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) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHaL5H-VYRg
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 🙂
New CCD? I click
Heroes!
Sometimes you have some sort of rice noodles and don't feel like stir-frying. Thanks for enlighting us with food from the holy soup pantheon and also making it possible enough for us mere non-china inhabitants ????
I would bet Kimchi would also be tasty in place of sauerkraut here. My local kroger carries it right next to the sauerkraut, same brand, along with fermented beets
fascinating, as always!
Me trying to make this in a big pot:
*GIF of Jordan Peele sweating like a waterfall*
Yunnan dishes are so interesting :') more Yunnan dishes please!
I wonder if I were to stop the assembly process once the meet is cooked if I could then take all the components make make the soup for lunch at the office reboiling the broth in the microwave
Funnily enough, SouthEast Asian grocers sell a thick dark soy sauce that's been mixed with molasses already. I've actually been mistakenly thinking that stuff was just regular dark soy sauce until I learned that dark soy sauce isn't supposed to be sweet. Whoops
is there a good gluten free sub for doubanjiang?
If you can get them, tofu skin is highly recommended as a topping. Also, nobody asked, but my preferred veg for this (alongside the jiu cai which are mandatory) is snow pea shoots.
'Fiery' and 'soothing' are very conflicting phrases to me ????
At the end, I think you were talking about น้ำเงี้ยว Nam Ngiao? Which has different recipes across regions, and is often eaten with ขนมจีน Kanom Cheen (lit. Dessert + Chinese ????) which is a fermented noodle. The name might explain its possible origins ????. Wiki said it's been eaten there since in the Lanna Kingdom (1292–1775) though, so the origination might be quite far in the past.
*all the English is my transliteration of some sort
okay soooo now i need a video on the pantheon of rice noodle soups lol
This is my hometown dish. ❤I haven’t had it for almost 10 years!
I always ate it before it was cool down and this hurts my tongue and mouth. ????
Thank you.
I take it that fiery means extremely hot and spicy?
I used to soak my rice noodles for hours, but I've figured out a lazier way that I prefer, which is bringing a pot of water with the dry noodles to a boil and immediately shutting off the heat and covering with a lid for about half an hour. This lets it basically steam and soften so you don't have a hard center in much less time, and doesn't overcook it like what can happen if you immediately boil from dry.
Of course I still drain and rinse with cold water when the noodles are to my liking to keep some bite to the noodles
Would you like authentic Mohinga recipe? From my Burmese background
You could have started by calling it authentic before adding sauerkraut and Japanese soy. 🙂 The comment section would have been unforgettable!
Great videos! I learned a lot, where are you in the U.S. I think? Love from Napa California