Recipe: Zha Jiang Mian Noodles Topped with Soy Bean Paste and Beer sauce

Nom! Perfect summer snack. Here’s a CRP first driven by a) hunger and b) the ever-present need for a new post. Not only am I going to translate this recipe, I’m going to try to make it as well (god save you all). We’ll be reading the recipe for (and then making) 炸酱面 zhá jiàng miàn, which is a thick ground pork sauce over fresh noodles topped with sliced cucumber, but as I’m vegetarian, I’ll be leaving the pork out. However, the recipe I’m translating does have pork in it, and this sauce really is good with pork, so feel free to put it in according to the Chinese recipe or leave it out and just use the shitake mushrooms, like I do.
The 炸酱面 sauce is extremely salty, and if you do this right, you’ll think your sauce has too much salt in it until you put it on the noodles. The saltiness is heavily cut by the blandness of the noodles and the dish ends up being very savory and strongly flavored, but not overpowering. If you don’t live in China, you will need to go to an Asian grocers for one of these ingredients (the dry yellow paste 干黄酱 made from yellow soybeans) (or you can just get 黄酱 – more on that later).

Now, a little about Chinese cooking: don’t get hung up on perfect measurements – a little more of this or a little more of that isn’t going to kill anyone, and the Chinese cook very haphazardly. You’ll also notice something very interesting in this (and most recipes). We cook by eye – “cook until the edges turn brown” – the Chinese often cook by nose – “cook until the food smells fragrant”.
I’m going to translate the recipe first, and below that, I’ll post some pics, some tips on the ingredients, and the cooking process.
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肉末 – ròu mò – Ground meat
克 – kè – a gram
五香 – wǔ xiāng – Five spice: a sweet Chinese spice blend
调料 – tiáo liào – Condiment / flavoring
稀 – xī – Watery
粒 – lì – Granule
倒入 – dǎo rù – To pour in (Pour milk in the tea)
即可 – jí kě – And that’s good enough / that will do
烧开 – shāo kāi – Boil
材料：猪肉末150克、香菇200克、五香花生100克、啤酒1听、黄瓜1根、面条300克
调料：干黄酱150克
做法：1、干黄酱用啤酒慢慢调成稀的酱汁
2、香菇洗净，切末，花生压成粗粒
3、锅中放油，下肉末炒香
4、倒入剩下的啤酒，炒匀
5、放入香菇翻炒
6、再放入调好的酱汁，炒出酱香味
7、出锅时撒入花生粒即可
8、汤锅中加水，烧开后，放入面条煮熟，捞出过凉水，碗中放入面条、黄瓜丝啤酒香菇酱即可食用
厨房小语：酱汁一定要炒出酱香味
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Ingredients: 150 grams of ground pork, 200 grams of shitake mushrooms, 100 grams of five-spice peanuts, one can of beer, one cucumber, and 300 grams of noodles.
Condiments: 150 grams of dry yellow soybean paste.
How to make it： 1. Slowly pour the beer [into a bowl] over the dry yellow soybean paste until it becomes a watery sauce.
2、Clean the shitakes, mince them up, and crush the peanuts into coarse granules.
3、Pour some oil into the pot (wok), and stir-fry the ground meat until it’s fragrant
4、Pour in the remaining beer, and mix it in [until evenly distributed]
5、Add the mushrooms and stir
6、Now add in the yellow bean paste sauce, and stir in until it releases a fragrant smell
7、Add in the peanuts when its time to take the sauce out of the pot [presumably: remove from heat then immediately add ground peanuts].
8、Put water in a pot, once it’s boiling add the noodles until it boils again, fish them out and rinse them in cool water, put the noodles in a bowl, and top with cucumber slices and the beer mushroom sauce, and it’s ready to eat.
Kitchen tip: You definitely want to cook the sauce until it releases a fragrant / sweet smell.