Patron Exclusive Recipe #12 Northern Style One Pot Noodle with Pork Belly and Long Beans (豆角焖面/Dou Jiao Men Mian)

Sup guys. Sorry for posting a bit late again. We've been having this crazy schedule these two monthes and both me and Chris are under the weather for a little bit, finally getting better now.
This week I want to share a quick, easy and delicious northern style noodle dish. This is a summer favorite, but of course it's great in winter too (it's a all-time favorite tbh). I've been craving this recently and after I gave it to Chris, he thought that we can do it for the channel soon. It would probably be a video for this dish in the coming 2~3 monthes, so you can consider this a very early look.
The basic idea of this dish is cook the noodle in the sauce of a quick pork belly stew and thus the Chinese name "焖面/Men Mian", meaning stewing noodles. This is almost a type of cooking method for noodles, you'll also see other combinations of ribs+potato or pork+shiitake mushroom, and sometimes people would put tomato in this version too.
So right, let's get started.

 **Ingredients**  (Serves two as a whole meal)

1. Long beans, 300g. Cut into ~5cm long sections. You can use green beans too. 

2. Fresh non-alkaline noodle, 300g. The noodle to long bean ratio is 1:1. And fresh noodle is a must for this dish. If you can't source fresh non-alkaline noodles, you can make a quick noodle like the one we made in our Zha Jiang Mian video (if you're making this one, just roll and cut it thinner, like 1mm-1.5mm in diameter).

3. Pork belly, 200g. Seperate the really fatty part and the leaner part first, then sliced each part into 3mm pieces. We'll need to fry them in seperate stages. The amount is really up to you here and you can adjust it to your liking or even skip it and make it vegan. I only have about 80g of fatty pork belly so I top it up with some extra lean.

4. Water, for this bean and noodle ratio (1:1), it should be enough to cover the beans and pork.

5. Aromatics.
Leek, ~10cm(~3 inch) long, minced.
Ginger, ~4cm(~2 inch) piece, minced.
Garlic, 3 cloves, minced.
Optionally some fresh chili to go in with the garlic for extra heat.

6. Spices. Two star anise and optionally 10 dry Erjingtiao chilies for a bit of heat (cayanne or arbol are fine sub).

7. Seasoning.
Light soy sauce, 3 tbsp.
Dark soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp.
Salt, 1/2 tsp. (An extra small pinch to spinkle on top of the noodles.)
Sugar, 1 tsp.
Vinegar, 1/2 tbsp.
Five spice powder, 1/4 tsp.

  **Process**  

1. Now with all the ingredients prepped. Let's fry the long bean to get rid of the grassiness. First, long yao. First get your work piping hot, turn off the heat, add in the oil, here about 1/2 tbsp, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface.
Add in the long beans, lay them out evenly in the wok, and let it fry for bit on medium high. Stir and rearrange ocassionaly.

2. Once the long beans' turned into dark green and got some slight chared, take it out and set it aside.

3. Now in the same wok, no need to clean or wipe, add in about 1/2 tbsp of oil again. Then add in fatty part of the pork belly. We're going to render out some oil in this stage. So lay them out and fry them on medium-low heat.

4. Once the fatty slices are nice and brown and the edges are getting a bit crispy, we can add in the lean slices. Give them a mix and continue to fry them on medium to medium low. 

5. First the oil in the wok will seem cloudy after you add in the lean slices, that's just water from the lean. Just keep fryingt them till the oil is clear again and the lean is also nice and a bit brown, we can go the next stage, adding in aromatics and spices.

6. Set the meat aside, add in the minced ginger and leek (garlic goes in at later stage). Fry them on low till you smell the fragrance. Then add in the star anice and chilis, continue to fry for about 30 sec.

(Aromatics in first)

(Then spices in)

7. Now toss the long beans back in and quick mix with the pork, fry for about 1 min. Then we add in some water, to the level that it just submerge the long beans.

8. Bring it to a boil, turn the heat to low and we season it. Add in all the seasoning except the vinegar, which will be add in at later stage with the garlic. So Light soy sauce, 3 tbsp. Dark soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp. Salt, 1/2 tsp. Sugar, 1 tsp. 

(Seasoned soup, you can see the water level here.)

9. Before we put the noodle in, let's scoop out about a half cup of sauce/soup for later use.

(Reserve some sauce for later use)

10. Now loosely sprinkle your noodles onto the stew, create kinda a circle shape, leaving a hole at the center for steam to come up. Then sprinkle a pince of salt on top of the noodles.
(Note about noodles, some people insist that you need to pre-steam your noodles. If you're afraid that the noodles can't cook through, you can oil an steamer, loosen up the noodles and put them in, then steam on medium high for 8 minutes to prep the noodles first.)

(Sprinkle noodle in bit by bit)

(Leaving a hole at the center)

11. Now tightly cover the lid and let it cook on medium for 10 minutes. 

12. 10 minutes later, add in the reserved half cup of sauce along the side of the noodles back into the wok, then cover tightly again. Let it cook for another ~4 minutes on medium.

(Add in the reserved sauce so that the noodles can be cooked more evenly)

13. Now after a total of about ~14 minutes of cooking, the sauce should be basically gone. Now we add in the garlic and the vinegar. Just toss in or sprinkle the garlic in. Then add in the vinegar along the side of the wok. Then sprinkle in some five spice powder. 

(Minced garlic goes in later stage so that it gives a more obvious fragrance.)

(Vinegar in to create a more round up flavor)

(Five spice powder for the classic meat stew taste)

14. Now after the garlic, vinegar and five spice powder are all in, cover tightly again, let it cook for about 1 minute, turn off the heat, open the lid and mix it well in the wok. Then you're all set to serve.

(Ah... now at mindnight, looking at this picture is a huge challenge for me to not run into the kitchen and whip it right up)

And now you have it, a tasty and easy one pot meal that has everything you need. Quick and satisfied.
I also love the version where they use ribs in (if you go that route, just add in more oil when frying the ribs to ensure you get about 3 tbsp of oil). Some people would also toss in some deep-frid potato chunks or peeled tomato chunks. So feel free to play around with seasonal ingredients with this method.
Oh, btw, we got an Instagram account too, tag us with your results with "Chinesecookingdemystified". We always love to see how it turned out for you guys!