How the heck do Chinese people make noodles at home?

[vellocet]

This sounds like the stupidest question ever, but I have been banging my head against it for some time.  I quite like Ajisen (which is Japanese, not Chinese) noodles, and would always stop by when I was in a hurry. Beats the stale-bread and drowning in mayo chicken hamburger any day. One day I ordered Ajisen waimai, and got a bowl with a soup base and FRH (flameless ration heater, those things you add water to and they start hissing and popping and putting out a ton of heat and steam).  It tasted just like the restaurant.  Then, they came out with a version you could buy at the grocery store.  A bit of soup base in an envelope, add 200ml boiling water, add noodles after draining, plus whatever fixins you want.  Pretty dern good, also quite close to the restaurant.

 

Well my wife saw that I was making noodles, so she took it on herself to buy a huge pack of dry noodles.  Despite the fact that these are egg noodles that could be taken out of an Italian kitchen, including being flat, I gamely tried to make noodles of them.  I quickly encountered two problems: what do Chinese people use for a soup base?  I mean, they can't use water, that has no taste.  What do they do, go out back to the pigsty and grab a couple of bones and spend the next six hours boiling them down?  Every time they want a bowl of noodles?  And how about the couple of pork discs?  Those obviously aren't the main point of the meal, but they are greatly appreciated.  The rest of it I could find at the grocery store: the bamboo, the beansprouts, kimchi if I wanted spicy, etc. 

 

After much searching, I found what I thought was soup base.  Apparently it was made for large families to make a huge pot of soup.  I tried using a dollop of the mixture in 200ml boiling water, dissolved it, and it was still very weak and almost flavorless, when it should have been way too strong (I was planning on adding more water to dilute it, but no).  Despite searching high and low both locally and on Taobao, I still can't find any soup base or meat discs.  What the heck do Chinese people do when they want a bowl of noodles?

 

I have a sinking feeling the answer is "they order waimai" or "they make instant noodles".  ? I'm sorry, but I don't trust anyone who can sell me a bowl of noodles for ¥8 and still make a profit.  Too much incentive to alter the food in the ways we all know well.

[Publius]

Well I'm super lazy so my usual solution is: water + salt + chicken powder + tiny amount of cooking wine + small amount of starch, heat to boil, turn down the heat, poach an egg, wait for it to become more or less shapely, turn up the heat again, throw in some 涪陵榨菜 and slices of 鸡肉火腿肠, boil for a while, done. ?

 

If I'm feeling fancy, I may add other things like 油菜 (上海青 where you live?), rehydrated shiitake mushroom (香菇, you really should have some dried mushrooms on hand, they're different from the fresh ones), shredded pork stir-fried beforehand...

 

But you know what, search 老北京炸酱面. That's the thing I really recommend. Make a big bowl of the sauce and you don't have to worry about what to eat for a whole week (every household has a refrigerator I presume). It's anything but weak. ?

[MTH123]

LOL! I hit the “Like” button on your post because it made me laugh. You really have a fun way of asking this question. Maybe I should have hit the “Good Question!” button instead. I don’t really know the answer to your question. But, I’ll give it a shot. I do something similar to Publius, who is obviously a much more advanced cook than I am. I have a long-term project to upgrade my cooking, but it’s a mystery how far I’ll get. (It’s just like it being a mystery how far I’ll get re-learning Chinese, lol.)

 

The famous Irene Kuo made two main stocks for her high-end restaurant. One was with chicken bones. The other was with a combination of chicken bones and pork bones. Many people have been called the Julia Child of Chinese cooking, but Irene Kuo is the one who had the same exacting publisher and wrote an incredible Chinese cookbook. It’s called The Key to Chinese Cooking. I’ve found helpful information in it that I haven’t found in other touted cookbooks.

 

I’ve tried making stock from bones for two people, but the strength has been all over the place. It really depends on the bones and the amount of meat on them. So, I’ve put that on the backburner to figure out.

 

In the meantime, I use chicken powder or pork powder or a combination of them to make broth. I put 50% more powder than normally called for, to make the broth richer. For example, for a soup with only chicken powder (and no pork powder), instead of 1 tsp per cup of water, I put in 1.5 tsp per cup of water.

 

Salt is 0.25 tsp per 3 cups of water.

 

That’s the most basic stuff I do.

 

Soups are dressed up from there, depending on the recipe. For example, below is my ramen noodle recipe. (It’s way better than cheap Maruchan instant-noodle packs that are everywhere in the U. S. and many college students partially live on. It’s not only way better, it’s probably also cheaper. I wish I knew about this in my college days, but there was no internet back then.)

 

Ramen Noodles	4 to 6	oz
Water	4	cup
Chicken Powder	3	tsp
Pork Powder	1.5	tsp
Garlic Powder	1	tsp
Onion Powder	1	tsp
Ginger, ground	0.25	tsp
Soy Sauce	1.33	Tbsp
Shaoxing Wine	4	Tbsp
Sesame Oil	0.25	tsp

 

Instead of salt, the recipe calls for soy sauce. I also tend to put in extra ramen noodles, because of the amount of soup. So, I put in 6 oz instead of 4 oz. You could add maybe 0.5 tsp of white pepper if you like, not black pepper. Black pepper just falls to the bottom of the soup, so almost all of its effect is lost.

[suMMit]

My mother in law handmakes noodles sometimes. It seems to me she never puts them in a soup, but rather a 拌面 type of thing or like Publius said, 咋酱面

[abcdefg]

On 5/28/2022 at 8:41 AM, vellocet said:

what do Chinese people use for a soup base? 

 

When I lived in Kunming, I boiled down all bones, chicken, duck, pork, beef. Accumulated them in a plastic bag in the freezer until I had enough for a batch. Sometimes I would add a few chicken feet, specially bought for that purpose. They added gelatin as well as flavor. Was something I just put on the stove to simmer while I took care of other tasks. Did it once a month or so.

 

Sometimes I would start everything in a pressure cooker. A French chef might frown on that, because even though speeding up the process, it made the stock cloudy. Didn't affect the flavor. Would put in a few seasonings, small amounts, bay leaf, black pepper corns, etc. Nothing too strong or distinctive. Wanted the stock to be "neutral" -- a blank canvas. Added vegetable scraps. Limp celery, stale carrots, part of an onion or two. Sometimes after it was ready, I would reduce it by half via boiling with the lid off. 

 

Then I would pour it into rice bowls and drinking glasses that had slanting sides. Freeze them. Next day, unmold them into sealed plastic bags and return them to the freezer. Took a little effort and time, but it served me well as a soup base for many meals. 

[Flickserve]

On 5/30/2022 at 7:44 AM, abcdefg said:

Sometimes I would add a few chicken feet, specially bought for that purpose. They added gelatin as well as flavor.

this sounds so Chinese style. ?

[abcdefg]

On 5/29/2022 at 11:58 PM, Flickserve said:

this sounds so Chinese style

I learned this approach to soup stock from Chinese friends and their mothers. Also one professional Chinese chef who kindly took me under her wing.  I learned to value the duck heads and chicken heads and other bits I might have otherwise thrown out. They contribute a lot of flavor. 

 

At times one of the stores where I shopped would break down whole chickens and sell the breast meat and the leg meat separately, off the bone. They wound up with bony carcasses stacked off to one side, backs and necks attached. I bought them cheap in a big bag expressly for stock.