How to Make Chinese Noodles
Ever wondered how you can impress your date or your dinner party guests with your cooking knowledge? Knowing how to make Chinese noodles—and where it’s okay to leave it to the professionals—can go a long way in showing your cooking knowledge to the world.
Take a look at the basics of making noodles at home, and see how MìLà can help you have an authentic Chinese noodle experience with a fraction of the work.
The Classic Method
Basic Noodle Dough Recipe
If you’re trying to make authentic Chinese noodles at home, you’ll need a few ingredients that you probably already have on hand:
- Flour (ideally bread flour, because it’s a bit more robust)
- Water
- Salt
If you’re lucky enough to own a stand mixer with a dough hook, you’re in luck—this will be comparatively easy. However, if you don’t, no worries. This is an opportunity to give your biceps a good workout with a bowl, a mixing spoon, and your bare hands. There may or may not be some sweating involved.
Combine all three ingredients, but avoid adding too much water—this will make your noodles gummy. A gummy noodle is a sad noodle. Give the flour time to absorb the water, and knead it until a lumpy but relatively cohesive ball of dough comes together.
Cutting and Cooking Chinese Noodles
Once your dough has come together into a cohesive mass, it’s time to get out a rolling pin and the biggest, sharpest knife you own. If you can find a noodle cleaver, that can also work.
You’ll need to split the dough in half and roll it out until it’s as flat as you can possibly make it. This will take a lot of rolling in both directions until it’s about 2 millimeters thick.
Once the noodles are thin enough, you’ll need to fold them into fourths like one of those old maps your parents refused to take out of the seat pocket in their car when you were a kid. You’ll need to make cuts in the folded dough—the closer the cuts, the thinner the noodles. Be sure to gently separate them with your hands and toss them in a bit more flour so they don’t stick before you cook them.
After they’re all cut, you can boil them in water so they’re ready to eat. However, there’s a lot of variation on how long it can take to cook the noodles, so you may need to taste-test them along the way to make sure they’re perfectly cooked.
A word to the wise: This is way easier said than done. Some of the best Chinese noodles in the world take years to perfect. We have the calluses from overusing our grandma’s rolling pin for years to prove it.
In fact, unless you’re one of the world’s few hand-pulled noodle masters and you’ve been making noodles all your life, we’d honestly recommend buying noodles ready-made from your local Chinese grocery store. It’s the easiest way to make a perfectly chewy or bouncy noodle so you can focus on making the sauce you choose shine.
Sauce Considerations
There’s a whole world of possibilities with Chinese noodle sauces, ranging from simple and elegant dark soy sauce-based options to thick, rich recipes with beef or fermented soybean paste at their base.
Just like your one friend who’s obsessed with Italian food will tell you which pastas work best with certain types of sauces, certain shapes and sizes of Chinese noodles have natural pairings. For example, flat rice noodles work well with thick soups and curry dishes. Mung bean vermicelli (also known as glass noodles) work beautifully with sauces featuring sesame oil.
Whichever type of Chinese noodle you choose to cook, there are hundreds of possible sauce options, so it pays to know which options work best together. That’s partly why we offer three unique combinations of noodles and sauces for easy authenticity.
How to Make Authentic, Easy Chinese Noodles
Making Dan Dan Noodles at Home with MìLà
These are a world-famous classic for a reason. Dan Dan Noodles (担担面) are a spicy, savory flavor experience that uses sesame, Sichuan peppercorns, and chili oil to give it the tingly mala (麻辣) that pairs perfectly with the noodles and ground pork or Impossible Meat™.
Our Dan Dan Noodles recreate that classic flavor combination, complete with thin, bouncy noodles that are ready to enjoy in less than 10 minutes. We use the recipe we learned from our parents to make this easier version of the classic—all you have to do is boil a pot of water and you’ll be on your way.
How to Make Scallion Oil Noodles at Home
We’ve made this delicate, Shanghai-based classic easier than ever to have at home. Our Caramelized Scallion Oil Noodles (葱油拌面) are vegan by design and pack a flood of umami sophistication that will leave you hungry for more. In addition to being ready in a matter of minutes, they have the fresh, perfectly bouncy, toothsome chew that some home chefs would commit petty crimes to achieve.
The thin, bouncy noodles in this dish pair perfectly with simmered fresh green onions, soy sauce, and cooking oil. Together, they make an understated but fulfilling flavor journey that can sing a perfect flavor solo or be part of a chorus of other dishes in your dinner lineup.
Cooking Chinese Sweet & Savory Noodles at Home
Compared to the other noodles we offer, these are thick with a capital T. Sweet & Savory Noodles (or Zha Jiang Noodles/炸酱面) are also known for being chewy and coming with a rich, soybean-based sauce that takes the term “comfort food” to a whole new level.
Our version of these thick and chewy noodles cooks in the same amount of time as our Dan Dan and Scallion Oil Noodles, so you can still have a hearty meal ready in less than 15 minutes. We especially love these thick noodles with vegetables and ground pork to make this experience into a proper meal that can satisfy any late-night craving you’ll ever have.
