Chinese Noodle soup recipe Vegetarian

This Dan Dan Noodle Soup is a flavour explosion in a bowl, healthy (< 300 cal) and you’ll have it on the table in just over 10 minutes. The soup is thicker than the usual clear noodle soups, and the creamy colour is from the sesame paste (or tahini) and chilli paste. Traditionally it is made topped with stir fried pork, but today I’m sharing a meat free version which is my favourite way of making it – it’s faster and healthier. But just as tasty – a truly authentic flavour. A perfect midweek meal to pop into your RecipeTin app!

Another great thing about this recipe is that you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand – and really load it up. Also, here are a few tips for making this recipe:

1. A microplane is a handy thing to have in the kitchen for mincing garlic and ginger straight into the pot. If you use a young ginger with soft skin, you don’t even need to peel it. I never use a garlic crusher anymore, and I rarely bother finely chopping garlic, I just use my microplane.
2. Undercook the noodles as they will continue to cook in the bowl when you ladle over the hot soup.
3. I used rice stick noodles (pictured at the bottom of the post), but you can use any noodles you want.
4. Unlike many noodle recipes, the noodles are actually cooked in the soup stock. Partly for the convenience, but also because the starch from the noodles actually thickens to stock which is how it is supposed to be.
5. Make it as spicy or mild as you want. The authentic version is really spicy!

These are the noodles I used – rice stick noodles. But this recipe is just as delicious made with egg or flour noodles, dried or fresh, except I wouldn’t recommend using vermicelli noodles as they are too thin for the punchy flavours of this soup.