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(743)
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

Preparation

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.
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.
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.
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.
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

743 user ratings

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Comments

Paul2 months ago

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.

John2 months ago

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.

vj2 months ago

Genevieve Ko included a 15-minute vegan no-recipe recipe in a recent newsletter. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/dining/easy-dan-dan-noodle-recipe-for-cold-weather.html Here it is: Mix Chinese sesame paste (or tahini mixed with toasted sesame oil), soy sauce & chile crisp with a pinch of sugar in the bowl you’ll eat from. Adjust seasonings to taste. Stir in boiling water (maybe pasta water?) until runny. Cook your noodles, add whatever veg. Top with peanuts &or pickled veg.

Susan P18 hours ago

The sesame paste and ya cai were delicious in this dish. Plain old spaghetti worked perfectly well. I used diced chicken, which I thought worked also, though it didn’t absorb flavors quite as well as pork would have. While eating, my partner made those tiny involuntary vocalizations of pleasure that can’t be faked, so… five stars!

Carole2 days ago

I'm not one of those people who changes all the ingredients and then sings the praises of my version. I decided to make these on a weeknight when my daughter was begging for NYC takeout, had ground pork and dried noodles but had to use the alternate or substitute at least half the other ingredients. I expected it to be a big loser and ended up with a giant win. Had no Chinese sesame paste so used Joyca tahini. No Chinkiang or balsamic vinegar so used sherry vinegar. No brown sugar! Had crystallized maple syrup. Used the very last about 1/2 tsp of the Trader Joe's chile crisp. Nothing even approximating ya cai (Sichuan preserved mustard greens) and could not even start with the capers and pickles so tossed in a "vegetable topping" packet that came from some ramen package. No tian mian jiang (sweet wheat sauce) or hoisin in the house - used 2 tsp of fig mostarda from Eataly. Had Japanese rice wine. Love little baby bok choys but nope - sliced up red and green peppers and thirded a bundle of asparagus. No Sichuan peppercorns. I'm a pretty agile cook but [scratches head]. My 14YO daughter slurped it up! She thanked me! And it was indeed delicious. Foolproof. Heading to Chinatown this weekend for the right stuff.

NM3 days ago

Turned out bad. All I did was substitute pork for extra firm tofu and greens for Napa cabbage and rice noodles for wheat noodles. And I didn’t add the sauce to the bottom of the bowl but poured it over the noodles (not what you’re supposed to do). I guess it really pays to follow the recipe?

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