Zha jiang mian 炸酱面 Recipe

One of my favourite Chinese noodle dish is Zhajiangmian. I almost always order it whenever I see it available on the menu because of the great texture of the dish. The sweet bean sauce on the ground pork combined with the cool and refreshing taste of the julienned cucumber and carrots is a great combination, in my opinion.

The thing is, this dish looks pretty easy to make but I never got around to making it because I didn’t even know where to start. Like, what do I even need to make the sauce? Good authentic Chinese recipes are hard to stumble across online and when I do stumble across one, it’s written entirely in Chinese and I don’t understand what ingredients even go into the dish -_-

Luckily, I stumbled across a blog that was written in English . I looked at the listed ingredients and it looked legit enough (based on pure gut instinct) so I decided to give it a try. The results? Not bad! I made some minor adjustments to the recipe according to my personal preference as I felt the sauce was too strong so I toned down on the ground bean sauce a bit. The result was a delicious noodle dish that I will make time and time again 🙂

Ingredients
~ Makes 4 servings.
Total cook time: 30 mins

300 gram flat noodles
8 oz ground pork
1/2 tbsp corn starch
1/4 tsp of white pepper and salt to season
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp sweet bean paste
2 tbsp ground bean paste
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1/2 cup water
3 cloves minced garlic
3 slices of minced ginger
julienne carrots and cucumber to garnish
chopped green onions and extra minced garlic to garnish (optional)

Marinate the ground pork with white pepper, salt, oil, and corn starch. Set aside for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, start cooking the noodles. Once they’re done, drain and set aside for later.
Combine sweet bean paste, ground bean paste, and dark soy sauce into a bowl and set aside.
When the ground pork is done marinating, cook it in a pan over medium-high heat. Be sure to drain the excess fat while cooking to prevent your ground pork from getting too crispy as the fat will fry the meat.
Once the ground pork is almost done cooking, push the meat to the side of the pan to make space for the garlic and ginger. Cook until aromatic and slightly browned and combine it with the rest of the ground pork.
Add in the bowl of sauce you combined earlier into the ground pork mixture and stir thoroughly. Add the water a bit at a time until you get the right consistency. You may not need to use all of the water.
Once you’ve reached the desired consistency, turn the stovetop off and start plating. For me, I usually re-soak the noodle a little bit in a water as they get really sticky and clumpy when dried up. I arrange the noodles on a plate and top with the ground pork mixture. I add the julienne carrots and cucumbers on the side and garnish with some chopped green onions and garlic for looks.

That’s it, you’re done! Snap a pic and enjoy!