Beijing-style noodles with soybean sauce

Your ingredients

Get ready: Kitchen scales, chopping board, mixing bowls, measuring spoons and a suitable saucepan or frying pan.

• 🥩280 g pork mince
• 🥣2 tbsp neutral cooking oil
• 🥬3 spring onions, chopped, white and green parts separate
• 🥣1 tsp minced ginger
• 🥣1 star anise
• 💧1 tbsp unsalted stock instead of cooking wine
• 🥣4 tbsp Chinese yellow soybean paste
• 🥣2 tbsp sweet wheat sauce, tian mian jiang, or hoisin
• 💧160 ml water
• 🥣1 cucumber, in matchsticks
• 🥣8 radishes, thinly sliced
• 🥣75 g frozen shelled edamame
• 🥣150 g beansprouts
• 🍚340 g dried wheat noodles

Let’s make it

1. Cook the sauce

   Warm oil with spring-onion greens, ginger and star anise. Add pork and break it up as it cooks. Stir in stock, soybean paste, sweet wheat sauce and measured water. Cover and simmer gently for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook pork to 75°C for 30 seconds.

2. Prepare the toppings

   Wash cucumber and radishes and slice them thinly. Cook frozen edamame according to the packet. Cook beansprouts thoroughly until steaming hot, rather than serving them raw.

3. Finish the sauce

   Uncover and simmer until thick enough to coat a spoon. Remove star anise and stir in the spring-onion whites. Taste cautiously: fermented sauces are salty.

4. Boil and assemble

   Cook noodles following the packet, drain and divide between bowls. Add sauce and vegetables. Mix well before taking your first bite so the rich sauce spreads through the noodles.