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Shaxian Peanut Sauce Noodles (沙县拌面)

Chinese Cooking Demystified
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EDIT: Recipe card for use in the kitchen is here if you like: https://i.imgur.com/IeKIRyH.png . Huge thank you to its creator whitelotuswarrior (Twitter: @rad_sad_q ) - they did an absolutely fantastic job with it! Hey guys, a few notes: 1. So one important consideration - peanut oil. The bog standard sort of peanut oil in the West is a RBD oil, which means the peanut flavor is very subtle in it. Chinese peanut oil is, as far as I can tell, is 'semi-refined' - it has a high smoked point while still retaining a good bit of peanut flavor. We're unfortunately not educated on the specifics of Chinese peanut oil manufacture (not for lack of searching lol). While Chinese peanut oil is available at many Chinese or Asian supermarkets, we think you can still use the Western peanut oil here. You could perhaps mix in a touch (~1 tsp or so) of toasted sesame oil into your finished product to compensate for the less nutty base oil. 2. Another consideration - water. As you can see at 0:50, a bit of the noodle cooking water comes along for the ride when transferring it over to the bowl. We'd estimate that to be roughly one tablespoon's worth, (or even more, honestly). Don't drive yourself crazy about trying to get the exact quantity of noodle water correct! Just do a not-paranoid job transferring them to your plate, mix them, and if the sauce is still a bit thick to your tastes... just add a touch more of the noodle cooking water to help bring it all together. 3. So then, if we're relying on our eyeballs a bit... how saucy should this dish be? As soon as you add in the noodles, you might be thinking "uh... this might be too much water". You can take a look at the consistency of the street vendor at 0:50, ours at 3:57, or even the chain's at 0:23 (the chain's is especially watery at first). Once you mix it, the sauce'll emulsify and cling to the noodles - it'll look about the consistency of a Carbonara or a Dan Dan Noodle. As it sits though, the noodle will begin to absorb the sauce and look dryer - take a look at 1:05 for how it'll look ~10 minutes later (this aspect of the dish makes it uh... challenging to film lol). 4. If you're a vegetarian, Halal/Kosher, or if lard's just annoying for you to buy... swap the lard for peanut oil. Lard just has a nice, rich mouthfeel to it - it's tasty, but you wouldn't be missing much. On a similar note, if you just so happen to have scallion oil around (e.g. from making scallion oil noodles, or many Dim Sum items), just use the scallion oil that you have at your disposal. 5. Another potential shortcut is just using bottled 'seasoned soy sauce' in place of the homemade. Something like this would be totally fine too: https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kum-Seasoned-Sauce-Seafood/dp/B0000DJYWR 6. Apologies for not showing how to make the Shaxian sort of alkaline noodles from scratch - ever since the Lanzhou Lamian project, we've been feeling some noodle-making burnout lol. If you can understand Chinese, here's a clip of a chef from Shaxian showing how to make it: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1pZ4y1K7LH/ 7. A random thing I'm kicking myself over - in the outro I was totally planning on including this clip when Steph was discussing noodles: https://streamable.com/4i0abl That noodle drawer is charming as hell. 8. If any of you get the chance, we'd heavily recommend taking a trip to Shaxian sometime. It's about a ~2.5 hour fast train from Fuzhou (an under-rated city in its own right). The snack places are... incredible. One of the most under-rated food destinations in the country, which's honestly surprising given the chain's massive reach. The scenery is pretty gorgeous as well.
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Frying the peanut butter for that extra toasty flavor is genius!! I used to have these noodles many times a week. I am now secretly hoping you give shaxian‘s fish balls a go some day!
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Things I love: fast, high deliciousness to effort ratio, and noodles.
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Vegans out there: Switch the lard with some leek or scallion oil and you're golden, this is gonna be your new Ramen cheap n' easy recipe, it's soooooo good. The flavors blend together so welll and as described in the comments the sauce gets soaked up by the noodles it's incredible. Together with some bog standard veg from the freezer (throw it frozen into the pasta water while you are bringing it to a boil and fish it out when its done) you have your perfect lazy meal.
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My girlfriend and I just tried this recipe, and "aggressively delicious" is absolutely accurate to describe how it tastes ; so much that we had a second serving ! We didn't have lard on hand so we used regular cooking oil instead and it worked perfectly.
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2:50 "When you can start to see some slight wisps of smoke" Wok: aggressively smoking
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I got so excited when I saw this in my feed, it's nice to get a (at least easily convertible to) vegetarian recipe from you guys.
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Fun fact(?): Adams, the natural peanut butter brand, started selling a “dark roast” variant maybe around a year ago. I tried a jar at the time, looking forward to toastier flavours, and surprised myself by being disappointed with how it didn’t taste “right” for peanut butter to me. Like, it seemed every bit as quality as regular Adams, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be much better suited for some sort of other application far removed from normal peanut butter duties (toast, bread, apples, celery, cookies, etc. etc.). I think I just found a good reason to try another jar.
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Or for broke college student version: Make instant ramen. Realize you've had it three times that week already. Reserve half a cup of broth, mix it all with peanut butter and soy-sauce. Eat. Its... okay!
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Just tried making this, 10/10. The frying totally added a new dimension to the peanut flavor. I'll definitely be making this again! Thanks for the video!
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Dog: AM I INVISIBLE TO YOU?!
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My mom used to make a version of this for me and then in college I ate a collegey version of this with ramen and sriracha virtually daily for probably a year or two. A touch of sesame oil and chinkiang vinegar does wonders too when feeling fancy.
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I love it how you guys always take into consideration that some of us don't live in China. Greatly appreciated!
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I'm absolutely in love with this recipe. I made a big batch of peanut and seasoned soy sauce and have a bottle of scallion oil around at all times anyway so these are incredibly simple to make now. My favourite noodles for this recipe is just using plain instant ramen that I can by in portions of 5 from my local Chinese grocery store. Thank you for this recipe!
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Just tried this for the first time. It's so uncomplicated and delicious at the same time. Might become one of my favorite dishes
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I love this channel. Its like if the LAW AND ORDER voice over had a food channel “In the food cooking world, the are two types of recipes. The regular recipes, and the easy to understand, well filmed recipes. These are the story of the latter” DUN DUN!
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I LOVE PEANUT SAUCE. I could practically drink peanut sauce so I’m super excited to try these noodles
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I'm 3 years late but I had to drop a comment for this one. "Aggressively delicious" is the perfect description for this recipe. It's amazing
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Just made this and it was great. However, a word to the wise: avoid heavy bottom pots for toasting the peanut sauce. I used one and it continued to cook after being taken off the heat, transforming my dark sun-kissed peanut sauce into a blackened burning mess.
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Love the dog. Looks to be saying “Enough talking. Let’s eat.”
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