Hot and Sour Noodle Soup (suan la fen 酸辣粉)-15 minutes!

I love spicy food and noodles. What’s a better way to combine both of them? This hot and sour noodle soup originated from Sichuan province and it’s usually sold as a street food or street side restaurant. You will see people selling this using a large wooden bucket that they can carry everywhere to sell. This sour spicy noodle soup is also a favourite among students.

While I’m from Northern China, I really love spicy food. Thus, I gravitate towards Sichuanese or other regional Chinese food that is on spicier side.

What is Sichuan cuisine?

As you might know, Sichuan province of China is known for its spicy and sometimes numbing flavours. Some examples are hot pot, skewers dipped into chili sauce and Malatang (where ingredients are boiled in a spicy and numbing soup).

Sichuan cuisine thrives on flavours that is bold and stimulating. Sichuan is located in southwest China. It has very varied climate but can be very wet with humid subtropical climate. Due to this climate, it’s also easy to grow hot peppers and peppercorns. This is why Sichuan cuisine features a lot of spicy and numbing flavours. In addition, the humid weather also diminishes appetite. Hence the spicy food helps to stimulate appetite. This hot and sour noodle soup definitely fits the definition of Sichuan cuisine and can be found all year round.

Suan La fen (hot and sour noodle soup)?

While it originated in Sichuan province, it’s popular all throughout China. There is a bit of variation in how the dish is made Usually street stalls don’t have a lot of soup in the dish, it’s mainly just the sweet potato noodles with the sauce mixed in. Other streetside restaurants, they add soup and it’s usually the same soup used in many hotpot places. In our homemade version we will add water that used to boiled our potato noodles as our broth. However, you can use chicken or beef broth as well. The The spicy and savory soup is so addicting but helps to stimulate appetite. Perfect for when you don’t have too much of an appetite. The soup is flavourful and light despite the heat. The potato noodles have a soft and springy texture. It definitely helps to keep the dish light.

Even though in Canada, we have lots of Sichuanese restaurant it’s hard to find hot and sour noodle soup at these restaurants. The premade ones are also too salty for me. This is why I’ve decided to recreate this soup at home. Honestly it’s so easy with ingredients you can find at home that you don’t need to buy premade ones.

Ingredients

Aromatic oil

• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp chopped scallions
• ½ tsp sesame seeds
• ½ tbsp chili flakes Korean Chili flakes
• Pinch of ground/crushed Sichuan peppercorn
• Pinch of ground white pepper

Sauce

• 1½ tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp oyster sauce
• 2 tbsp black Chinese vinegar
• ½ tsp sugar

Noodles and other ingredients

• Handful potato noodles soak in hot water for 5 minutes
• Leafy vegetables like Bok choy, pea shoots leafs, napa cabbage are good choices
• thinly sliced pork shoulder/beef brisket (optional)

Toppings

• Fried peanuts optional
• cilantro

Substitution and/or additions:

Sichuan peppercorn: this gives the soup as slight numbing taste. If this is unpleasant to you, you can decrease it or omit it all together. I like putting a bit of Sichuan peppercorn in the soup because Sichuan peppercorn has a slight fruitiness which makes the soup more delicious.

Noodles: I like using sweet potato noodles as they have a slight chewiness without the denseness of wheat noodles. It also compliments the soup. I usually use Korean sweet potato noodles used for Jap Chae. If you can’t find it, you can use rice noodles, make sure not to over cook them or else it will fall apart in the soup. If you are using rice noodles from Thailand or Vietnam, just soak them in hot water. Then add hot water/warmed broth into the sour spicy sauce to make the soup, put the noodles and any veggies you like into it.

Chili oil: If you don’t want to heat any oil up to pour over the aromatics, you can use chili oil. HOWEVER, you will need to some additional work with the garlic and Sichuan peppercorn to have similar flavour. First, mince your garlic pretty finely and soak them into water. Then grind your Sichuan peppercorn finely. You don’t have to add sesame seeds or chili flakes. When you are assembling the bowl, add 1.5 tbsp of chili oil, 1-2 tbsp of the minced garlic water, 0.5 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn, and green onions. Then add everything else according to the instructions.

Peanuts: If you are not allergic to peanuts, it would be more delicious to add some fried salted peanuts. Just fry some peanuts in oil for about 3-4 minutes. Salt them slightly, add to your soup and then store in a air tight container.

How to make it

1. Soak some potato noodles in some hot water.
2. Wash any veggies
3. Cut up the scallions, mince garlic. Also cut up some cilantro
4. If you only have whole Sichuan peppercorn, then just use a small spice blender to grind some up.

Making the sauce

1. Combine garlic, scallion, sesame seeds, chili flakes, Sichuan peppercorns, white pepper into a bowl
2. Heat up oil in a small pot
3. Once the oil is starting to smoke, take it off the heat, then pour over the aromatics
4. Once it’s stopped bubbling, add in soy sauce, oyster sauce, black Chinese vinegar and sugar. The sauce is done
5. Boil some water, add in your veggies, potato noodles and thinly sliced beef. Cook for about 2 minutes, remove any scum on top. Potato noodles should still have a bite to it.
6. Add some the water from the pot into your noodle bowl with your sauce.
7. Put the potato noodles, veggies and beef brisket into the bowl.
8. Top off with some cilantro and peanuts (optional). Enjoy!

Pro-tip

• Try to heat the oil until it’s just starting to smoke. This means that the oil is hot enough to bring out the flavour of the aromatics
• If you don’t want to do that, use chili oil instead. Make a minced garlic water to get the garlic flavour into the soup.
• For the broth, use water that you are using to boil your noodles. This saves time, but you can heat up any broth like chicken, beef or vegetable to give some extra flavour.