Taiwanese Meat Sauce, with no meat

Vegetarian rou zao (肉燥), in danzai noodles

To call this a "recipe" is kind of crazy, because it's basically throwing a bunch to stuff in a pan, but I guess that just tells you how easy it is to cook something pretty crave-worthy in about 15 minutes.

I looked up how to make southern Taiwanese meat sauce*, rou zao (肉燥) when I was craving dan zai mian (擔仔麵), an old-school noodles classic usually with a prawny-porky broth, prawns, some egg and this meat sauce.

Taipei - Jin Feng Luroufan (Braised Pork Rice)

Luroufan at Jin Feng

There are a few signature or staple dishes in each city - some seem geared towards tourists (egg tarts in Hong Kong - not that locals don't like them, we just don't eat that many of them), while others truly live in people's subconscience and and are eaten by locals on almost a daily basis. To me, an example of the latter would be luroufan in Taiwan, or braised pork rice.

On previous trips, I had been introduced to Formosa Chang, or "bearded Chang" in Chinese (鬍鬚張), which, in my untutored opinion, is a very decent chain, but I decided I'd go looking for more options, just to compare (this will sound familiar to food nerds...).

Ten Easy Steps - Taiwan Yiping Huadiao Chicken

Wouldn't it be funny if the signature dish the name of every restaurant was also their name? The Chairman would be Crab Steamed in Shaoxing Wine and Chicken Fat, Mak's Noodles would be Wonton Noodles and McDonald's would be Big Mac. Oh wait, the last two weren't that different, so I guess it's normal that this place is called Taiwan Yiping Huadiao Chicken.

It's a hotpot restaurant, but whether you end up having a hotpot or not (optional, and nothing overly spesh if you ask me), you need to have the huadiao chicken. Here are 10 steps to its greatness.