Zha Jiang Noodles

Julienne the carrot, cabbage, cucumber. Cut the Chinese celery into little pieces. Have some bean sprouts ready. You can use other vegetables like baby bamboo shoots, mushroom... it's your choice.

Combine 4 tbsp of soy bean sauce with 1.5 tbsp of sweet soy bean sauce and 1/4 cup of water.

Heat up your wok, on the highest level, for 10 seconds then turn the heat to low. Put in the ground pork (30-50% fat), saute it on low heat.

After 3 minutes, the fat is almost melted and the meat should become a little bit golden brown. Push them to the side. You can see all that fat. We will use the oil to fry the sauce.

Slowly add the sauce into the wok. Make sure to keep the heat on the lowest setting. Use your spatula stir it for about 1 minute.

Then mix the sauce with the pork and add in all the aromatics- the ginger, garlic, scallion. Stir this for 5 minutes. Keep your eyes on the sauce. It is very important. You should see the oil and the sauce are separated. This is how you know it's done!

Traditionally we will leave the fat in the sauce, but if you don’t like that, you can drain the fat out.

Put the noodles in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. After 2 minutes you can try one and see if you want it softer. Once you think it is good to take it out and put it in a bowl.

Place the vegetables and put some zha jiang on top of the noodles.

One thing you should know is that zha jiang is very salty and savory. If you never had it before, you might want to add a little bit sauce first, mix it with the noodles and then add more if needed.