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Spicy “Little Pot” Rice Noodles

Byamazingfoodstv


Little Pot Rice Noodles! A classic dish from Yunnan, we wanted to teach you how to make the real deal Kunming version… together with a ‘western supermarket club’ version for ease of international replication.

0:00 – What are Little Pot Rice Noodles?
0:38 – What has to go into a Little Pot Noodle?
2:20 – Preparing the Components for the Kunming Style Little Pot Rice Noodle
7:56 – Kunming Style Little Pot Rice Noodles
9:55 – “Western Supermarket Club” Little Pot Rice Noodles
11:24 – Re the ‘pork patty’ style

SUBSTITUTES TO PREP FOR THE KUNMING STYLE

We will prepare two spice powders and three substitutes in advance. Our recommendation would be to scale each component up, so we’ve given the quantities ‘per serving’. So if you’re planning on making four bowls, multiply everything by four; ten, by ten.

Spice Powders:

* Star Anise (八角), ~1 per serving
* Tsaoko, a.k.a. Chinese black cardamom (草果), ~1 per serving

Peel the Tsaoko and discard the pit. Toast the two spices over a medium low flame for 3-5 minutes, or until the Tsaoko begins to ever so slightly brown.

Grind each – separately! – into a powder. Reserve.

Suanyancai substitute:

* Suancai ‘sour mustard’ (酸菜), 40g per serving
* Dark brown sugar, 1/2 tsp per serving
* Star anise powder from above, 1/4 tsp per serving
* Tsaoko powder from above, 1/4 tsp per serving

Medium low flame in a bit of oil, melt the sugar into the oil. Add the rest of the ingredients. Fry for ~3 minutes, until the suancai deepens in color.

Zhaotong Chili Paste substitute:

* Pixian doubanjiang, Sichuan chili bean paste (郫县豆瓣酱), 1 tsp per serving
* Mianchi, Cantonese ground bean paste (面豉/原晒), 2 tsp per serving
* Red, fragrant chili powder (e.g. 秦椒, Kashmiri, Gochugaru), 1/4 tsp per serving
* Star anise powder from above, 1/4 tsp per serving
* Tsaoko powder from above, 1/4 tsp per serving
* Sichuan peppercorn powder, 1/8 tsp per serving

Pound the two bean pastes until fine. In a bit of oil over a low flame, add all the ingredients and fry for ~5 minutes, or until the oil is stained obviously red.

Tuodong Sweet Soy Sauce substitute:

* Dark soy sauce (老抽), 1/4 tsp per serving
* Soy sauce (生抽), ½ tsp per serving
* Molasses, ¾ tsp per serving

Mix.

KUNMING STYLE

* Dried rice noodles, preferably Yunnanese Mixian (米线) or Jiangxi rice noodles (江西米粉), 125g per serving
* Chinese chives (韭菜), 30g per serving, chopped into 1 inch pieces
* Minced pork, 60g per serving
* Marinade for the pork:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Sugar, 1/8 tsp
Cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp
White pepper, sprinkle, ~1/16 tsp
Soy sauce (生抽), ¼ tsp
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ½ tsp
* Chinese pork stock, preferably -or- chicken stock -or- water, 2.25 cups
* Lard, 1 tsp
* Zhaotong chili sauce sub, 1 tbsp
* Suanyancai sub, ¼ cup
* Tuodong sweet soy sauce sub, ½ tbsp
* Bean sprouts -or- your veg of choice, ~30g
* Seasoning for the soup:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Chicken bouillon (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp
White pepper, 1/8 tsp
Dark Chinese vinegar (香醋/陈醋), ¼ tsp
* Lao Gan Ma chili crisp, 2 tbsp

Soak the rice noodles in cool water for at least four hours and up to overnight. Par boil for ~45 seconds, or until al dente. These can keep 1-2 days in the fridge.

Marinate your pork.

For the process for the soup, refer to the video at 8:45.

WESTERN SUPERMARKET STYLE

* Dried rice noodles, 125g per serving
* Minced pork, 60g per serving
* Marinade for the pork:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Sugar, 1/8 tsp
Cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp
White pepper, sprinkle, ~1/16 tsp
Soy sauce (生抽), ¼ tsp
Wine – white, sherry, bourbon, Shaoxing, whatever – ½ tsp
* Pork stock, preferably -or- chicken stock -or- water, 2 cups. If buying western stock, make sure it isn’t heavily seasoned with western herbs like thyme or rosemary.
* Lard, 1 tsp. Skip if you have to.
* Japanese Miso Paste, 1 tbsp
* Sauerkraut, 40g, minced
* Soy sauce, 2 tsp
* Molasses, 1 tsp
* Tuodong sweet soy sauce sub, ½ tbsp
* Bean sprouts -or- your veg of choice, ~30g
* Seasoning for the soup:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Sugar, 1/8 tsp
Chicken bouillon (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp
White pepper, 1/8 tsp
* Scallion, ~20g, sliced
* Cilantro, ~20g, chopped
* Lao Gan Ma chili crisp, 2 tbsp

Soak the rice noodles in cool water for at least four hours and up to overnight. Par boil for ~45 seconds, or until al dente. These can keep 1-2 days in the fridge.

Marinate your pork.

For the process for the soup, refer to the video at 10:19.

______
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Outro Music: คิดถึงคุณจัง by ธานินทร์ อินทรเทพ
Found via My Analog Journal (great channel)

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39 Comments

  1. Hey guys, a few notes:

    1. Before anything, a quick mea culpa that I forgot the rice noodle quantity in the VO! 125g of dried rice noodles per serving. Apologies about that.

    2. Obviously, for different varieties of rice noodles, it’s best to read the instructions on the package. That said, I know that depending where you purchase your noodles these instructions may or may not be in English. For the thicker sort of rice noodles (like Yunnan Mixian, Jiangxi Mifen, Guilin Mifen, etc etc), you’ll want a long soak – at least four hours – followed by the par-boil til al dente like we showed in the video. If you’re opting for thinner rice noodles like Pho noodles or Cantonese Hofun, you can skip the soak: simply par boil the noodles directly, shock with cool water, and reserve to use. And of course for fresh rice noodles, simply give them a good rinse, then use directly.

    3. We absolutely adore Yunnan food, but it’s undeniably often a little difficult on the ingredient-sourcing front (ironically, we’re actually a bit better positioned to cook Yunnan food here in Bangkok than we were in Guangdong). So for a dish like this… where the whole essence of the thing is to whip up something easy and soothing? Moving forward, we were thinking that – in addition to a more tried-and-true Yunnan version, obviously – we also wanted to approach these recipes with an eye for creating a ‘western supermarket club’ as well. Of course, fair warning that we are not chefs – our strength is research, not creating new dishes out of whole cloth. So definitely trust your own instincts.

    4. Re whipping up all those ‘Yunnan Ingredient Substitutes’ (the Suanyancai, Zhaotong chili sauce and so forth), I do hope the “per serving” instructions didn’t end up overly confusing. Because you obviously don’t want to go through all the trouble for just one bowl of rice noodles, you’ll want to scale those up by however many bowls you want over the weeks to come – personally, I’d probably prep enough for ten servings, but then again I also quite like these noodles.

    5. Thinking about it again though, I think proper recipe writers usually crack that nut by simply designing everything with X servings in mind. I dunno. For you, do you prefer a recipe that lists everything out ‘per serving’ to make the scaling math easy, or would you rather I assume that you’d make ten bowls?

    6. A quick word that the only source we know of re that whole ‘Cuanrou Mixian’ bit is Wang Zengqi himself. So like food history stories (which’re often frustratingly as much myth as they are history), take with a slight grain of salt.

    7. And for the ‘meat cake’ version that Steph was describing in the outro, definitely check out our friend Michelle’s recipe, over here: https://blog.themalamarket.com/yunnan-small-pot-rice-noodles-xiaoguo-mixian/

    As a general statement, Michelle has some fantastic recipes – probably some of the best English language stuff out there for Yunnan food – so definitely check our her series over at Mala Market or follow her over at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nosweetsour/ .

    That’s all I can think of for now. Next week’s video’ll be a little experimental (we’ll be talking a bit about stir-frying mise en place and such), but there’ll be a proper recipe video coming the following week 🙂

  4. its a nice idea with the two different versions!
    it gives me an idea about the original dish plus makes it available for me.
    it also gives me the chance to go somewhere inbetween. I won't go all the way to purchase Pixian doubanjiang, Sichuan chili bean paste and Mianchi, Cantonese ground bean paste.
    but I have some yang jiang femented beans in my cupboard, so I'll figure something out pounding them with miso and something spicy.

    the way you go with per serving is definitly fine, but it would also be fine if you'd design for 4 servings in mind.

    thanks for your great work guys 🙂

  12. I’m from Canada and we have a chain of asian supermarkets here. I was able to find basically everything needed for the more traditional version of this recipe, and made it today for lunch. It was so incredibly good and now I have a bunch of extra ingredients to make it many times over

  34. Small note with the miso. When adding miso to a soup, I often see a technique where they take the spoon/ladle they're using, just barely submerge it in the hot water, and mix the miso into the water using chopsticks (should work with a fork or whisk too). This breaks up the miso so that there's less likelihood of chunks floating around in the soup once you're done cooking.

  38. I'm also not sure if the pork patties used in Thai noodle soups is a coincidence or not, but I'd like to note that it's not restricted to northern Thailand. I actually see it all the time in central Thailand too, and in non-spicy dishes. I can't remember about other regions other than the north though, since I don't travel there often.

    Thai noodle dishes do trace their ancestry to China, though not sure how many Chinese immigrants were from Hunan. I think most were from the south of China.

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