One of the most common radishes we have in China is the white radish, which is also called “mooli” or “daikon radish”. One of the reasons it is popular amongst Chinese people is because of its various health benefits. Luckily in the UK, there are quite a few places where I ca purchase mooli. The one I mostly go to is Taj.

In this article, we will walk you through how to make a nutritious and light soup with fishballs, mooli, and Chinese glass noodles. The fishballs I used for my soup are handmade out of salmon and carrots. If you are interested in taking up the challenge, you can find our handmade fishball recipe here. Alternatively, you could purchase ready-made fishballs from your local Chinese store.

To make the soup, you’ll need the ingredients in this photo.

Now, on to our authentic Chinese fishball mooli glass noodle soup recipe!

Authentic Chinese Fishball Mooli Glass Noodle Recipe

Recipe by LinCourse: Noodles, SoupCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Medium

Servings

3

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

10

minutes

This recipe shows you how to make authentic Chinese fishball mooli glass noodle soup, a light and healthy dish that’s good for most occasions.

Ingredients

• 10-15 fishballs

• A handful of dried Chinse vermicelli (glass noodles)

• ½ Mooli

• 1 Spring onion (garnish)

• Salt to taste

• ¼ tsp white pepper powder

• Coriander (garnish + flavor)

Directions

• Take a handful of dried Chinese vermicelli (glass noodles), soak them in lukewarm water until soft.
• Peel half of your white radish (mooli).
• Cut them into thin slices (around 2mm thick).
• Then cut them into shreds.
• Warm-up a cooking pot, add ½ tsp of vegetable oil, wait until the oil is heated. Put the shredded mooli in and stir fry for a couple of minutes, you should see the mooli shreds are softening up.
• Add 2 cups of water into the cooking pot. Bring it to a boil. (Add the fishballs in if you have purchased them from your local Chinese store and they are frozen)
• Add your softened glass noodles in, let it boil until the vermicelli becomes transparent. Do not cover during the process, the bad smell of the white radish will evaporate. By this time, your radish shred should look a bit jelly-like.
• Add your fishballs in if they are freshly made as they don’t need to be thoroughly cooked. Add salt to your taste and ¼ tsp of white pepper powder.
• Let it boil for a further minute. Place in a big bowl, garnish with spring onion and some coriander. Serve. I like to have my soup with extra ground white pepper and Chinese dark rice vinegar. Hope you could enjoy this hearty and healthy soup as much as I do. 您慢用（nín màn yòng) ！
  

Notes

Try It Yourself!

And there you have it! This is how you can make authentic Chinese fishball mooli glass noodles. Give our recipe a try and let us know how it goes in the comments below. We’re also happy to answer any questions you may have about this and other recipes on our site. Be sure to also give us a follow on Instagram! We post more photos of delicious Chinese food regularly.

The post Authentic Chinese Fishball Mooli Glass Noodle Soup Recipe appeared first on Lin's Chinese Kitchen.

Ever since then, beef tomato noodles have become a regular dish on my winter menu. I honestly won’t feel my winter is complete without it. So, in this post, I wanted to share with you this authentic Chinese dish.

Before we start, I have to warn you. This is not a quick meal, BUT the result will be worth the trouble. It is best to eat this with freshly handmade noodles so check out our recipe to complete your experience. Now, on to the recipe.

Beef Tomato Soup Noodles Recipe

Recipe by LinCourse: Beef, NoodlesCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Medium

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

2

hours 

Cooking time

1

hour 

20

minutes

This post shows you how to make authentic Chinese beef tomato soup noodles that are perfect for cold winter days and nights.

Ingredients

• Beef tomato soup

• Diced beef shin 500 g

• Medium tomatoes x 5

• Ginger 3 slices around 15 g

• Cinnamon stick x 1

• Star anise 2g

• Sichuan peppercorn 2 g

• Bay leaves x 2

• Shaoxing Cooking Wine 1 tsp

• Large garlic 4 cloves

• Fennel seeds 2 g

• Tsaoko x 1

• Leek 25 g

• Dried hawthorn 3 slices

• Soybean paste 1 tbs

• Oyster sauce 1 tsp

• Sugar 3 tsp

• Salt 2 tsp or to taste

• Wangshouyi multi-flavoured seasoning 1/4 tsp

• Garnish

• Boiled eggs x 2

• Pak Choi or other vegetable of your choice

Directions

• Give the beef a long cold bath. I bought 500g beef shin from my local Saintsbury, I feel it has the right amount of fat and lean meat ratio. You can use other cuts, too. Take a big container, put cold water in and add 1 tsp of Shaoxing Cooking Wine and 1 piece of fresh ginger. Put the beef in and let it sit for 30-60 minutes.
• While the beef is comfortably bathing, let’s cut the tomatoes into big chunks then set them aside for later use. I cut them in half first and cut each half into 4 pieces.
• Time to change the beef water. Keep bathing the beef and change the water every 15 mins until the water is clear and no more blood is coming out.
• Prepare the spices: 2 slices of ginger, 2g star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, 2g Sichuan peppercorn, 2 bay leaves, 4 cloves of large garlic, 1 tsaoko, 2g fennel seeds, 25g leek and 3 dried hawthorn slices.
• Warm up your cooking pot, add 1 tbs of oil and a tsp of cane sugar. Mix over medium heat until sugar melts and the sugar and oil mix turns brown. Then, add your spices in and let it all cook for 1 minute.
• Take the beef out from its bath and let it dry. Put it in the pot and quickly stir. Add 1 tbs soybean paste (you should be able to get this in your local Chinese shop) and 2 tsp of oyster sauce. Keep stirring to let everything in the pot mix well.
• Let our beef cook thoroughly with the lid on the pot, then transfer everything into the pot in your pressure cooker and add just enough hot water to cover everything in the pot. Put it on the “stew option” and let it cook.
• While our beef is being cooked let’s cook our tomatoes! Warm up a cooking pot, add 1 tsp of vegetable oil and let it heat up.
• Add the chunky tomatoes from Step 2 to the pot. Add 1 tsp of salt and close the lid to let them cook until they are soft and mushy.
• Set aside and wait for the beef to finish cooking.
• Separate all the spices from our beef stew until we have only beef and soup in the pressure cook pot left.
• Add the cooked tomatoes to the stew. Add 1 tsp of salt, 2 tsp of sugar and ¼ tsp of Wangshouyi Multi-flavoured seasoning.
• Mix well and put it back to the pressure cooker for another full stew program.
• After it’s done, take it all out of the pressure cooker. Transfer the content to a cooking pot and let it boil on medium-high heat without a lid for 10-15 mins. This is to thicken the stew and give it a more concentrated flavour.
• The beef stew now should be ready, and if you taste the stew itself it should taste a bit too salty to eat the way it is right now, and that is ok.
• For me, the soul of soup noodles is hidden in the noodle water itself. After you boil your noodles, add them to your bowl as well as the water left in the pot with which you boiled your noodles. Trust me. This simple step will bring out all the flavours of your soup noodles.
• Add your beef tomato stew to the bowl. My ratio is 2 portions of the noodle water and 1 portion of the stew, but you can try different ratios to your taste.
• Garnish with a boiled egg and vegetables of your choice. Add a touch of Chinese dark rice vinegar if you are a fan and enjoy (您慢用 nín màn yòng ）！

Try It Yourself

And there you have it! Authentic Chinese beef tomato soup noodles that are great for those cold winter days and nights. It takes a while to prepare and cook but you’ll likely agree they’re worth the effort. Give this recipe a go and let us know what you think in the comments below. Be sure to ask any questions you may have about the process and ingredients as we check in the comments regularly. Also, be sure to follow us on Instagram for more Chinese food photos.

The post Beef Tomato Soup Noodles Recipe appeared first on Lin's Chinese Kitchen.

As a northern Chinese, I can live without rice but not without noodles. One of the many things I really miss whenever I’m away from Beijing is a good bowl of Beijing Zhajiang noodles (老北京炸酱面 lǎo běi jīng zhà jiàng miàn).

There are many theories regarding where Beijing Zhajiang noodles came from. The most popular one is that it was discovered and brought back to Beijing from Xi’an by Empress Dowager Cixi when she and her royal family was on the run avoiding foreign invasion back in 1900. While we can never be sure of its origin, one thing is for sure, which is Beijing Zhajiang noodles became and still is one of the most popular dishes in Beijing.

Luckily, my Greek husband is as much of a noodles fan as I am. So, whenever I make Zhajiang noodles at home, we feast.

In this post, I am going to walk you through the process of making an authentic Beijing Zhajiang noodles dish.

Every self-respecting Zhajiang noodles dish has three parts: Zhajiang sauce (炸酱 zhà jiàng), vegetables (菜码 cài mǎ), and noodles (面 miàn).

This recipe walks you through how to make the sauce (炸酱 zhà jiàng), and the vegetables (菜码 cài mǎ) in this recipe together. I highly recommend pairing this sauce with handmade noodles!

Beijing Zhajiang(Bean Paste Sauce) Noodles

Recipe by LinCourse: NoodlesCuisine: ChineseDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

15

minutes

Our authentic Beijing Zhajiang noodles recipe will show you how to make this hearty northern Chinese favorite for any occasion.

Ingredients

• Sauce

• Pork belly 500g

• Red peppercorn 3g

• Star anise 0.5g

• Cinnamon stick half

• Bay leaf 1 whole

• Spring onion 1

• Sweet Bean Paste 1 packet

• Bean Paste 1 packet

• Water 3 tbs

• Sugar 20-25g

• Shaoxing Cooking Rice Wine (optional)

• Vegetable garnish

• Carrots 2 whole

• Cucumber 1 whole

• Chinese leaf

• Celery 2-3 stalks

Directions

• Here are all the ingredients (the flour and egg are for the handmade noodles, I forgot to take them out when taking the picture…)
• This Shaoxing Wine is what I use when cooking the meat. If you don’t have it, feel free to replace it with another kind of cooking alcohol you can find in your local Chinese shop. Even if you can’t get some, it is fine. It’s not going to affect the taste too much as the bean paste is pretty strong when it comes to flavor. So, NOT the end of the world, keep going!
• Chop the spring onion into big chunks and put them together with red peppercorn, star anise, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf. These are the spices we need for the sauce.
• Separate the fatty part of the pork belly from the lean part and cut them into small cubes. The perfect fat meat to lean meat ratio is 3:7.
• Heat up a tablespoon of vegetable oil (or sunflower oil). Then, put the spices in, and let them cook for a few minutes on high heat.
• The oil should have absorbed the flavors from the spices. Take them out when they are nicely browned as shown in the image below and make sure you leave the oil in.
• Start by cooking the fatty portion of the pork belly first and let it cook until its oil is out.
• Add the lean portion of the pork belly and let it cook thoroughly. Add 3 tablespoons of water and bring to a boil.
• Set the heat to low, put in the sweet bean paste and bean paste. Stir in one direction (Don’t ask me why, this is what I was told by my mom, and she by her mom. If you do feel naughty and want to stir all kinds of ways, do enjoy and let me know the result!). Add sugar to your taste. Let it all simmer for 4 minutes with the lid on and your sauce is ready.
• Cut carrots, celery, Chinese leaf, and cucumber into fine strips. In a pot, bring water to a boil, put all the vegetables EXCEPT the cucumber in for 1-2 minutes. Run under cold water to cool, then plate them.
• Now, mix the noodles (面 miàn) of your choice (mine are handmade noodles), vegetables (菜码 cài mǎ) and Zhajiang sauce (炸酱 zhà jiàng) together. Personally, I like to add quite a bit of Chinese dark rice vinegar in the mix (proud northern Chinese). Also, some garlic goes really well with this dish (if you are a garlic lover like me ;p)
• Enjoy!

Variations

I prefer to have my Zhajiang sauce with freshly handmade noodles because of the chewy texture. You can check out our super chewy handmade noodles recipe to make your own.

However, when I do feel lazy and just want a quick Zhajiang noodles meal without too much effort, I find that fresh egg noodles from local supermarkets are a pretty good substitute. The next option would be packaged pasta, which I find makes for a hearty meal. For this reason, I like to make more sauce and store it in a jar in the fridge.

Try It Yourself!

Now you are armed with the knowledge to make your own tasty Zhajiang noodles! Have at it and let us know in the comments how it went. Feel free to drop any questions you might have as well and be sure to follow us on Instagram for more photos of delicious Chinese food.

The post Beijing Zhajiang Noodles Recipe appeared first on Lin's Chinese Kitchen.