While the most traditional versions don't include a sesame product, I've recently taken to adding a touch of tahini to my sauce, after having tasted it in Chichi's vermicelli with chili oil recipe. Not enough to bring a distinct sesame flavor to the dish, but just enough to lightly bind the sauce and add a touch of creaminess to help it cling to the noodles a little bit better.

The second great thing about making dan dan noodles—it's an exceedingly simple dish to make. Once you've put together your roasted chile vinaigrette (which holds for months in the fridge, by the way), it's just a matter of cooking your noodles, frying your chopped pork, and throwing everything together.

Traditionally served for Lunar New Year, Buddha's Delight is a vegetarian stir-fry packed with flavorful, filling ingredients. It contains plenty of veggies, but also soy- and wheat-based components that give it extra heft: tofu puffs, bean curd sticks, and Chinese braised gluten. If you don't live near a good Asian grocery, some of those might be less accessible, but you can find them all online.

Once you've mastered our technique for a crispety, crunchety coating on takeout-style fried chicken, you can easily replicate a number of favorites on the buffet line. To turn our General Tso's recipe into sesame chicken, we simply change the sauce, global noodle recipes|https://noodleinsight.com/ adding extra sugar and sesame oil and omitting the chilies. Be sure to toast those sesame seeds before adding them, and sprinkle them both throughout the sauce and over the finished dish.

Perhaps the biggest key to making excellent dan dan noodles is to make your own roasted chile oil. When done right, it gets a rich, fruity, smoky flavor that none of the store-bought stuff can touch. It's really quite simple. Toasted Sichuan peppercorns have a sweet, citrus-like aroma with a mouth-numbing quality, while roasted chile oil brings on the heat.

The first great thing about making dan dan noodles at home is that you can customize it however you'd like. Personally, I like the chile oil of the Sichuan version, but I also love adding crushed roasted peanuts to the top. Who's to stop me? Some hardcore versions of the dish have the noodles quite literally swimming in a bowlful of chile oil. I like my oil to coat the noodles and pool up a bit in the bottom of the bowl.

The pork is the odd man out in the traditional recipe. Fortunately, much like with the beef in Sichuan mapo tofu, the pork is not the star player of the dish. Its role is mainly textural, adding a bit of meaty, bouncy chew that clings to the slippery noodles as you slurp them up. Having already addressed an identical issue when finding a suitable replacement for ground beef in my vegan mapo tofu recipe, I knew what I had to do here: I chopped up a bunch of mushrooms in a food processor, then employed the Chinese technique of dry-frying—cooking them slowly in oil—until they were mostly dehydrated, lightly shriveled, and deeply browned. The resulting little nuggets have great texture and a flavor that is not really pork-like, but savory and rich in its own unique way.

To Finish : Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add noodles and cook according to package directions. Drain. While noodles are cooking, heat oil in a wok or a small skillet over high heat until smoking. Add pork and preserved vegetable and cook, stirring and shaking constantly, using a spatula or a spoon to break up pork until cooked through, about 1 minute. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

Making the sauce for dan dan noodles is exceedingly simple once you've got the basic ingredients in your pantry. It's just a matter of mixing them in the right proportions. Soy sauce forms the base, while Chinkiang black vinegar lends its characteristic acidity—it has a sweet, almost balsamic vinegar-esque aroma to it, though not quite as syrupy as that. Fermented broad bean chili paste comes in many forms throughout China or can be purchased online. Chili oil is a given, and while it's best (and remarkably easy!) to make at home, there are a number of good options available at any decent Chinese market. Look for the kind which has actual chile, garlic, and ginger debris in the bottom of the jar, not the completely clear kind you see in easy-pour bottles. That debris is where the magic is at.

Place mushrooms in the bowl of a food processor and process until pieces no larger than 1/2-inch remain, about 6 short pulses. Transfer to a small saucepan. Add vegetable oil and stir to combine. Place over medium-high heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until mushroom pieces shrink and are deep golden brown, about 8 minutes. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer set over a small bowl. Reserve mushroom pieces and discard all but 1 tablespoon oil.

Chow mein is another Chinese-American standard that's so easy to make at home and customize to your liking, you may never feel the need to order it again. For this DIY version, we quickly cook vegetables (chives, julienned carrots and scallions, bean sprouts) and tofu in a wok, then combine them with long, slender chow mein noodles and a soy-based sauce. Add extra vegetables, more tofu, or meat to turn it into a heartier meal.