Lemongrass, ginger, whole bean sauce, chili paste and Asian eggplant are all part of Chinese Egg Noodles with Beef and Hot Bean Sauce, the Asian comfort food equivalent of spaghetti with meat sauce. Recipe below.
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, MY SISTER GAVE ME a copy of Bruce Cost’s Asian Ingredients as a birthday present. Somehow, I just never got around to looking at it. It sat among our cookbooks, looking inviting and new, and for some reason I never thought to take it up. Maybe, although I am not a devotee of high-design coffee table cookbooks, I had been put off by the drab layout and black-and-white photography. It was one of those inexplicable lapses.
The other day, though, we happened to pay our first visit to the very wonderful H Mart, in Niles. We already are fans of Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese-focused store, so when my colleague Jodi raved about H Mart, we had to go.
H Mart is a chain based in New Jersey, with stores in 12 states (and more locations opening soon). There are a number of companies like it in the US, in essence supermarkets that focus on Asian consumers. H Mart’s particular audience is Korean.
The thing about H Mart is that it’s not just a store, it’s an experience. It calls itself a “one stop shopping center,” and while it doesn’t have everything it has many things—sparkling aisles of enticingly arranging products, a beautiful seafood and meat department, a food court, a vast case of different brands of kimchee, friendly salespeople offering tasty samples, and, arranged along an attractive corridor on the way to the parking lot, an arcade of tiny shops, many of which seem to sell cosmetics.
When we were getting ready for our first visit to H Mart, girding our loins for our drive to the suburbs, I happened to remember Cost’s book, and I grabbed it to glance through in the car. During the ride, I opened it almost at random, and I was hooked. All the time I threw away not delving into this book! Cost describes the essential Asian ingredients and a few that, even in this day, are unfamiliar even to adventurous American cooks (hair vegetable!), but the most valuable part is the recipes, which are many and enticing.
This noodle dish is based on the first recipe I noticed when I opened Asian Ingredients. At first I planned to make Cost’s original recipe, which is almost stark. But soon after our suburban trek, I happened to walk through the weekly farmer’s market at Daley Plaza and was lucky enough to find some beautiful Asian eggplant and the nicest lemongrass I’ve ever seen—tender, emerald green shoots—from an organic farm in Michigan. Those inspired this evolution of Cost’s dish.
Bruce Cost calls this the Asian equivalent to spaghetti with meat sauce, and I would say that is very correct. With warm eggy Chinese noodles, a spicy zip and a forthright meatiness, it is deeply satisfying in the same comfortable way. Now that the nights are drawing in, this is a good dish to have in your arsenal of cold weather food.
A variation for vegans is also included, in the Kitchen Notes.
Chinese Egg Noodles with Beef and Hot Bean Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoon canola oil or peanut oil
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
- 2 teaspoons finely minced lemongrass [see Kitchen Notes]
- 2 cloves garlic minced fine
- 1 pound lean ground beef (see Kitchen Notes)
- 4 tablespoons whole bean sauce (see Kitchen Notes)
- 2 tablespoons chili paste (see Kitchen Notes)
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3/4 cup water
- 3 chopped scallions
- 2 Asian eggplants, the tops cut off, sliced in 3/4-inch coins
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 3/4 pound dried Chinese egg noodles (see Kitchen Notes)
Instructions
- First, start a large quantity of water, to cook the noodles, in a deep pot.
- In a skillet, heat the cooking oil, then add the ginger, lemongrass and garlic, and sauté for 1 minute, stirring quickly. Add the ground beef and sauté it, breaking it up into grains, until it loses its color.
- Add the whole bean sauce and the chili paste. Stir everything together. Add the sugar and the water, and stir again. Add the eggplant coins, and bring the liquid to a simmer. The water should not be covering the eggplants—they should be sitting in it with the liquid level about a third of the way up their sides.
- Cover the pan. Cook on a gentle simmer for about 6 or 7 minutes.
- When the pot of water boils, add the Chinese egg noodles. Stir to make sure the noodles do not stick together, bring back to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer and cook until al dente.
- Back to the meat sauce. Uncover the pan and raise the heat—you want to cook the liquid down until there is a small amount in the bottom of the pan—a coating on the bottom. At this point, stir in most of the scallions, reserving about a teaspoon for garnish, and stir in the sesame oil. If the noodles are not cooked yet, turn off the heat and cover the pan.
- When the noodles are cooked, drain them. We served this by plating the noodles and then topping with the sauce and then the scallion garnish, but you may prefer to mix everything together in a big bowl and pass the bowl, family style.
Oh! Am I first??!! Oh!! Oh!!
Seriously, you 2 ought to come to Tejas for a visit and cook away til your heart’s content. It’s like summer outside here til mid-December, so we can barbacao outside!! Too bad you missed Hatch Chili festival – too bad I did, too, this year!!
Ow, wow!! I’m first!! Am I first??!!
yum yum yum, that looks extra delicious, yup you are right, we chinese do love our comfort food and afterall, It was Marco Polo went to china and fell in love with it too that inspired him to create pasta 😀
Blue kitchen is cool dude, i particularly like the chalkboard menus. Gives it a nice independent homecooked food feel.
I loooove Chinese eggplant! We just grilled some last night. Marinated them in soy/garlic/lemongrass
I LOVE ground bean sauce and have never tried whole bean sauce. I will definitely pick some up on our next trip to chinatown. I did a similar recipe recently with fresh chinese egg noodles and they were terrific…really springy and fun to eat. I’m hungry just thinking about it. Some szechuan peppercorn would probably be great in this, too…
This looks really good, I have also never used Whole Bean paste before, but I have bookmarked this recipe. I am up for it. It is my favorite thing to do to walk into my asian market like an idiot and ask questions that people don’t understand what I mean.. sigh, usually it is worth it though.
Just a hunch here, Shauna, but maybe you should cut back on your caffeine intake. Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Hope all is well in the Big D.
kang L—Thanks for stopping by! For Marion and me, Chinese food really is comfort food. I’ll definitely have to check out your London Eater blog.
Steamy Kitchen—Interestingly, Chinese or Asian eggplant is what finally got me over my dislike of eggplant in general.
maggie—Speaking of hungry, the Porkstravaganza Shiv posted over at your blog is about to send me up the street to a new little cafe for some pulled pork Mexican style.
Katerina—Being in H Mart was that experience in spades. Very little English spoken by the nevertheless very friendly staff and the packaged goods had little or no English on them either. Still, it was all fascinating, and I’m sure we’ll continue to explore and experiment there.
I have no idea how I ended up here — must have taken the wrong trail. However, this looks so tasty, I don’t mind being lost.
Never used the bean sauce either, but methinks I will soon.
Now did you all really use those chopsticks? Hmmm?
altadenahiker—However you got here, welcome to Blue Kitchen! And stop by again.
Donald—Busted! No, this particular evening, we used forks. We often use chopsticks for Asian noodle dishes, though, usually shoveling them in as we hover over our plates. Which is pretty much how it’s done in this case—none of that twirling them on a fork into a genteel bite as one would with Italian.
Sounds wonderful, I was busy getting all excited about it when I got to the bean part… My other won’t have anything to do with them…So I’ll have to wait till he goes away for a night before I try this.
Merry—Bean sauce is made of soybeans, so it doesn’t have the “beany” taste of, say, kidney beans or other kinds of beans. And as Marion advised me, if you use the ground bean paste, you won’t even have any telltale solid soybeans in it. So if your other is okay with any kind of soybean product, he should like this just fine.
Oh, it’s been too long since I’ve been to my favorite Asian grocery stores. I can see that I’m going to have to correct that – soon!!
Love bean sauces and what they add to dishes. This one is a two yums up! (Sorry about that – couldn’t help it!;-))
Ok, bought all the ingredients. Saturday is the target. You’ve ruined my weekend — or made it.
Hmmm…would love to try this soon!
Mmm, what a great recipe and story — the perfect company for my turkey sandwich! I think it’s time for a trip to H Mart. Thanks for the inspiration!
Toni—Anytime we can get someone into an Asian market it’s a good thing.
altadenahiker—Oh, man, the pressure’s on here. I think you’ll find we’ve made it, though. Everyone, check out altadenahiker’s hilarious take on food blogging.
Alisa—Thanks for stopping by!
Carmen—Be sure to go on a Saturday morning. They do lots of sampling then.
i’m officially convinced – I’m heading to chinatown this weekend and getting stuff including this bean sauce. this dish looks so simple and easy – and favulous!
I like the idea of this with ground lamb and cumin – lamb and eggplant is a good combination.