Zha Jiang Mian (炸醬麵) Easy Noodle Recipe!

Hey guys, it's Angel. I love a bowl of freshly cooked noodles, so today I'm going to show you how to make my Zhajiangmian recipe, which is a noodle dish served with a savory pork topping. Originally, this dish is from Northern China, where they serve it with thick noodles and a ground pork topping, which they mix in right before eating. Now, Zhajiangmian literally translates to fried sauce noodles, and sometimes at restaurants they call it brown meat sauce over noodles. I know that sounds kind of weird, but you can usually tell it's Zhajiangmian because it's typically served with fresh cucumbers. So if you guys are interested in how to cook this dish at home, keep watching. First, let's get our noodles. In today's video, I've partnered with Xin Dong Yang, or HTY for short, which is a popular Taiwanese food snack brand. They're probably most famous for their gourmet beef jerky, but they also make Taiwanese pineapple cakes and also noodles as well. In today's video, I'm going to be using their Guan Mao thick noodles, which are a popular Taiwanese noodle originating from Tainan, Taiwan. And what I like most about these noodles is that they're preservative-free and are made with only three ingredients, wheat flour, water, and salt. HTY also has thin noodles as well, but I personally like their thick noodles because I feel like the thick noodles absorb more of the sauce. In addition to the noodles, we'll also need some ground pork, a yellow onion, some cilantro and green onions for garnish, cucumbers, soy sauce, sesame oil, chili oil, sweet bean sauce, cornstarch, some minced garlic, and some water. The first thing that we're going to do is chop the onions. And right now I'm just dicing the onions into small pieces. And here it's pretty handy to have a bowl ready, or a plate ready, to transfer the onions to. Now I'm going to go ahead and chop the green onions. I'm just going to transfer this to a plate as well. And I like to clean up as I go. I highly recommend that as a kitchen tip. So now I'm going to mix our sauce. I've got a small dish here, and then afterwards we're going to prepare our thickener. So I'm going to start with one tablespoon of soy sauce, two tablespoons of sweet bean sauce, two tablespoons of sweet bean sauce, and this is also HTY brand sweet bean sauce if you've never seen it before, two teaspoons of garlic, next is sesame oil, and I love the smell of sesame oil here, one teaspoon of sesame oil, and a drizzle or two of chili oil if you like it spicy. We'll also need some salt and pepper to taste, which we'll add when we're cooking, but for now I'm going to go ahead and mix the sauce. And we'll also need to make a sauce thickener. So here I've got half a cup of water, and we're going to just add two teaspoons of corn starch. Give that a good stir. And now we're ready to cook. So now I'm going to get my wok out, and since I'm using my wok, I'm just going to go ahead and put the wok ring on my stove. Get my wok out. I need the wok ring because I have a rounded bottom wok, so just put that on there. So I've got my wok on a medium high heat, I'm just going to add two tablespoons of oil, then go ahead and add the ground pork, I just want to break the pork up here. When the pork is halfway cooked, I'm going to go ahead and add my onions. Now that the pork is almost done, I'm going to go ahead and add my sauce mixture. And finally, we're going to thicken the sauce. And here you'll want to mix quickly, because the sauce will start to thicken fairly quickly as well. Once the sauce is thickened, you go ahead and turn off the heat, and then we're going to add some salt and pepper. And I usually like to add 10 turns of my salt and 10 turns of my pepper mill. Finally, give that a good mix, and that is our sauce for our zha jiang mian. So now we're going to put the sauce aside, and then we're going to make our noodles. Now I've got a pot of water here, we're going to bring it to a boil, and then we're going to start to cook our noodles. Now that the water has come to a boil, I'm going to add the noodles, one for me, and one for you. These noodles will take about 10 to 12 minutes to cook, and I know it takes a while, but good noodles take time. And you'll know when your noodle is done when you do the taste test. I like to take one noodle out and just give it a try. Perfect. Now that the noodles are done, I'm just going to go ahead and drain the noodles over the sink. Now that the noodles are done, I'm going to go ahead and put everything into a bowl and assemble our zha jiang mian dish. I'm going to scoop some meat sauce directly over the noodles. Finally I have some cucumbers that I pre-sliced. We're just going to serve that on the side right there. Finish it off on the top with some cilantro for garnish. We're ready for the taste test. Got my chopsticks out, and we're just going to dig in here. Some noodles, a bit of cilantro. Wow. That tastes so amazing. I love the flavors of that sweet bean sauce. And the noodles are really good. I'm glad I picked the thick noodles because it kind of gives it a little bit more texture, and it definitely holds more of the sauce. These noodles taste amazing. I love zha jiang mian, and I love these white noodles in this recipe. Go to htyusa.com so you can get these delicious noodles yourself, and you guys can cook along with me. And while you're at it, you can check out their online store where you can see other Taiwanese snacks as well. And use my discount code ANGEL for 20% off your order. And a little treat for you guys watching today. HTY and I have a giveaway for you guys. It's a little prize pack of some of the featured ingredients that we're using. So if you guys are interested in that, follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter at angelcooksfood for more details. I'm Angel. Thank you guys so much for watching. Take care. I love you guys, and I will see you in the next video. Bye for now.