How Do Chinese People Make Home-Made Noodles?
There are many kinds of Chinese home-made noodles. What I am writing about here is the kind of noodles we call knife-cut or going-through-water noodles. But knife-cuting or going-through-water is only one step in the whole process to make the noodles. We also call the noodles bean noodles because we use green beans as the main ingredient in our dressing. Generally speaking, there are many versions of home-made noodles. Based on this recipe, by making little bit modification, you can create your own version.
- Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour
- 1 Egg
- 1.5 lb Green Beans
- 0.5 lb Ground Pork
- Fresh or Frozen Gingers
- Vegitable Oil
- Five Spices
- Salt
- Scallions
- Soy Sauce
- Making the dough. In a big mixing bowl, put 2-3 lb of all-purpose four, break one egg in the flour, mix with tap water untill all the four become little lumpes, then knead the flour into a big dough or 2-3 small doughs. Make the doughs at least 1-2 hours in advance and let them sit in room temperature until use
- Wash clean the green beans and chop them finely as in Fig. 8.
- Chop scallions and gingers finely.
- Heat some vegitable oil in a big frying pan, add in ground pork to stir fry, at the same time add in some five spices, salt, chopped scallions and gingers, and some soy sauce. Finally add some water to merge the content in the pan, put on lid, cook untill the beans are very tender, well cooked. See Fig. 9.
- Now we need to make the noodles using the dough we made in the step 1. Put one piece of dough on the board and press it flat, using a rolling pin to make it a thin sheet as is Fig.2.
- Put some dry flour on the top of the thin sheet to avoid sticking, then fold it as in Fig. 3. Put some flour on the top and fold again and again until it looks like in Fig. 4.
- Cut the folded sheet into noodles as in Fig. 5 Then you can see the made noodles as in Fig.6. and Fig. 7
- Now it's time to cook the noodles. While making the noodles, we use a big cooking pot to boil enough water to cook the noodles. Now, the water in the pot should be boiling, once the noodles are made as in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, put them in the boiling water, be careful to stir lttle bit to prevent the noodles stick together, but not vigorously. Boil them until the noodles are floating on the top of the boiling water and keep them there for about 2 minutes.
- Stop the fire and drain the water into sink or get the noodles out from the pot and put them into another big container with tap water, then get the noodles out of the container with tap water, put them on plates. Now they are ready to serve as in Fig. 10.
- Put some dressings in Fig. 9 on the top of noodles in Fig. 10, whick looks like in Fig. 1. Then mix and enjoy.
These noodles are very delicious and chewy, have very good mouth feeling. If you like, you can try to make or use diffent dressings. Sometimes I make dressings using scrambled eggs mixed with soybean paste made in China. That one is very delicouse too, maybe sometime later I will write about it.
