Lately, I’ve been drawing endless culinary inspiration from Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel. A few weeks ago, I recreated Molly’s roasted cauliflower carbonara – and recently, I prepared Chris’ spicy-sweet sambal pork noodles. Both were easy to make and delicious.
Spicy-sweet sambal pork noodles require a short list of ingredients (many of which you likely have on hand) and come together in about an hour. While the original recipe calls for fresh ramen noodles, I used dried fusilli col buco and was more than pleased with the finished product.
Chris describes the dish as a mashup of ragù Bolognese and drunken noodles. “You get a lot of meat, you get a lot of flavor … in a very short amount of time.” He’s not lying.
Needless to say, I polished off the spicy-sweet sambal pork noodles in a few sittings. And now the question is: What Bon Appétit YouTube video will spur me into cooking action next?
Recipe adapted from Bon Appétit.
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound ground pork
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 4 fresh basil leaves, plus more for garnish
- 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons sambal oelek
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 8 ounces fusilli col buco
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- kosher salt, to taste
- In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add ground pork and break up meat into large chunks with a wooden spoon. Cook, without stirring, until it starts to brown on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Stir and cook until pork is browned all over, about 3 minutes. Remove all but 1 tablespoon of fat from pot.
- Add garlic, ginger and sugar and cook, breaking pork into bite-size pieces, for 5 minutes.
- Add tomato paste and basil and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.
- Add sambal oelek, soy sauce, rice vinegar and 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta until al dente according to package directions. Drain, reserving ¾ cup cooking liquid.
- Add cooked pasta and butter to the sauce; stir to combine. If necessary, add some of the reserved cooking liquid to loosen the sauce. Discard basil and season with salt to taste. Garnish with additional basil and serve immediately.
[…] Now you won't see pork with sambal oelek traditionally, as Indonesia is a Muslim country and Pork is not halal. However, the sauce is now so wide-spread that we are seeing all sorts of variations, such as these spicy pork noodles. […]