Noodles in Fermented Sour Broth 酸浆面
Noodles in Fermented Sour Broth is featured among the local specialties of Hubei.
Noodles in Fermented Sour Broth (酸浆面) are thin wheat noodles served in a sour, spicy broth fermented from blanched greens and noodle water. They are a traditional snack of Yunyang District (郧阳区) in Shiyan (十堰), where Hubei, Henan and Shaanxi meet, and are recorded as almost 200 years old.
How it is made
Cooks divide the work into four stages. First comes the sour broth, a step locally called doujiang (抖浆): greens such as mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, celery or cabbage, or tender long beans, are blanched and laid in a clean tub, warm noodle-cooking water is poured over them, and a bluestone slab weighs them down. Cooled boiled water is added bit by bit, the scum is skimmed off each time, and the broth is ready when it smells sour. A little Sichuan pepper leaf improves it, and broth started before the Qingming (清明) festival in early April counts as the best.
Next, sesame oil and lard are heated to about 80°C with spring onion, ginger and salt, fried to a reddish yellow and stirred into the broth with five-spice powder until it turns milky white. The noodles are ideally thin, rolled and cut by hand from a dough with salt, a little alkali and egg white; the alkali gives them a faint yellow colour, and they cook up firm without clouding the soup. Some cooks use a mixed flour of 30% pea flour and 70% wheat flour.
How it is eaten
Blanched mung bean sprouts and chopped pickled greens, usually sour celery or sour mustard greens, go into the bowl first. The boiled noodles are laid on top, the sour broth is ladled over, and the bowl is finished with crushed toasted sesame, chilli oil made with sesame oil, spring onion and pepper. In summer it is eaten to cut through greasy food; in winter people add more chilli oil and pepper to warm up.
Where it comes from
A local legend places its start in the Daoguang reign (道光) of the Qing dynasty: an orphaned brother and sister surnamed Wang seasoned the brother's birthday noodles with leftover soup they had begged, and the sour smell drew curious passers-by. The brother went on to open a noodle shop by the Xihe wharf (西河码头) on the Han River. When the begged leftovers were no longer enough, he poured noodle water over vegetable leaves and let it ferment into a sour broth. Taiwan veterans who came back to Shiyan in the 1990s asked for the dish by name. The making technique was added to Shiyan's sixth municipal list of intangible cultural heritage.
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.