Suzhou Big Meat Noodles (苏州枫镇大肉面)
Directly translated as 'big meat noodles', this is a classic noodle soup from the city of Suzhou. It's also an absurdly delicious dish, and one of the tastiest noodle soups we've ever eaten.
“Daroumian” (大肉面), directly translated as “Big Meat Noodles“, is an absolutely classic noodle dish from the Jiangsu province. The name “big meat” actually means pork, traditionally in some places in China, that’s what pork is called. And that’s topping for this noodle, a big slab of pork belly.
It’s an absurdly delicious but undeniably involved dish – and by ‘involved’ I mean… like, four-day project involved.
We did try testing a few shortcuts here or there, but nothing quite hit the same taste that you’d have in Suzhou. So I guess… I’m going to do what’s literally the opposite of what recipe writers should do. I’m not going to promise quick and easy. I’m going to promise… painstaking and complex.
This will probably be the most work you’ll ever put into a bowl of noodles. Will it be worth it? I think so. This recipe will also make for a bunch of leftover components so that you can continue having bowl after bowl of for the whole week, too. It’s also way more planning and waiting than it is active cooking, but that planning will also be crucial.
What makes this soup so logistically annoying to make at home? Well… it’s a pintang - that is, a soup that’s the combination of multiple soups. If you’ve ever had Lanzhou Beef Noodle soup, that is a pintang. Certain sorts of Japanese ramen could also be conceptualized as pintangs as well. This particular soup, our Big Meat Noodle, is a combination of:
Slow simmered pork belly
The spiced poaching liquid of the pork belly
An eel bone soup that uses the spiced poaching liquid as a base (we’ll be subbing the eel with fish and duck, more on that later)
A ginger-scallion oil made from the fat of the spiced poaching liquid
An actively fermenting Rhizopus koji jiuniang, mixed with water and fermented another day
It’s a mix that undeniable makes more sense for a restaurant than a home cook. And you know what? If you were living in Suzhou, I’d say “don’t make this dude, just go to a noodle shop”. But you don’t live in Suzhou. And it ain’t like there’s a swath of Suzhou restaurants all around the world. And you certainly aren’t gunna be traveling to Suzhou anytime soon. So if you want to make one of the world’s great noodle soups, you’re going to have to take matters in your own hands.
So given that this was such a… process, I wanted to organize this a bit differently than usual. Originally, I thought we could give out a ‘baker’s schedule’ of sorts to go along with this recipe (i.e. what you’d follow if you were making, like, a sourdough), but after playing around with it, it kind of felt like forcing a square peg in a round hole – we’re not baking bread, after all.
So the approach of this recipe is a bit different than our usual ones. This one is written based on the logic of a baker’s schedule – i.e. Day 1 your do this, Day 2 your do that, etc etc. I’m not sure how well it worked though, so feel free to just take a look at the video if you want something structured a bit more traditionally.
Ingredients for All the Components
Fermented Rice:
So this will make an ingredient called – depending where you are in China – either ‘laozao’ (醪糟) or ‘jiuniang’ (酒酿). I’m just going to call it ‘fermented rice’ for the purpose of this specific recipe.
Sticky rice (糯米), 500g. Any sort of glutinous rice is fine.
Rice leaven (甜酒曲), Rhizopus spp, 2g.
Bottled water, 150g. Or whatever drinking water. Boiled water, whatever. I just don’t trust our taps for fermentation – might be overly paranoid.
Note on rice leaven: Ok, so unless you’re a fermentation geek, you’re probably asking “what the fuck is Rhizopus”? Well… you’re probably familiar with Japanese Koji – Aspergillus Oryzae, yeah? This guy is similar. It’s used to make lightly fermented rice products, as well as certain varieties of Chinese rice wine. I promise you that it’s available online – search “rice leaven” into Amazon and you can find little packs of the stuff. Should also be available at many Chinese supermarkets. Note that while Koji can also work in a pinch, the method to make it is quite different. For more information on that route, you can follow the instructions in this video here (basically, make Japanese amazake but don’t blend it).
Slow Simmered Pork Belly:
Bone-in, skin-on pork belly (in an ideal world) -or- 1kg skin-on pork belly (totally workable) -or- 1kg of whatever pork belly you can find.
Optional: Zaolu, “Superior Pickle Sauce” (糟卤), ~2 bottles.
Note on choice of pork: So in an ideal world, the cut you’d be working with here’s called “肋条肉” – basically, it’s a bone-in pork belly (i.e. a pork belly with the rib attached). Unfortunately, where we live in Guangdong, the markets don’t really carry that cut – the best we could do is a skin-on belly. Not a huge problem – if you’re working with a similar situation as us, just use bone-out and add ~200g of pork bones/scraps with bone to make up for the lack of rib. Lastly, I do know that skin-on belly can be tough to find in some places – while we think that skin-off would be possible, we do worry that the fat might melt too much during the simmering process (so just keep an eye on it).
Note on “pickle sauce”: Super optional, but we think that it’d be a nice idea. Basically, after braising some shops’ll soak the pork belly overnight in some of this pickling liquid. Should be available at most Chinese supermarkets, where it’s labeled ‘superior pickle sauce’.
Pork Belly Poaching Liquid:
Water, ~2.5L.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 3 tbsp.
Salt, 1 tbsp. Swap to ~2tsp if using salted Shaoxing wine.
Star anise (八角), 1.
Cinnamon stick (桂皮), ½.
Fennel seed (小茴香), ¼ tsp.
Whole Sichuan peppercorns, (花椒), ¼ tsp.
Two inches of ginger (姜). Both smashed.
Two large scallions (葱). Tied in a knot.
Fish-duck soup: (eel bones are traditional)
So the hallmark of this soup is freshwater river eel bones. Which… presents a sourcing problem for basically all of y’all outside of China. We did try to sub them with salt-water eel, but it really didn’t hit the same notes.
But surprisingly for me at least, tasting water simmered with eel bones in isolation had a surprising… ‘ducky-ness’ to it, if that makes any sense. It was still missing a sort of freshwater-fishy quality to it though, so we tried to see if we could replicate it with a combination of bone-in duck and… river fish.
It worked about as well as anything’s gunna work here, I think. I’d say our substitute gets you about 90% of the way there, and it is delicious, so definitely don’t feel bad or drive yourself crazy trying to find river eel bones.
If you do happen to live somewhere with easy access to river eel bones, use a half a kilo’s worth.
Bone-in duck, 250g. Something like a couple duck legs should work great here.
Flaky river fish, e.g. Tilapia (罗非鱼), 250g. I know that tilapia is apparently only one or two steps above rat-meat in the eyes of some. If you’re an anti-Tilapia zealot, feel free to use whatever flaky river fish you like – we just couldn’t think of any more available worldwide than Tilapia is.
Ginger (姜), ~2 inches. Smashed.
Scallion (葱), 2 large. Tied in a knot.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 2 tbsp
The pork poaching liquid from above, two liters.
Ingredients, Ginger-Scallion Oil:
Reserved lard from skimming the pork poaching liquid, 1/3 cup. We’ll be chilling and de-fatting the pork poaching liquid. That fat’ll form the base of this.
Ginger (姜), 2 inches. Thinly sliced.
Scallion (葱), 20g. Cut into ~2 inch sections.
Ingredients, to make the final soup:
Duck-fish soup from above, 300g. Or eel bone, if you went that route.
Pork poaching liquid, 50g.
Ingredients, a bowl of Big Meat Noodle soup:
Xiyuanmian (细圆面) -or- Japanese somen noodles -or- whatever sort of dried non-alkaline, non-egg noodles you can find -or- whatever the hell noodle you feel like, ~80g. So the noodles that we used we a sort of bog-standard supermarket noodle called ‘xiyuanmian’, which’re functionally almost completely identical to Japanese somen noodles. But really, just use whatever noodle you think would be tasty.
Salt, 1/8 tsp.
Sugar, 1/4 tsp.
Optional: MSG (味精). Just a tiny spinkle.
Ginger-Scallion Oil, 1 tbsp.
Fermented Rice water, 2 tbsp. The proper name for this fermenter rice water is ‘jiunianglu’ (酒酿卤), as an aside. I’ll just be calling it ‘fermented rice water’ in this recipe.
Chopped Scallions.
Serve alongside julienned ginger and a big slab of your pork.
How to Make Big Meat Noodles, start to finish
So right, this is … experimental. I usually generally try to avoid saying stuff like “in the morning, do this; in the afternoon, do that”, mostly because I believe what works for my mise won’t necessarily work for someone else’s life and setup. If you want something organized in the normal fashion, do check out the accompanying video.
There’s three time consuming moving pieces here: the fermenting rice, prepping the pork belly, and prepping the soup. Once you’ve completed these three things… all those elements can keep quite well. The soups and pork belly can be frozen; the fermented rice water lasts at least a week in the fridge.
Day 1: Prep the Fermented Rice by Soaking the Sticky Rice
Evening:
Thoroughly wash your sticky rice.
Here you take your rinsing a bit further than you’d usually go with for white rice or whatever – you want to wash it until the water basically runs clear (5-6 times).
Soak the rice overnight.
Day 2: Start the Fermented Rice
Morning:
Drain the rice, transfer to a steamer lined with cloth.
Spread the rice out evenly over the strainer, then poke some holes in the rice with your fingers to allow it to cook more evenly.
Place steamer above a rapidly bubbling pot of water and steam for 45 minutes. Every 15 minutes, pour over ~1/2 cup of water over the rice.
Pouring the water over the rice ensures that it doesn’t dry out during steaming. Also, take note of the water level in your steamer – you might need to add more if things’re drying up.
Remove the sticky rice, give it a few flips, wait for it to cool down to 35C. Once cool, transfer it to a large bowl.
Mix the Rhizopus with the water, then sprinkle it on the now-cooled sticky rice.
Pat the rice down a bit with your hands, then make a little ‘hole’ in the center of it with your finger.
That little hole will be our ‘window’ to see if the fermentation is finished. If it’s got liquid, it’s good to use.
Ferment the rice for 36 hours at 30C.
So generally fermenting this stuff’s always been a summer thing – so if you’re in the Northern hemisphere, you’re in luck. Our oven also has a fermentation setting where we can set the temperature to something as low as 30C, which also obviously works great.
Day 3: Poach the Pork Belly, finish the Fermented Rice and start the Fermented Rice water:
Morning:
Prep and soak the pork belly.
First scrape any hairs off the surface of the skin, then drop it into cool water. Soak the pork belly for at least one hour to draw out a bit of myoglobin – this will give the pork a more flushed, attractive look in the end.
Add the pork skin side down together with the ‘ingredients for the Pork Belly Poaching Liquid’ Bring up to a boil, down to a simmer, and simmer on low – covered - for four hours.
So to jog your memory, that’s the 3 tbsp Shaoxing wine, the 1 tbsp salt, 1 star anise, ½ cinnamon stick, ¼ tsp fennel seed, ¼ tsp Sichuan peppercorn, 2 inches smashed ginger, and 2 large scallions. Oh! And also any pork bones/boney pork scraps if you’re using bone-out belly. As it’s coming up to a boil, also skim it a bit if you find it a bit gunky.
Afternoon:
Shut off the heat, let it all come completely down to room temperature, ~3-4 hours.
Keep your lid covered during this process. Sometimes we actually let this go overnight if we start later on in the day, but I guess you shouldn’t flirt with that too hard for food safety reasons? Dunno.
Evening:
Remove the pork from the stock, pat dry with paper towels.
Carefully remove the belly – you don’t want the fat to break. Dry it off a bit.
Cover the pork belly with seran wrap, transfer to the fridge.
We need this to firm up.
Strain the soup, also toss in the fridge.
We’ll need to de-fat the stock later.
Go back to the fermenting rice – there should be liquid. Remove 100g and toss in a bowl. Transfer the remainder of the fermenting rice to the fridge.
Yeah, I know, we’re annoying and’ll only use 100 grams of this stuff. But the remainder makes for a great snack (I like hitting it with a touch of lemon and eating with a spoon) – it keeps for about a week in the fridge as is.
Mix that 100g of actively fermenting rice with 100g of water. Ferment at 25-30C for at least 24 hours.
Day 4: Cut the pork belly, make the soup, make the seasoned oil, make your noodles.
Morning:
Remove the pork belly from the fridge, cut into 2cm strips, and slice those in half.
First trim off any ugly bits, then slice the pork into nice, attractive strips. You should have ~5-7 strips. Then cut those in half to get your final pieces… each bowl of soup will have one large piece of pork (so this should be enough for 10-14 servings, pork-wise).
Transfer the pork pieces to the fridge, optionally soaking them in the Zaolu superior pickle sauce.
The pork will need to be cold right to the point of serving. If soaking the pork in the pickle sauce, just crack open a bottle of the stuff and pour it into a plastic container. Then pile the pork pieces in. You might need two bottles to soak all of the pieces. You could perhaps soak half, keep half unsoaked if that sounds slightly wasteful to your ears (bottles are $3-4 stateside).
Defat the poaching liquid.
Remove the poaching liquid from the fridge, and scoop off the fat from the top. Get all of it, but we’ll only need 1/3 of a cup today. If you have a little extra, your could leave it for the birds or save it – the stuff makes for an awesome frying oil for some stir fried vegetables.
Make the ginger-scallion oil: fry the ginger and scallion with the skimmed fat over a low flame, ~10 minutes; then up the flame to medium and fry for another ~10 minutes.
Or until the scallions are crispy and golden brown. I like starting this on a low flame mostly because I kinda suck at de-fatting stock (and inevitably bring a some liquid with the fat in the process), and the low flame’ll allow that moisture to bubble off without popping too crazy on you.
Strain the oil.
Reserve, obviously.
Start the soup: blanch the fish and duck in boiling water for ~3 minutes.
Optionally swirl in a bit of Shaoxing wine in your blanching water if you like. Blanching first will make our soup clearer in the end, as well as giving it a slightly cleaner flavor.
Remove the fish and duck, rinse under running water.
To remove any gunk from the blanch.
Add the fish and duck to a pot together with the ‘ingredients for the fish-duck soup’. Get it up to a light boil then down to a simmer, and cook – covered – for three hours.
So that’s the two inches of smashed ginger, the two large scallions, the two tablespoons Shaoxing, and two liters of the reserved defatted pork poaching liquid. You really want to make sure this’s going at the lowest flame your stove’ll go, else the fish can cloud the soup.
Afternoon:
Carefully remove the fish and duck pieces from the soup.
These simmered fish and duck pieces aren’t going to be used in the final dish or anything, but they’re still good to eat. So… I dunno, dip them in soy sauce and munch on them with your lunch or something? Could be a good post-workout thing too if you’re into that.
Strain the soup.
Reserve, obviously.
Evening:
Ok, showtime.
Get everything ready to go here because what we need is this: cool pork belly hitting piping hot bowl of noodles. That’s the magic. You want everything to be hot enough so that when you eat it the pork feels, well, hot… and the fat melts in your mouth. But if the pork’s too warm beforehand? The fat’ll melt and leave you with a greasy soup. It’s been four days of work now, don’t fuck up…
(just kidding, don’t stress… after all, you’ve got 10-14 bowls of noodles ahead of you, right?)
But yeah, take your pork out of the fridge, keep it in a cool place in your house (not the kitchen). Take our your fermented rice water. Take out your ginger-scallion oil. Get some chopped scallions and julienned ginger ready. Make sure your salt and such is within arm’s reach.
Boil your noodles.
According to the package, or until a touch past al dente.
While you’re boiling your noodles, rinse your serving bowls down with some of the boiling water.
These serving bowls need to be really hot. At a lot of noodle shops in Suzhou they’ll just keep them in a rolling steamer – that’s also an option if you like.
Remove the noodles, spin them in your strainer to get a sexy-looking circular shape if you’re feeling a bit fancy.
Separate burner, combine the 300 grams of the duck-fish soup together with 50 grams of the pork poaching liquid. Get to a rolling boil.
Season your bowl of noodles.
So that was the 1/8 tsp salt, optional sprinkle of MSG, ¼ tsp sugar, 1 tbsp ginger-scallion oil and two tablespoons of the fermented rice water.
Add the piping hot soup into your piping hot bowl of noodles.
Sprinkle over the scallions.
Serve immediately with the pork and some julienned ginger on the side. To eat, toss the pork in the bowl and munch on it as you’re eating your noodles. Enjoy a ridiculously delicious bowl of soup noodles.