How to Top a Biang Biang Noodle
Four different toppings, besides the classic Chili Oil sort
So there’s a solid number of recipes online on the subject of Biang Biang noodles – i.e. those wide ‘hand ripped’ noodles from the Chinese northwest. And why not? They’re tasty as hell, and on the grand spectrum of “handmade Chinese noodles” are one of the easier sort to whip up. And if you’re curious to see how they’re made, a while back we had a post on the topic.
There’s much less out there, however, on the subject of Biang Biang noodle toppings. See, if you go to a noodle shop in Xi’an, you’re presented with a number of different toppings – you choose what you want, and you mix it all up. So today I wanted to cover four different toppings:
Braised pork (臊子). Probably one of the most classic Northwestern noodle toppings.
Stewed tomato and egg (西红柿鸡蛋卤). That bog standard tomato & egg stir fry is another popular choice, but this post’ll show you the stewed version (more on that later).
Blanched Chinese chives (韭菜). Often seen in conjunction with these other toppings.
Cumin Lamb (孜然羊肉/馕包肉). So “cumin lamb” is probably (by far) the most well known Biang Biang noodle topping out there, but… it unfortunately isn’t too much of a thing here in China. It was popularized in the West by a restaurant called “Xi’an Famous Foods” – I’ve never eaten there so I figured a copycat recipe would be out of line, so instead the recipe here is an adapted form of the Xinjiang dish “Nangbaorou”, which was one of the few Chinese braises (that I’m aware of) that feature cumin. More on this later.
For any and all of these, feel free to play around and toss on whatever noodle you like. While these are classic for Biang Biang noodles, you certainly do see them with other noodle dishes too.
In addition to each topping, I’ll also cover how to assemble a bowl of Biang Biang noodles at the end.
Braised Pork
Ingredients, Braised Pork
Pork Belly (五花肉) -or- Pork Ham (后腿肉), 500g. Pork belly is most traditional, but we’ll be separating this out into the lean and fat, so we personally went with the ham cut (i.e. the leg). Skin removed.
Aromatics for the braise: 2 cloves crushed garlic, 2 ~inch long sections of welsh onion (大葱) -or- the white portion of two scallions. So welsh onion or “dacong” is often erroneously referred to in many places as ‘leek’ (lord knows I’ve fucked that up in the past) – it’s also used in Korean cooking where it’s referred to as “Daepa” (if my google-fu is correct). Don’t feel like sourcing it? No worries. In the south of China people’ll use the white bottom part of scallion instead, so feel free to do the same.
Spices for the braise: 1 cinnamon/cassia stick (桂皮), 2 star anise (八角), 1 dried bay leaf (香叶).
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tbsp. For use while stir-frying.
Light soy sauce (生抽), ¼ cup.
Dark Chinese vinegar (陈醋/香醋), 2 tbsp. There’s two types of ‘dark Chinese vinegar’: Chinkiang vinegar (镇江/香醋) and Shanxi Mature Vinegar (陈醋). The latter would be more authentic here but either sort would work cut fine – they’re by and large direct subs for eachother (Shanxi mature is slightly sharper).
Hot, boiled water; 1 cup.
Seasoning for the braise: ¼ tsp salt, sprinkle of MSG (味精). By sprinkle like a tiny little sprinkle… e.g. ~1/16 tsp.
Slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch (生粉) mixed with a tbsp of water. Or potato, cassava, or tapioca starch if you feel strongly on the subject.
Process, Braised Pork Topping:
Separate the lean from the fat, and cut both into ~1/2 inch cubes. If you working with an extremely evenly layered pork belly, feel free to save yourself the headache on skip the separating on the lean/fat bit. Note that if you’re following along in the video, there we actually screwed up and cut the pork a bit too big – our bad.
Smash the garlic, cut the welsh onion/scallion.
Blanch the lean pork for ~2 minutes in boiling water. Drop the pork into some boiling water and let it cooks for a couple minutes. This mellows the so-called ‘shanwei’ of the pork and’ll give your braise a cleaner taste. Is ‘shanwei’ a variable when buying refrigerated pork from the supermarket? Feels like it could be much less so… my personal theory is that the three categories of ‘unpleasant odors’ in Chinese cooking volatile compounds arising from lipid oxidation, which would obviously be much less of a thing if you’re not buying stuff fresh from open-air markets. So… yeah, up to you. I’d still do the blanching step.
Fry the pork, then add in the spices/aromatics and braise. Ok, so with your flame on medium, in a dry wok first add in the pork fat. Let that fry and render out for ~3 minutes, or once it’s starting to turn lightly golden and your looking at a solid pool on oil to fry in. Alternatively, if you’re not separating out the lean/fat, start things off with a touch of oil. Then:
Pork lean, in. Fry for ~3 minutes until everything’s good and golden brown.
Aromatics, in. Fry for ~1 minute or until fragrant.
Spices, in. Fry for ~1 minute.
Swirl that tablespoon of liaojiu wine over your spatula and around the sides of the wok. Quick mix.
Add in the soy sauce, the vinegar, and the water. If using a wok, optionally transfer the contents to a different cooking vessel at this point so that you don’t strip your wok’s seasoning. Or, you know, yolo I guess.
Get up to a boil, then swap the flame to low and cover. Simmer for ~45 minutes or until pork is tender.
Remove the spices and ginger.
Season, then mix in the slurry. Fin.
Stewed Tomato and Eggs
Ok, so… tomato and eggs. I know it’s like everyone’s favorite stir fry. A huge chunk of China grew up with the stuff, it’s a familiar comfort food, and hell… even among Western expats I know here, it’s a crowd pleaser.
Here’s the thing though… neither me nor Steph actually like the dish. It was actually something we bonded over on our very first date. So many people’ve requested we make it, but we just… can’t. In the process of testing and adjusting the dish, we’d probably end up making something completely different (knowing us, it’d probably somehow turn into shakshuka)… satisfying no one. Nobody’s interested in “Chris and Steph’s wacky fusion variety hour”.
Stewed tomato and egg though is a bit more up our alley – it’s basically a tomato and egg for people that don’t like tomato and egg. You could kind of conceptualize it as a quick-and-lazy tomato sauce mixed with a bit of egg. Works for me.
Ingredients, stewed tomato and eggs:
Tomatoes, 2.
Egg, 1 small. Stewed tomato and egg uses a large quantity of tomato in relation to egg than the stir-fry.
Aromatics: 2 cloves smashed garlic, ~1 inch smashed ginger (姜).
Optional: 1/2 cup water; slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch (生粉) mixed with a tablespoon of water. So right, in stewed tomato and egg, some people add water and finish with a bit of a slurry. It’s up to you but we felt that going that route had a bit of a weak tomato taste… if I did so, I’d probably personally fry a dollop of tomato paste in the beginning with the aromatics to make up for it, but… nobody’s interested in ‘wacky fusion fun time with Chris’.
Seasoning: ¼ tsp salt, ½ tsp sugar, sprinkle of MSG (味精).
Toasted sesame oil (麻油), ~1/2 tsp. For finishing.
Process, stewed tomato and eggs:
Optional: remove the peel of the tomato. So yeah one of the things we don’t really like about the tomato and egg stir fry is the inclusion of tomato skins. So if you’re like us, peel the tomato like I know you know how: cut a little x on the bottom of the tomato, give it a brief blanch in boiling water for ~1 minute, remove, and peel. For stewed tomato and egg… some people do this, some don’t… it’s up to you.
Dice the tomato, smash the garlic and the ginger, beat the egg until no stray strands of egg white remain. For the tomato and egg stir fry, the tomato is cut into wedges, but for stewed tomato & egg we’ll want a dice so things break down quicker.
Fry the egg, then remove. So in a pan toss in ~3 tbsp of oil and heat it up until bubbles form around a pair of chopsticks (~165C). Then drop in your beat egg – it should puff up in a real satisfying way. Shut off the heat, give it an ever so brief scramble with chopsticks, remove and reserve.
Fry the aromatics, simmer the tomato. So same pan, flame on medium fry the garlic/ginger for ~30 second or until fragrant. Then add in the diced tomato and let it bubble away to break down… ~6 minutes.
Once the tomato’s mostly broken down, remove the aromatics. Or munch on them, whatever you want.
Season, then add back in the eggs. Drizzle over a bit of the toasted sesame oil. Quick mix, then done.
Jiucai Chinese Chives
Ok, so it’d feel a bit absurd to write out a whole ‘ingredients’ and ‘process’ thing here because there’s really not much to thing.
Cut off the hard bottom bit of the Chinese chives and toss it. Then cut the remainder into ~1 cm pieces, and give it a quick blanch in boiling water for about a minute.
Cumin Lamb
This was a tough one to conceptualize. When we did our old Biang Biang noodle post, Cumin lamb was by far the most requested topping.
But… if you stumbled into a noodle shop in Xi’an, you’re probably not going to find a cumin lamb topping. See, Biang Biang noodles were first popularized in the West by a small eatery in Queens (not so small anymore) called Xi’an Famous Foods, and their signature topping’s cumin lamb. I want to emphasize though that there’s nothing inauthentic about that… a lot of noodle shops in Xi’an have their own house toppings. But we’ve never been to a Xi’an Famous Foods, so this definitely presented a problem… because here, cumin is primarily used with fried or roasted lamb.
The only braised lamb dish that we could think of that used cumin is a Xinjiang dish called nangbaorou. It’s an incredible dish, well worth trying if you get the chance – it’s basically braised lamb smothered all over a Uighur naan bread (think Iranian naan, not Indian).
Xi’an Famous Foods, meanwhile appears to do a version of “Hongmen Lamb” (红焖羊肉)… braising the lamb with chilis and oil. You can definitely find this as a noodle topping in the Northwest, but we haven’t seen anyone add cumin to it. We were torn between teaching you that and this – while we know that hongmen lamb might be closer to what a Xi’an Famous Foods fan might want, we couldn’t exactly call it ‘cumin lamb’. “Cumin lamb with no cumin” would have the potential to be a bigger controversy than when I added a small dollop of LKK oyster sauce to thicken our homemade oyster sauce lol. We could’ve just added a dash of cumin to hongmen lamb, but then how would we know how much of a cumin kick they use? It’d be much too speculative.
So to crack this nut we got a bit creative and adapted nangbaorou to work as a noodle topping. That said, we didn’t want this to be our Nangbaorou recipe. It’s an awesome dish and we do still have to do some research on the topic in order to make sure it’s the most proper Xinjiang style. The topping was mostly an amalgamation of Nangbaorou recipes we found online adapted to work as a noodle topping. Honestly though? I loved this stuff.
Ingredients, Cumin Lamb:
Lamb leg (羊腿肉), 500g.
Kashmiri chili (新疆线椒), ~2. Dried, you should be able to find these on Amazon. They’re a classic chili to Xinjiang cuisine and’re great because they’ve got this vibrant red color. You could alternatively use Korean reds – or any dried chili you know of that’s (1) not overly spicy and (2) has a vibrant red color.
Spices: 2 tsp cumin seed (孜然籽), 1 dried bay leaf (香叶), 1 cinnamon/cassia stick (桂皮), 1 star anise (八角), 1 Tsaoko/Chinese black cardamom (草果). Note that if you can’t find the Tsaoko/Chinese black cardamom just skip the thing – I know it can be a tough one for some to source. Also, some recipes for Nangbaorou use cumin powder in place of seed… we just preferred whole seeds.
Aromatics: 2 cloves smashed garlic, 2 one inch sections smashed ginger (姜), 2 one inch sections welsh onion (大葱) -or- white part of scallion (葱). Same deal as with the pork topping – just swap the welch onion for scallion if it’s expensive/hard to find.
Light soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp.
Salt, 1 tsp. To season.
Slurry of 1 tsp cornstarch (生抽) thickened with 1 tbsp water. To thicken at the end.
Process, Cumin Lamb:
Ok, so here’s the deal: you can pretty much turn any braise you can dream of into a noodle topping by (1) cutting the meat smaller so it can incorporate with the noodles better and (2) adjusting the cooking times accordingly. So… that’s precisely what we did here.
Snip the Kashmiri chili into ~1/2 cm sections, then reconstitute with hot, boiled water. Let it soak for at least 30 minutes.
Trim the lamb and cut into ~1 inch cubes. For us, we separated the lean from the fat and fried the fat at first to render out a bit of oil. That’s basically just our own personal approach though, so up to you.
Smash the garlic and the ginger, cut the welsh onion/scallion.
Blanch the lamb pieces in boiling water for ~2 minutes. Is this step necessary? Man, it’s been ages since I’ve cooked with lamb in the West. Given that they’re a loud subsect of people out there that complain about ‘the smell of lamb’, I’ll say “yeah, blanch it”.
Fry the lamb, then the aromatics/spices, cover with water, braise. So yeah, same deal as the pork, we fried the lamb fat first over a medium/medium-high flame… then added the lean. Because there wasn’t a ton of lamb fat though, we first tossed in a tablespoon of oil to help things get started. Then after about 2-3 minutes of frying:
Lamb, in. Fry for ~3 minutes or until it’s starting to get good and browned.
Aromatics, in. ~15 second fry, or until fragrant.
All the spices minus the cumin, in. ~15 second fry.
Chili, in. Fry for ~1 minute.
Cumin, in. Quick fry.
Add enough hot boiled water to submerge everything, then toss on a tablespoon of soy sauce.
Bring to a boil then down to simmer, cover and cook over a low flame.
Simmer for ~45 minutes, or until lamb is suitably tender for you.
Remove any spices/aromatics you don’t want to be munching on. Season with salt.
Thicken with the slurry.
Assembling your Biang Biang Noodles
In the end, there’s one thing that every Biang Biang noodle needs: oil. You could go nuts and put an Italian bolognaise on this stuff (I’m sure that’d taste good, right?) but you’ll still need some hot oil lest the noodles form into one clumpy mass.
Besides oil though, many Biang Biang noodles’ll include (per 500g of noodles, i.e. two small servings or one real large one):
• Whatever toppings you want.
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce (生抽).
• 1 tbsp dark Chinese vinegar (香醋/陈醋).
• 1/8 tsp salt.
• Sprinkle of MSG (味精).
• ~1 tbsp worth of minced Welsh onion (you can also use scallion)
• ~2 cloves of minced garlic.
• ~1/2 tbsp of chili powder (辣椒面)
Now heat up a quarter cup of oil (again, for that 500g of noodles) til you start to see wisps of smoke, ~210C or so. Drizzle that over the noodles, aiming for the chili powder/aromatics.
Then just mix it all up into the elegant cacophony that is a Biang Biang noodle, and eat the thing.