
- 1 carrot
One thing interesting about onion, is that it becomes sweeter as you cook it. The longer you cook it, the sweeter it becomes (well…definitely before it gets burned :D) We are going to use this natural sweetness from cooked onions to season our zha jiang sauce.
Heat up a pan with 2 tbsp of oil to around 300F at medium heat. Add 1 cup of chopped onions and continue to stir fry until it brown, usually it takes about 3 min or so. If you use lower heat it’s even better because the sweetness from slow roasting is richer and you have less chance to burn it by accident!
Once the onions are browned, add in ground pork and stir fry until cooked.
After your meat is cooked. Time to add diced bean curd! You may have some questions regarding bean curd. What is bean curd? I heard many say it’s just a type of firm tofu, but that is not entirely true! It’s basically pressed tofu that you can make at home. Check out our pressed tofu recipe. One less concern on unknown food additive, isn’t it wonderful you can make this on your own?
Now it’s time to add sweet bean sauce. Interestingly, beans is actually not the main ingredients in sweet bean sauce, sometimes you don’t even have beans in it! Sweet bean sauce is actually made of fermented flour. They usually use the leftover steamed buns and ferment them with Aspergillus oryzae, a kind of fungus that is used to make soy sauce. It will produce maltose that naturally sweeten the sauce. This is how the sweet bean sauce is made!
Like I mentioned in my Mapo Tofu recipe, these non-mainstream sauces have really different tastes across the brands. You will have to use your best judgement to change around the recipe. The sweet bean sauce I used is just the right taste for me but not thick enough and not enough in volume. Therefore, I added a cup of water to increase the volume and a cornstarch slurry to thicken. Once the sauce is boiling, mix 1 tbsp of water and 1 tbsp of cornstarch in a bowl and then add to the Zha Jiang sauce, continue to stir until it’s boiling again. Your Zha Jiang sauce is perfectly thicken and ready to be served!! I usually serve with Korean fresh noodles!
Normally You should use cucumber and carrot as vegetable, today I’m proposing my alternative to you. Instead of cucumber shreds, I use green onion shreds and it fits perfectly! The spiciness of green onion works better than cucumber in my opinion! Enjoy!
- 1½ cup of ground pork
- 1 cup of chopped onion, about half of an onion
- 2 cup of chopped bean curd
- ½ cup of sweet bean sauce
- 1 cup of water
- 1 tbsp of cornstarch
- 1 tbsp of water
- 1 green onion
- 1 carrot
- Add 3 tbsp of oil, heat up in a pan at medium heat to about 300F
- Add 1 cup of diced onion, about half of an onion
- Stir fry until it’s close to golden brown
- Add 1 ½ cup of ground pork, stir fry until it’s cooked
- Once the ground pork is cooked. Add in diced bean curd. stir fry for another 2 mins
- Add ½ cup of sweet bean sauce and 1 cup of water. Continue to stir
- Mix 1 tbsp of water and 1 tbsp of cornstarch in a bowl
- Once sauce boils, add cornstarch mixture and bring to boil again