Shuifu Ran Mian

Shuifu Ran Mian

　　Shuifu Ran Mian is a distinctive snack from Shuifu County in Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province. The Ran Mian of Shuifu is loose, bright red, fragrant, and offers a balanced kick of spicy and numbing flavors, all while being delicious and refreshing.

　　Locals in Shuifu have a habit of eating noodles in the morning, and the varieties available are rich — including beef, sausage, three delicacies, spareribs, mushrooms, minced pork, and about ten to twenty other types. Among them, the most famous is Ran Mian. Shuifu Ran Mian originates from Yibin Ran Mian. Shuifu and Yibin are closely connected geographically, and Bashu culture has had a profound influence on Shuifu.

　　Shuifu Ran Mian is made primarily with locally sourced high-quality wheat noodles as the main ingredient, along with supporting ingredients such as yellow sprout cabbage, small-grind sesame oil, fresh lard, star anise, sand ginger, sesame, peanuts, walnuts, golden chili peppers, premium Sichuan peppercorns, monosodium glutamate, as well as scallions, pea shoots, or spinach leaves. The noodles are boiled, drained, and excess alkali flavor is removed before being stir-fried according to traditional methods with oil and seasonings. The result is characterized by a loose texture, bright red color, inviting aroma, and a delicious balance of spicy and numbing flavors that’s refreshing to eat. It's called "Ran Mian" (which translates to “burning noodles”) because the heavy oil content makes it so that the noodles can catch fire easily when exposed to a flame. Yibin Ran Mian is mainly made with alkaline noodles, and the addition of a small amount of alkaline gives it a unique taste and texture. Also gaining fame alongside Ran Mian is Yibin’s crushed rice sprout vegetable, an essential condiment for making Ran Mian. This unique ingredient is only produced in Yibin and comes from a vegetable called “qing cai gan” (green vegetable stem), which grows uniquely in Yibin’s soil. These are green, cylindrical vegetables about three centimeters in diameter and roughly one foot long. After being sliced into thin strips with bamboo skewers, dried, and pickled, they take on a yellowish-brown hue. With a predominantly salty taste, they also offer special textures described as savory, sweet, crisp, tender, and fresh. When used, they are chopped into rice-grain-sized pieces, hence the name “crushed rice sprout vegetable.”

　　In recent years, the variety and types of noodle dishes in Shuifu have become increasingly diverse. In addition to options like sausage noodles and three delicacies noodles, the dry-mixed noodle series includes spicy beef noodles, cowpea noodles, and golden sauce noodles. The soup noodle options are even more extensive, such as tomato meatball noodles, pea noodles, ginger duck noodles, and eel noodles... The total number of varieties exceeds 20.