Sichuan · Main
Yibin Ranmian
- Easy
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, an earthy, grounding base, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 400 g thin fresh alkaline wheat noodles
- 150 g minced pork
- 60 g Yibin yacai, rinsed and chopped fine
- 20 ml rapeseed oil
- 10 ml Shaoxing wine
- 80 ml hongyou, with its sediment
- 20 ml roasted sesame oil
- 20 ml light soy sauce
- 3 g ground roasted huajiao
- 60 g roasted peanuts, crushed coarse
- 40 g walnuts, toasted and crushed
- 30 g spring onion greens, sliced fine
- 20 g garlic, crushed to a paste with 20 ml cold water
- 3 g salt
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · peanuts · soy · sesame · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Fry the pork in the rapeseed oil over medium heat until the grains separate and crisp at the edges, add the wine and yacai, and keep going until the pan is dry and the yacai smells sweet and smoky.
- Boil the noodles in a lot of water for 60 to 90 seconds, until they bend without snapping but still show a thin white line at the core.
- Drain hard, spread them on a tray and toss with the sesame oil until every strand is separate and no water beads on the surface. This step is what the name is about.
- Tip into a warm bowl with soy, garlic water, hongyou, ground huajiao and salt, and turn from the bottom until the strands go glossy red and nothing pools.
- Top with the pork and yacai, peanuts, walnuts and spring onion, and eat at once, while the noodles are still hot enough to carry the aroma.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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