Yexian Huimian Noodle Soup 叶县烩面
Yexian Huimian Noodle Soup is featured among the local specialties of Henan.
Yexian Huimian Noodle Soup (叶县烩面) is the mutton noodle soup of Ye County (叶县), Pingdingshan (平顶山), Henan, made in the qiangguo (炝锅, "pan-searing") style: raw mutton is fried hot in the pot before stock and wide noodle strips go in. The Ye County government calls the county the place where Chinese qiangguo huimian culture began, and says the dish is served in more than a hundred shops in the county and has taken root in many other parts of China.
How it is made
The Pingdingshan culture and tourism bureau describes the method used by Quezi Huimian (瘸子烩面), a Ye County shop it lists among the county's local specialities. Plump young mutton is sliced thin and stir-fried raw with spring onion, ginger, garlic and red chillies until it is seventy to eighty per cent cooked. Stock is added, and once it boils, dough pieces made from good flour are pulled straight into the pot, followed by green vegetables. Coriander goes on as the bowl is filled, and a house chilli oil is added to taste. At a 2026 county food event the shop's founder, Zhao Ruimin (赵瑞民), explained to onlookers, as People's Daily Online reported, that the stock is slow-simmered for hours, the noodle pieces are hand-made, and the searing of the mutton is the soul of Ye County huimian.
Flavour and texture
The Ye County government describes a savoury, rich broth clinging to wide, chewy noodles. The culture bureau notes that searing draws the flavour fully out of the mutton, and describes a fragrant soup and tasty meat, fresh without a gamey mutton taste.
Where it comes from
People's Daily Online reports that the dish's history is traced to the Spring and Autumn period, when Lord Ye (叶公) governed the area. Zhao Ruimin, from a family of cooks, spent years reworking the traditional Yegong noodles (叶公面) after the reform era began, using free-range lambs from the upper reaches of the Li River (澧河); the shop name comes from his lame right leg. Ye County put the dish forward for Pingdingshan's fifth municipal intangible heritage list in 2022, and in April 2026 the Pingdingshan culture bureau proposed the Ye County qiangguo huimian making technique for Henan's sixth provincial list.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.