Maapo Harusame

As a massive noodle fan, having learned how to make maapo tofu, my next step was to make maapo harusame (maapo with rice vermicelli). I actually don't know if they eat this in China since I always had the Japanese version (from already made packs). Rice vermicelli are very thin, transparent noodles and I think you can easily find them in local Asian grocery stores :)

In an earlier post I explained how I made maapo tofu. If you mastered this already then you will be able to make this dish too! It's a pretty easy recipe and you just need to replace tofu with a bag of rice vermicelli and buy a pack of shiitake mushrooms (this was not in the maapo tofu recipe).

Ingredients (for approximately for 4 big nomsters):

• 3 teaspoon of chicken stock diluted into 500ml of water
• 2-3 teaspoon potato starch (to thicken the sauce)
• 4 teaspoon soya sauce
• 3 teaspoon sugar
• a drizzle of sesame oil
• 3 cloves of garlic or 4 teaspoon of mashed garlic
• 4 teaspoon of minced ginger
• 8 green onions (white parts and green parts)
• Doubanjiang (chili bean paste; you can easily find it in asian supermarkets)
• 400 g of minced beef (you can also use minced pork)
• a bag of more or less 250g of rice vermicelli (available at local asian grocery store)

Preparation:

• In a bowl, mix the chicken stock, potato starch, soya sauce and sugar. 
• In a deep frying pan or a pot, add a drizzle of sesame oil and add the garlic, ginger and white parts of the spring onion on medium heat. When it's cooked add the minced meat. Try to make sure to break the clumps of meat with the spatula :)
• When the meat is almost cooked, add the shiitake mushrooms (I cut them into very small bits but you can cut them bigger of course)
• In a pot, boil the water for harusame (rice vermicelli). 
• When the meat is cooked, add the doubanjiang. I did not put a specific amount in the recipe because I always just randomly add the paste. I just keep adding until the meat is evenly covered and becomes red-ish.
• Mix the sauce that you kept on the side one last time before adding it to the pot. 
• Let it boil until the sauce thickens
• When the water in the pot is boiling, add the rice vermicelli. Check the package to know how long you need to boil them (mine were 5 min). When they are done, drain them and rinse them with cold water. This is to ensure the cooking stops completely. Drain them well and add them to the sauce. 
• Serve with fresh rice (optional) and sprinkle the green part of the green onion as decoration. 

As you can see pretty straight forward preparation! My only problem was the rice vermicelli... I didn't want to use the entire pack at first but it was impossible to cut them. Tried with scissors, knife... I put the entire bag and there were some left overs. 

Luckily, this dish was still good to nom-nom the next day. If you have leftovers you will see the vermicelli will drink up aaalll the sauce and they will look a bit fatter than the day before. But no worries the taste will still be the same! :) 

Enjoy!