Dan Dan Noodles

By Genevieve Ko

Updated Nov. 11, 2025

Dan Dan Noodles
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.
Total Time
30 minutes
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
20 minutes
Rating
5(424)
Comments
Read comments

A specialty from Sichuan, a province in the southwest of China, vendors once balanced baskets of noodles and sauce on their shoulder poles and cried out “dan dan mian!” to hawk their wares. Dan dan refers to those bamboo shoulder poles and mian means noodles, but there’s no one way to prepare them. Nowadays in the Western diaspora, the dish is associated with a few essentials, namely chile oil and sesame paste, but another is worth adding: preserved vegetables. Salty and a little sweet with the sour oomph of fermentation, pickled mustard greens give the soothing noodles an umami zing. These noodles are especially rich with sesame, but you can adjust all of the seasonings to your taste. Toasty and salty, tangy on the cliff of funk, chewy with pops of peanut, dan dan noodles are a bowl of contentment.

Featured in: These Dan Dan Noodles Are the Weeknight Meal of Your Dreams

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Ingredients

Yield:4 to 6 servings

    For the Sauce

    • ¼cup well-stirred Chinese sesame paste or tahini (see Tips)
    • 2tablespoons soy sauce
    • 1tablespoon sesame oil
    • 1 to 2tablespoons chile crisp, preferably Sichuanese, plus more for serving
    • 2 to 3teaspoons brown sugar
    • ½teaspoon Chinkiang vinegar or balsamic vinegar

    For the Meat

    • 2tablespoons vegetable oil
    • ½cup ya cai (Sichuan preserved mustard greens) or other finely chopped Chinese pickled or preserved mustard vegetables (see Tips)
    • 1large garlic clove, finely chopped
    • 8ounces ground pork
    • 1tablespoon Shaoxing wine or other rice wine
    • 1tablespoon soy sauce
    • 2teaspoons tian mian jiang (sweet wheat sauce) or hoisin

    For the Noodles

    • 1pound fresh Chinese wheat noodles (see Tips)
    • 8 to 12bok choy or gai lan (Chinese broccoli), optional
    • Chopped roasted, salted peanuts, ground Sichuan peppercorns and finely sliced scallions, for topping
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)

618 calories; 25 grams fat; 6 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 11 grams monounsaturated fat; 6 grams polyunsaturated fat; 77 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams dietary fiber; 7 grams sugars; 27 grams protein; 576 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Start the sauce: Set a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, mix the sesame paste, soy sauce, sesame oil, chile crisp, brown sugar and vinegar in a large bowl. The mixture will be thick. Taste and add more chile oil or brown sugar (or other seasonings) to your liking.

  2. Step 2

    Make the meat: Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a wok or large, deep skillet over high. Add the ya cai and cook, stirring, until softened and fragrant, about 1 minute. Scrape half into the sauce bowl. Add the remaining oil to the wok. When it’s hot, add the garlic and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the pork and cook, smashing it into the vegetables and stirring to break it into tiny bits. When its pinkness fades after a few minutes, add the wine, soy sauce and tian mian jiang, and stir until the pork is cooked through. Keep warm over low.

  3. Step 3

    Finish the sauce: Scoop ¼ cup boiling water from the pot and add to the sauce. Stir until smooth. The sauce should run off the spoon. If it doesn’t, add more boiling water a tablespoon at a time.

  4. Step 4

    Make the noodles: Drop the noodles into the pot of boiling water, stir and cook until there’s still a bite in the center, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the bok choy and cook until bright green and the noodles are just tender, about 1 minute longer. Drain and run under hot tap water to rinse excess starch off the noodles.

  5. Step 5

    Slide the noodles and bok choy over the sauce, scrape the pork and its sauce on top, then sprinkle with peanuts and scallions if you want. Top with more chile crisp if you’d like. Mix well and enjoy immediately.

Tips
  • Chinese sesame paste has a deep toasted flavor. If using tahini, try to find one made with roasted sesame seeds, such as Joyva. If using tahini ground from raw sesame seeds, add another tablespoon toasted sesame oil.
  • Sichuan preserved mustard greens, known broadly as ya cai or more specifically as Yibin ya cai for the region from which it comes, come in small foil packets or jars. The dark brown bits of preserved vegetables start as strips of Sichuanese mustard green stems, which are then dried, salted and fermented with a sugar syrup and spices. They end up savory, a little sweet and pleasantly funky. There’s no great substitute, but other varieties of Chinese pickled or preserved mustard greens, such as sui mi ya cai, work. In a Western pantry, a combination of finely chopped capers and finely diced fermented bread-and-butter pickles comes closest.
  • If you don’t have fresh Chinese wheat noodles, you can use 12 ounces dried lo mein noodles, thin spaghetti or ramen and cook according to the package directions before draining and rinsing.

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Ratings

5 out of 5
424 user ratings
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Comments

Paul

Done it, almost weekly now. We've used shrimp instead of pork & subbed honey for the brown sugar. You can empty your veggie bin, we've added Kale, spinach, broccoli, snap peas, just about anything.

John

I make a vegan version of this by using textured vegetable protein (TVP): Don't soak the TVP but rather just brown it, dry, in a lightly oiled pan, and then just treat the TVP the way this recipe treats the pork.

Jon G.

Rice noodles work for those who avoid gluten. My favorite brand is Tinkyada. I also use assorted mushrooms (shitake, enoki, etc.) in place of pork. I don't go all vegan, though. Some bacon fat and either a half pint of homemade chicken broth or high-quality jarred product (e.g., Better Than Bouillon) give depth -- and a nod towards tan tan men. I use fresh, grated ginger, too. It is worth it to find Sichuan peppercorn -- toasted and ground about 3/4 of a teaspoon.

Rich

Made this with rice noodles, but otherwise followed the recipe and it was just delicious. The sauce feels like something you could double or triple and keep in the fridge ready to toss with just about any protein, veg or carb. It's that good. Will add this to the rotation in our house.

Chris

We went to our best local Asian market to get authentic ingredients, which we generally do. We followed the recipe exactly using these ingredients. The final dish was inedibly salty. We suspect that the fermented mustard greens were the culprit since salt was the second ingredient. You are listing ingredients from all over the world that you do not have control over and cannot warn about them all. Guidance of what to watch for would be helpful.

cocomero

@Chris Yeah, I sensed that this might be rather salty, so I used low salt soy sauce. Even with that, it is a bit salty, but that’s part of its charm. You might consider adding more sesame paste the next time.

Monique

So salty! Did I do something wrong with the recipe? Loved the dish but have to find a way of reducing the saltiness by 100%. I cook without salt normally so was really sensitive to the saltiness

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