Chinese Spicy beef sauce- noodle toppings and great for meal prep!
I’m not fan of traditional meal prepping. I don’t like pre-portioning my meals and heat them up during the week. It just doesn’t feel relaxing to me to have microwaved pre-portioned food for dinner. This is why I love prepping easy sauces like a Chinese spicy beef sauce that I can put on top of freshly cooked noodles. It feels like a home cooked meal without the effort!
This Chinese spicy beef sauce is similar to my fried black bean sauce I made before on this blog. Also it keeps well since we are preserving the sauce by cooking the beef and adding different sauces. The best part about this sauce is that it only takes 15 minutes!
Ingredients
The main ingredient is ground beef. I’m using regular ground beef because I do like more fat in it. You can choose lean but just make sure not to overcook the lean ground beef. I love using ground meat because it makes the dish easier to cook. It’s also heartier without the time it will cook a larger piece of protein.
The two main sauces are spicy broad bean sauce (doubanjiang) and a sweet flour sauce (tian mian sauce). Both of these sauces are readily available in Chinese supermarket.
Broad bean sauce is made from fermenting broad beans and mixing with chilis, salt and flour. The flavour has a salty, umami and bit of spicy taste to it.
The sweet flour sauce is made with flour and soybeans and it has a mild, sweet flavour.
The only other ingredients in this spicy beef sauce are soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, minced scallions and ginger.
How to make it
Cooking the sauce
In order to make this sauce, we want to use a bit more oil in the sauce so it preserve well. Don’t worry you won’t be consuming that much oil as it you only need a small amount of oil each time you eat the sauce.
Heat up the oil in a wok or sauté pan. Add in the ground beef and cook on medium. This will help to cook the ground beef evenly without clumping (happens when the heat is too high). Once the ground beef has turned color and some of the water has evaporated, add in scallion and ginger and continue frying. At this point, you can turn the heat up to medium high.
Stir fry for about 1-2 minutes. Add in the spicy broad bean sauce and tian mian sauce. Add soy sauce and dark soy sauce. Once everything is incorporated and the sauce is pretty fragrant then we can turn off the heat and put onto your noodles or into a container for storage.
To assemble your noodles
Boil your favourite type of noodles. For your toppings, I like sliced cucumbers, cilantro, marinated and mustard greens. You can also add some blanched bean sprouts, carrots. The choices are endless. Take a spoonful of the sauce and mix with your noodles. You can also add in some hot noodle water to make it a noodle soup
There are no right or wrong ways to assemble the noodles, it’s just what you like to eat it with.
Pro-tip
- When cooking with ground meat, turn the heat down low so the ground meat doesn’t clump up.
- Put a bit more oil than you think it’s necessary, this will help to preserve the sauce for longer and when you mix with the noodles, you are not actually consuming that much oil.
- Don’t skip on the broad bean sauce because that’s what is going to give you the spicy and umami flavour.
Chinese spicy beef sauce (for noodles)
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef lean ground pork works well
- 4-5 tbsp oil (less if using full fat ground pork or beef)
- 3 tbsp broad bean paste
- 3 tbsp tian mian sauce
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce
- ½ tsp 5 spice powder
- ½ tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp minced ginger
- 2 tbsp chopped scallion
Instructions
Cooking the meat sauce
- Cut the scallions and mince the ginger
- Put oil into a wok or into a saute pan, heat up on medium.
- Put a spatula into the oil and if there are small bubbles forming, it's ready. Put in the ground beef.
- Stir fry on medium until it's mostly cooked and water has evaporated
- Add in scallions and minced ginger and stir fry for about 1-2 minutes
- Add broad bean sauce, tiamian sauce, mix together.
- Add in soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar and 5 spice powder.
- Stir fry for another 2 minutes. Then it's done.
Assembling the noodles
- Boil wheat noodles
- Add noodles into bowl, add in the meat sauce.
- Top with some julienned cucumbers, scallions and cilantro. I also added some marinated mustard greens
- Add a few ladles of the noodle water (add more if you want a noodle soup)
