Dongquan Sweet Chili Fried Noodles 东泉甜辣酱炒面

Dongquan Sweet Chili Fried Noodles (东泉甜辣酱炒面) is the Taichung (台中) breakfast of fried noodles dressed with Dongquan chilli sauce (东泉辣椒酱), the sauce of a Taichung food factory founded in 1963. Locals commonly eat the noodles with a bowl of pig's blood soup.

Ingredients

What sets the dish apart is the sauce. Dongquan chilli sauce is made from glutinous rice, sugar, salt, liquorice powder, soy sauce and chilli powder. Although it is called a chilli sauce it is not very hot; its flavour is mainly salty, sweet and savoury, closer to a sweet chilli sauce or even a sweet bean sauce.

Where it comes from

The sauce comes from the Dongquan Food Factory (东泉食品工厂), which Chen Qingben (陈清本), born in Dajia (大甲) in 1934, founded in Taichung's North District in 1963. The factory set out to make soy sauce and added chilli sauce to its range; word of mouth spread it, and it became tied to the local habit of fried noodles with pig's blood soup for breakfast. Because the maker still produces on a small scale, the sauce is sold almost only in central Taiwan, where it is a common sight in snack shops in Taichung, Changhua (彰化) and Nantou (南投). Chinese Wikipedia records it as one of the 'three treasures of Taichung' (台中三宝), with big noodle thick soup (大面羹) and jute-leaf soup (麻薏).

How it is eaten

A 2021 TVBS report quotes a Facebook post calling fried noodles with Dongquan sauce for breakfast 'a small happiness of us Taichung people', posted with a photo of the noodles beside pig's blood soup. The same report calls the sauce a condiment Taichung locals cannot do without at meals, and on the programme it is added to big noodle thick soup as well.