Recipe for Hand-Pulled Noodles (chemian 扯面), biangbiang noodles (youpo chemian 油泼扯面)

The first step to making a good bowl of biangbiang mian, is, of course, making some good mian. At the Shaanxi restaurants we visited, the noodles were hand-pulled right before cooking, and the belt-strap wide chewy noodles of charmingly uneven thickness is a big part of what makes this dish so enjoyable. Therefore, we took a shot at making our own hand-pulled noodles. We pulled together a recipe from a number of sources (we are indebted to advice from eGullet; a recipe for Kazahk noodles by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid from the book, Beyond the Great Wall, available online here; and this fantastic post from a Chinese blog).

Noodle dough:

• 3 cups flour (we used self-rising flour available in Chinese markets)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• one egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• about 1 cup of warm water (how much depends on the season and the dryness of your kitchen)
• peanut oil (as needed)

Whisk the flour and salt together, then add the egg and sesame oil. Add the water slowly, a bit at a time, and mix to make a dough that is neither dry not overly gummy. It should be pliant enough to knead with a little bit of muscle – don’t worry if it seems too dry, as the dough will rise and grow more moist when it is resting. In the winter you may need more water and in the summer you may require less.

Knead the dough for fifteen minutes. When you want to stop, keep going.

Oil a pan. Pinch them into small bundles (called jizi 剂子). Roll these into fat little tubes, and rub with peanut oil all over, primarily to prevent sticking. Cover with a moist towel or plastic wrap, and let rest in a warm place. In the summer, the resting time will be around 10 minutes; in the winter, 30 minutes.

Since neither of us are noodle-making masters, we guessed from what we observed on our visit to Shaanxi Folklore. Press a tube flat gently by hand.

Then use a rolling pin to roll it out lengthwise. Apply slightly more pressure in the center.

You can use the rolling pin to press gently to create a lengthwise indentation. For other types of pulled noodles, once the noodles are stretched out thin, they can be ripped apart along this indentations. For our biangbiang mian, since the super-wide noodles are part of the pleasure of eating this dish, there was no need to make the indent in the dough.

Grab the noodle at either end, and then stretch gently. Then, slap the noodle down onto the counter – BIANG! – which helps to flatten and further stretch them out. Keep repeating this until the noodles are as thin as you want them to be.

We wanted thinner noodles, so we helped (ie, cheated) the noodles along by rolling them out flatter to get the thickness that we wanted. Don’t make them too thick, but they are meant to be quite rough and homestyle.

Bring a pot of water to boil. When the water comes to a boil, add the noodles and cook for about three minutes, or until the thinner ones are quite translucent. Drain, and eat with whatever tasty toppings you can find. In our case, we assembled ourselves a bowl of biangbiang mian.