Slicked & Spicy Lamb Noodles, Perfect For A Weeknight Dinner

[upbeat music]

Today, I'm making my slicked and spicy lamb noodles.

I only eat halal meat, so I've never been able

to have the Xi'an Famous Foods cumin lamb noodles.

So I wanted to, sort of, riff on that idea.

This has to be probably one of my favorite recipes

that I've ever developed for this site,

just because I went through so many iterations of it.

So the final product is something that I'm super proud of.

That combination of lamb and cumin is so iconic

and I wanted to translate it to a really quick,

easy, weeknight noodle dish.

[deep bass music]

We need large shallots.

This is what I mean by a large shallot.

I'm going for like a quarter inch thick slices,

somewhere between an eighth and a quarter.

They're gonna get cooked down in a ton of olive oil

so don't worry about them being like paper thin.

I love shallots

because they have like a garliciness to them

so just save me from calling for another ingredient.

But if you only had an onion on hand,

you could definitely do one large yellow onion

and maybe like four or five garlic cloves.

Okay, shallots are done.

I'm just gonna put them off to the side in a bowl.

And then for the mint, I'm gonna toss the thicker stems

of the mint and try and use just mostly the leaves.

I don't mind the thinner stems at the top.

I want a half cup of mint and I'm gonna roughly chop it,

bundling it up to make it easier for me to handle

when I chop it up.

But just run your knife through it.

You almost want larger pieces so that you can see them

and really taste them in the final dish.

And then I'm just gonna crush two tablespoons

of whole cumin seeds in a mortar and pestle.

We want to really taste the cumin

in both flavor and texture so using whole cumin seeds

is the way to go here.

You wanna crush it till you see most

of the seeds have broken down.

It definitely doesn't need to be powdery

but you don't want the whole cumin seeds.

So that's the texture that we're going for.

You can see some of the pieces have completely broken down.

There are some larger chunks to give us texture

to the noodles.

That's it, I'm just gonna transfer it to a small bowl

and then we can move to the stove.

[deep bass music]

If you're scared of using stainless steel

because you're worried that your food's gonna sick,

like totally fair, that's usually

because your pan isn't correctly heated through.

So that will cause sticking.

If you wanna check if your pan is nice

and evenly heated through,

you can just splash some water on the skillet.

If it dances around like that and evaporates

within five to 10 seconds, you're good.

I'm gonna go in with that oil.

This is also a pretty significant amount of shallot.

This amount of oil is gonna help this cook down faster.

We want the shallots to soften

and also get, kind of, golden brown around the edges.

I just season that with a pinch of salt.

So just stir to break up any tight rings of shallot.

And then we're gonna let this go for six to nine minutes.

Again, we wanna see that the shallots have broken down

and softened, and they're starting to get golden brown

around the edges.

The volume of the shallots,

as the moisture draws out from cooking it, is gonna reduce.

And how long this takes is gonna depend

on how thinly you sliced your shallots.

If you went the mandolin route and they're pretty thin,

this will happen closer to five to six minutes.

If you kept them larger, this will take closer to 10.

This looks perfect.

I can see that the shallots have softened and broken down

and they're turning golden brown around the edges.

So now this is the perfect time to go in with tomato paste.

The tomato paste is going to caramelize in this oil

and get really nice and add a ton of depth and sweetness.

Tomato paste is one of my favorite ingredients

of all time just because it adds so much so fast.

Just by cooking it down a little bit

you lose that acidity and that tinniness,

and you get something that's very deep and savory.

So you wanna let this go

until the tomato paste darkens in color.

That'll take anywhere from two to three minutes.

The tomato paste has darkened in color,

it's pretty evenly dispersed.

And so I'm gonna go in with the spices.

For the smoked paprika, I'm using smoked

because I like that extra savoriness that it gives.

And then the red chili flakes gives it

a pretty good spice level in my opinion.

Cumin seeds are going in too.

And then we just wanna stir this

so that the spices can bloom in the oil.

Blooming the spices in the oil

is gonna bring out their flavor

and make them stronger and more potent.

That looks perfect.

And then I'm gonna go in with the ground lamb

and season the lamb a little bit with some kosher salts.

Lamb has a ton of flavor so it's the ideal choice

because it plays really well

with the other strong flavors that we have going on.

But you could definitely use ground beef as well.

Cooking the lamb in the spiced oil mixture that we made

is gonna make sure that the lamb is seasoned throughout.

If we just cooked it in oil with salt and pepper,

took it out and reintroduced it,

it wouldn't have had the opportunity

to mingle with these flavors.

I think that adds a ton of deep savoriness to the lamb.

At this point, the lamb is on its way,

it needs a few more minutes.

I'm gonna drop my pasta.

So I'm using pappardelle, which is like a nice wide pasta,

but you could use any pasta that you have, obviously.

This, I just feel like gives optimal melt feel

and clings to the lamb mixture beautifully.

I'm gonna season the boiling water

with a pretty generous amount of salt

and then drop my pasta.

The lamb mixture is done, this looks perfect.

I'm gonna keep it on low heat

while the pasta finishes cooking.

The pasta's been cooking,

it needs like another 30 seconds or so.

That's perfect.

Noodles are drained off.

I'm gonna put the heat to medium on the lamb

and add pasta water.

This is just gonna help loosen up the mixture

so that it can coat the noodles.

So just stir that together.

It'll emulsify in pretty quickly

because of the tomato paste.

It's not saucy, but it's also not dry, it's slicked.

Okay, perfect.

This looks great.

I'm gonna add a little bit more.

Because of that amount of oil, even though we added water

it still has that like greasy quality that we want.

I'm gonna taste it now for salt,

now that most of the pasta water's in.

Hmm, that's perfect, okay, great.

I'm gonna add half of the lamb mixture to the noodles.

So we're adding half so that we can coat the noodles

in the mixture and also have some reserved for the top.

And then we're gonna go in with the mint.

So now I'm just gonna toss the lamb mixture

with the noodles.

So you can see there's no like real sauce,

but the noodles are being coated

by the oil from the lamb mixture

and they're stained from all of those spices.

For plating, we're gonna add the noodles

to a bowl and then top it with more of the lamb mixture

just so that you have like extra concentrated lamb on top.

Then I'm gonna top the top

with a little bit of that reserved lamb mixture.

So pretty.

And then I'm gonna add a little bit more mint, too.

These are my slicked and spicy lamb noodles.

It's time to taste.

I'm actually kind of glad no one's here

'cause that means I get to eat the whole thing myself.

But I'm gonna grab a piece

with a pretty good amount of lamb.

I also want a little bit of mint.

Hmm, makes me so happy.

It's not like overwhelmingly spicy.

There's a ton of flavor.

It's really deep.

There's like a nice sweetness.

There's this like uniquely moistened quality to the noodles

where they don't feel like they're saucy and wet,

but they're also not dry at all.

If you're looking for a really simple

but flavorful noodle dish, this is the one for you.