Name: Lamb Pao-Mo Soup (羊肉泡馍)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon white pepper powder; 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil; 2 green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced; 1 cup (240 ml) cold water; 4 ounces (115 g) thin dry mung bean noodles, hydrated in warm water for 10 minutes; 4 cilantro sprigs, chopped; 16 wood ear mushrooms, hydrated in warm water for 30 minutes and coarsely chopped; 1 teaspoon salt; 8 cups (2 L) lamb broth (from Lamb Meat Soup); 2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce; 10 ounces (280 g) sliced lamb meat (from Lamb Meat Soup); 3 cups (375 g) all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast; 12 pickled garlic cloves (found in Chinese and Korean supermarkets, usually sold in bags or containers)

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Xi'an Famous Foods

By Jason Wang

Published 2020

About

According to legend, pao-mo soup came to be in the aftermath of a major battle during the Tang dynasty. One defeated general found himself AWOL, traveling around on foot and searching for home, subsisting only off his ration of dried bread. As luck would have it, he stumbled upon a butcher shop making broth with scraps of lamb. The starving general begged for a little bit of broth to boil his bread in, hoping to soften the hard-as-a-rock loaves. The resulting soup was so nutritious and fulf