This Beijing Noodle Feeds a Family Well for Less - Zha Jiang Mian

These Beijing noodles will satisfy your noodle cravings. The rich and flavorful sauce is surprisingly simple to make. Perfect for any night of the week. Hey everyone, I'm Flo. Dude is behind the camera and we're all about simple food, simple faith. Jiajiangmian is one of my favorite noodle dishes to order out and to make at home. It's actually one of the least expensive noodles that you can get out in the restaurants and I am incredibly sad that our favorite restaurant that I used to order this from has gone. I think they probably closed down during COVID, which is super sad. But now I just make it at home, which saves us a ton of money. And you can find this recipe in my cookbook, Daily Special. Although this recipe that I'm making today is a little bit more simplified and I'm not using all the ingredients, but you'll get the idea. I'm going to start with chopping up my aromatics. So I've got two green onions here. I'm just going to cut off the butts. And the white portion, I'm going to cook with the garlic and ginger. And then the green portion, I'm going to use as garnish. Only because I like the white and light green parts to be a little bit more cooked and not so raw tasting, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to. I'm using a giant clove of garlic. This will be about, I don't know, maybe two to three regular sized pieces of garlic. I'm just using my mallet to break the skin. I'm just going to chop this up. You can chop it up as finely as you like. Just one clove of garlic gives me a lot. And I find that these, well, this particular garlic that I'm using is quite juicy. And I'm using a small piece of ginger. That will give me approximately a tablespoon of grated ginger. Probably about half an ounce. I'm just adding it to the garlic because I'm going to put it in the wok at the same time. I'm also using half of an English cucumber or seedless cucumber. I'm going to julienne the cucumber. Okay, so I have my cucumbers and my green onion that I am going to set aside for garnish. Next, we're moving on to our sauce that we're going to prepare. And I am using bean paste. So there is regular soybean paste and a sweet soybean paste. If you can't find the sweet soybean paste, you can substitute it with like a hoisin sauce. That will do. It's not quite the same flavor, but it works in a pinch. So I'm going to use four tablespoons of this one. And two tablespoons of the sweet one. Also adding two tablespoons of regular soy sauce. One tablespoon of the dark soy sauce. If you don't have dark soy sauce, you can add another tablespoon of regular soy sauce. Maybe add a little bit of sugar in its place. And one tablespoon of Shaoxing wine. Shaoxing wine is a rice wine. If you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use regular rice wine or white wine. We've been known to use bourbon in the past. Just something that will add a little depth of flavor. We'll put links in the description to the sauces on Amazon. But if you can find them locally, they will be way cheaper. Okay, and we'll just give this sauce a stir. I'm just going to get my noodles started. I'm using medium wide noodles. And these are just wheat noodles. They take about three minutes in boiling water. So they're really quick and easy to make. There will be enough sauce for about four servings. Just make enough noodles for however many people you're serving. I'm making about half a pound today and that will serve three of us. Okay, we're going to get the sauce going. Turning my wok onto a medium high. And if you don't have a wok, you can use a large frying pan or a dutch oven. Just so that you can make the sauce. Once you see that wisp of smoke, you can add about a tablespoon of oil. I'm using avocado oil and I'm cooking about a pound of ground pork. I'm just going to move this around a little bit and let it sear on one side before moving it around some more. That just adds a bit of flavor to the pork when we sear it on one side. And we're going to do the same on the other side before we start mixing it up some more. All right, I'm going to break it up and cook it through. All right, once the meat is no longer pink, I'm going to push the meat to the side. This is why I like using the wok. And then whatever drippings and oil will move to the bottom of the wok. I'm going to add my white and light green parts of the green onion, plus my garlic and ginger right to the middle. And we're just going to let that cook for about 30 seconds until you start to smell all the flavors kind of coming together. And then we're going to mix it all together. I wish you guys could smell this. It smells so amazing. I haven't even added a sauce yet. All right, adding the sauce that we made. And about half a cup of water. And we're going to let this simmer for about three to five minutes. So now would be the best time to get your noodles into that boiling water. I'm just going to turn the heat down to a medium low while this simmers so all the flavors can get happy together. Just going to make my cornstarch slurry just in the same bowl that I had the sauce in. So using about a teaspoon of cornstarch, adding about a tablespoon of water. It has to be room temperature water or cold water. Otherwise, the cornstarch will not dissolve but become a goopy mess. So I just want my cornstarch to dissolve. And once your meat sauce has been simmering, I'm going to add this to the middle. Although it doesn't even look like it really needs it. You know what? If it doesn't need it, you don't have to add it. I'm going to add a little bit and add all of it. Okay, once it's heated through, you can turn off the heat. Now we're just waiting for our noodles to be cooked. So I think I actually made a pound of noodles because I added more to my pot after I told you I was only making a little bit. I lied. So let's get this into a serving bowl. I'm going to put some sauce on there. Some cucumber and some green onions. And that's it. You can feed your family for less than 10 bucks. I don't even know how much everything costed. All I know is that my ground pork cost about $5.50. And that's a bit on the pricey side. My cucumber was $1.49. And my noodles, well, I only used a portion of the package of noodles I picked up. So that package was probably $8. And that's also on the pricey side for noodles. But if you're only eating like a quarter of that package of noodles, that's only like what? Two bucks? So $2 plus $5.50, $7.50 plus your cucumber is $9. That's it, guys. Nine bucks to feed your whole family. Are you ready for... The taste smells really good. Really wholesome. Like talking about homestyle meal, doesn't have to be fancy, but checks a lot of boxes. And one of the things is, you know, super tasty and it fills you up. All right, you got to mix it up. And if you want to get some more heat into the mix, add your favorite chili oil. Or cat. Yeah, this smells amazing. Oh, yeah. Awesome flavor. You know what? I'm gonna add some chili oil. Be right back. Yeah, it's my new favorite chili oil. I will link to this in the description as well for... What do you... How do you say it in Chinese? I don't know. Okay, put some in there. Mix it around a little bit. Probably gonna add more afterwards because this is really my dinner as well. All right. Guys, awesome flavors going on here. And adding that heat component to it. Oh, it makes it even more tasty. Eating on the cheap doesn't mean that you're gonna not have flavor. You can have both. So you got to do this. Awesome. Thanks, dude. Yep. Noodles to feed your family for less than $10. Ready in less than 20 minutes. You can check this recipe out on olem.com.