[0:00] Here in China, one of the most popular 
noodles is Zha Jiang Mian – “Fried sauce  
[0:05] noodles” - basically, noodles in with a delicious 
meat sauce. And today, I wanted to try my hand at  
[0:12] inventing an American version of the dish... 
and stay with me on this one. Because the  
[0:18] Chinese term “Zhajiang”, it's a dish, but it's 
not really just one dish. It's more of an idea  
[0:25] that's been relentlessly adapted all throughout 
the country. The fundamental technique is to fry  
[0:30] out a bit of minced pork belly, then use that lard 
to fry some kind of thick fermented sauce… thus  
[0:38] giving it the name deep fried sauce. The most 
famous Zha Jiang is definitely the original,  
[0:45] the Old Beijing Zha Jiang Mian, which uses a 
fermented sauce called Gan Huang Jiang. The second  
[0:50] most famous is the Korean Jajangmyeon, which uses 
the Korean chunjang. But you can find this basic  
[0:56] idea again almost everywhere. Like, where we live 
in Yunnan, it's got its own local version with  
[1:03] its own local fermented sauce. A few days back, 
we covered the Cantonese version which uses the  
[1:09] Cantonese Minsi paste. And after that, we taught 
you how to make the Sichuan version, which fries  
[1:14] up Pixian Doubanjiang. Which all for me? It does 
kind of get my brain churning a bit… because like,  
[1:22] I'm an America. And if this technique is used 
everywhere from Hong Kong to Korea to the Yunnan  
[1:28] Myanmar border, what's stopping us from making our 
own? We like meat. We like noodles. We like deep  
[1:36] frying things in lard. Even the most maladjusted 
expat I've ever met here in China still loved Zha  
[1:41] Jiang Mian. For a dish with so many variations 
throughout China, throughout the world,  
[1:47] why not an American one? So that's the challenge 
that I've set here for myself today. A Zha Jiang  
[1:54] Mian with American flavors, which for the pork 
is definitely the easy bit. I mean, obviously,  
[2:03] obviously, we're going to be using some American 
style bacon. Now, if I went all bacon, I think  
[2:10] it would definitely be a little bit too bacony? I 
mean, this is going to be a meat sauce after all,  
[2:15] think something like a ragu. So, this here is 
a mix of 450g of ground pork belly with 100g  
[2:22] or about five strips of bacon. Now, just like the 
previous Zha Jiangs, for the pork belly, best is  
[2:28] going to be a coarser grind. So, you might want to 
find a proper butcher that's able to do that for  
[2:34] you. But if that is impossible or really expensive 
where you live, just try to find the fattiest one  
[2:41] that you can find. So then I'm just going to slice 
up this bacon into the same coarse grind sort of  
[2:48] consistency… and then this here is going to be a 
really nice base for our sauce. Which then brings  
[2:54] us to the difficult part of the exercise, which 
is some kind of thick fermented sauce. Which… I  
[3:01] don't think we really have in America. I mean, 
we've got some stuff that's fermented. I mean,  
[3:06] we do liquor pretty well. We've got some nice 
fermented hot sauces. There's some vinegars,  
[3:12] cheese, and sauerkraut, but nothing that really 
snugly fits in with this application. Because for  
[3:18] me, I kind of put fermented things into a couple 
of different buckets. There's boozy ferments,  
[3:25] there's sour ferments, there's what I think 
of as lightly fermented protein ferments,  
[3:29] heavily fermented protein ferments, and then 
clear umami fermentss, kind of like soy sauce  
[3:35] and fish sauce. Now, our cuisines, we've got these 
ones. We borrowed soy sauce from pretty early on,  
[3:43] but we don't traditionally have anything 
in this middle category here, the Jiangs,  
[3:49] which I'd imagine is why the cheffy types have 
been so religiously into Japanese miso ever since  
[3:55] they first got their hands on it. So, like maybe 
we could go miso, but again, I did want American  
[4:04] flavors here. So, maybe we can take a step 
back. Historically, we did have something in  
[4:09] this category in the form of mushroom ketchup, 
but it seems like we basically stopped making  
[4:15] that around when we collectively fell in love 
with the tomato. And ever since, it feels like  
[4:22] the tomato has functionally filled this void for 
us. So, in our search for the American “Jiang”,  
[4:29] this is where my head's at. The American Jiang, it 
should one - be a thick sauce. It should two - be  
[4:36] something recognizably an American flavor. 
Three, probably have a tomato base in it,  
[4:42] and four, ideally have some kind of fermented 
component to it. So after thinking about this  
[4:49] problem for way too long, the American Jiang… it's 
got to be barbecue sauce, right? I mean, it's not  
[4:56] really a Jiang, but it is undeniably us. Now, I'm 
kind of tempted to just try this bottle straight,  
[5:05] but I'm getting an inkling that it might kind 
of suck? So, instead, I'm thinking something a  
[5:11] little bit more… homemade barbecue sauce inspired. 
So, I'm thinking of something in the manner of a  
[5:19] Kansas City, but I also don't really want to use 
ketchup? So instead, I'm just playing it safe,  
[5:27] going with canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and a 
little bit of a grab bag of this ingredient list.  
[5:34] Which then brings us to the last thing before we 
cook. Both the Cantonese and the Sichuan versions,  
[5:41] they both include some kind of spicy sauce in 
their mix. And I was also thinking that that also  
[5:46] felt like a good idea. So, I was thinking maybe 
Heinz chili sauce, but to me that's about as spicy  
[5:55] as mayonnaise is? So, I don't know. I was thinking 
chipotles en adobo. I was thinking maybe Sriracha,  
[6:02] but I just decided to keep things simple. And last 
night, I soaked up 15g of dried chili in with hot  
[6:08] boiled water... and today, we'll turn that into 
a paste. So, I'll just snip these into sections,  
[6:14] give them a little chop, and you could totally use 
a food processor for this, but I wanted to use a  
[6:19] trick that I taught you a couple of weeks ago, 
which is to smash two cloves of garlic. And here,  
[6:25] I'll sprinkle on a 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 
smash that in, and then start to chop that  
[6:30] together with the chilies. Because garlic's 
an emulsifier, in just one or two minutes of  
[6:35] chopping, that's all going to come together into 
a really nice paste. So now we've got our tomato,  
[6:42] we've got our chili paste. So now let's go outside 
and we can start with our pork. So the technique  
[6:48] here is to start with about a tablespoon of 
oil. Then go in with the pork and bacon and  
[6:53] over a medium/medium high flame, begin to slowly 
render out that fat. Now, this is going to take  
[6:59] a hot second… so I'm going to quickly run inside 
and on a separate burner, I'm going to start to  
[7:04] soften up some onions - try to make everything 
a little bit more barbecue saucy. So, I'll just  
[7:10] mix in a 1/4 teaspoon of salt in with a half a 
thinly sliced onion, then a tablespoon of peanut  
[7:16] oil and then enough water to just barely cover 
the bottom. We'll let this go over a low flame  
[7:22] for about as long as our pork needs: we're just 
giving everything a head start to break down, just  
[7:28] try to remember to give this a stir every couple 
of minutes to make sure that nothing's scorching.
[7:33] So, now we'll run back to the pork. And after 
a minute or so of frying this, it's going to  
[7:38] be nice and loosened up a bit like this… just 
keep it going. After a couple more minutes,  
[7:44] it'll start to reach the “I'm being annoying 
and sticking to the pot!” stage… just keep  
[7:50] being patient with it. Scrape off anything 
that's sticking, and if you really need,  
[7:53] you can also add in a little bit more 
oil. After a few more minutes of that,  
[7:58] it's going to start to render out its lard... 
and at this point, you're not going to need to  
[8:02] nurse things quite as hard. After 10 more 
minutes of this stage, you're going to be  
[8:07] looking for the pork to be nice and golden brown, 
a bit like this. Just don't take things too brown  
[8:13] or too crispy because remember, we do want 
this as a base for our meat sauce. But, uh,  
[8:19] now I just remembered I'm going to swap this to a 
clay pot because I don't want the acidic tomatoes  
[8:24] to be ruining my wok seasoning… so once that's in, 
we'll move back inside real quick to the onion.
[8:32] So, this is what I'm looking at now. It's 
pretty broken down. I'll just let this go  
[8:37] for another minute or two and then toss that 
into a bowl. So right. Heating up the lard  
[8:45] now over a medium flame... the classic Zha Jiang 
technique is to add a couple tablespoons of that  
[8:50] oil in with your sauce and then mix that really 
well. The reason for this move is to heat up the  
[8:57] sauce a bit gentler, because sometimes 
if you just dumped everything straight,  
[9:00] things can sometimes scorch on you. So then just 
give that a quick fry, and then we'll also do the  
[9:05] same move then with about a tablespoon of tomato 
paste. Fry that for a hot second. And then once  
[9:10] that's fragrant, we'll toss in a tablespoon of 
paprika and the onions. Then we'll mix that,  
[9:16] fry it a bit to make sure that the oil stained 
all nice and red, and then go in with 200g of  
[9:21] crushed tomatoes. Then we'll toss in 200 ml 
of stock together with 200 ml of a light beer,  
[9:28] and then start to bring this up to a light boil, 
seasoning with a ¼ teaspoon chicken bouillon  
[9:33] powder, 2 tbsp dark brown sugar, 1 tbsp of soy 
sauce, a half teaspoon brown coriander seed,  
[9:39] and a good crack of black pepper. Then we'll 
just let that go over medium/medium high for  
[9:45] about 20 minutes to evaporate off all that 
moisture that we just added and continue  
[9:50] to break down the onions. After that time, 
what we'll be looking for is for the mixture  
[9:55] to have kind of reached its lava bubbling 
stage, something that looks a bit like this:
[10:04] Then we'll drizzle in a slurry of a half 
tablespoon cornstarch mixed with a bit of  
[10:08] water bit by bit. And once that's stirred in, 
we'll do our final seasoning. I'll add in a bit  
[10:14] more MSG and brown sugar. Another generous crack 
of black pepper this time. And a sour component,  
[10:20] which today I'm going to be starting with about a 
teaspoon of Tabasco. If you want things a little  
[10:25] bit more sour, you could maybe add in a little 
bit more Tabasco. Or if you wanted things a  
[10:30] little bit more barbecue saucy, maybe a bit of 
cider vinegar. But at this point, this already  
[10:36] tastes pretty good to me… so, we can just run 
inside and see how it is. Now, my conception  
[10:42] here was going to be to do a ganban mixed noodle 
kind of in the Sichuan style. So, we'll give each  
[10:48] bowl some base seasoning at first. So, let's do 
an 1/8 teaspoon each salt, MSG, sugar, soy sauce,  
[10:54] Worcestershire sauce, and then a good crack of 
black pepper. Then, we'll just boil up some pasta,  
[11:00] take it a touch past al dente, then out, jiggle it 
to cool down, and let the steam escape. Now, let's  
[11:06] do the move of a tablespoon of the pasta water. 
And together with that, the pasta also in. I'll  
[11:13] give this a quick mix first and then we'll smother 
that with all of our sauce. Now, in Beijing, this  
[11:20] famously comes with like a mountain of optional 
toppings, so I was thinking it might be kind of  
[11:26] fun to do the same thing here. Now, I admittedly 
did kind of go light on the sourness… so I think  
[11:32] we can have a bit of pickled jalapenos on the 
side. And if anybody wants theirs a little more  
[11:37] spicy, some chopped green chilies, a little less 
spicy, some sour cream, or for a little freshness,  
[11:43] a bit of chopped onion. Then for the sides, 
when I think of American snacks, I can't think  
[11:49] of anything more American than Doritos. So, we'll 
add in a little bit of pile here. And definitely  
[11:56] being American, I think we have to add in a bit of 
cheddar cheese. Top it with a little scallion...  
[12:01] and this is looking pretty good I think. So, 
yeah. Um, let's give this to a neutral party.  
[12:09] See how I did. Steph, do you wanna? Here you go. 
All right. Let's see. Smells like Mexican food.
[12:21] Pretty good. Feel like tortilla 
chips would be better. So, yeah,  
[12:27] I definitely consider this one a success. Um, 
personally, I'm going to be making it again,  
[12:33] but I do also think that this can also be adapted. 
Because like if we look at the Cantonese one, it's  
[12:40] served with wanton noodles in wanton shops. Or if 
we take a look at the Sichuan Zha Jiang, it's got  
[12:47] alkaline noodles and it's often in soup, which 
is just perfect for the foggy Sichuan winters.  
[12:53] So, I think we can also take this base and adapt 
it into the American cultural context. So, maybe  
[13:01] you could also take this, serve it with cornbread, 
serve it with fries, or even top it over hot dog.  
[13:07] Why not? So, yeah, originally we were all going to 
have all three of these Zha Jiangs as one video,  
[13:13] but um after thinking on it, we did really want 
to do the Cantonese and Sichuan ones justice?  
[13:20] We were originally just going to cut this, but 
I don't know. I just kind of have too much fun  
[13:25] with it. So, huge, huge thank you to everybody 
that's supporting us on Patreon. You can find  
[13:31] a written recipe for all three of the Zha 
Jiang in the link Substack post below. And,  
[13:37] of course, subscribe for more Chinese 
or Chinese and American cooking videos.