Stir-Frying and Cooking Hand-Rip Noodles: A Step-by-Step Guide

When it comes to cooking stir-fries, there are many factors that can make all the difference between a successful dish and a disaster. One of the most important considerations is the temperature of the wok or pan, as this will greatly impact the texture and flavor of the final product. In this article, we'll explore the process of stir-frying and cooking hand-rip noodles from scratch.

To start, preheat your wok or pan to medium heat. It's essential to not set the temperature too high, as this can burn the sauce and create a bitter flavor. The sauce in our recipe is quite thick due to its high sugar content, so we need to be careful not to reduce it too quickly. Instead, we'll add a small amount of white sugar to balance out the saltiness of the sauce and deepen its flavor. Once the sauce has been cooked for just a little while longer, it's time to move on to the next step.

Preparing the Hand-Rip Noodles

Before we can start cooking our noodles, they need to be prepared. To do this, take two pieces of dough and roll them out into thin rectangles. The dough should be rolled out to a thickness that's not too thin, but also not too thick. Once you have your rectangles, use the roller to create an indentation across the long way of each piece. This will help guide the shape of the noodles as they're pulled apart and will prevent them from becoming uneven or thick in certain areas.

It's essential to handle the noodle dough gently when picking it up, as this can cause the ends to become too thick and brittle. To avoid this, hold the dough kind of like a book and stretch it apart with your shoulders, then swing it back and forth, using the momentum to pull it further apart. This will help you achieve an even thickness throughout the noodles.

Once you've stretched the noodles apart to the desired length, use a pair of scissors or clippers to trim them to size. Be careful not to cut too close to the ends, as this can cause them to become uneven or split. If you do find yourself having trouble getting the ends to line up evenly, don't worry – it's all part of the process!

Cooking the Noodles

With your noodles prepared and ready to go, it's time to cook them. To do this, bring a large pot of water to a boil and carefully add in the noodles. Cook for about three minutes, or until they're cooked through but still retain some firmness in the center.

Once the noodles are done cooking, use a spider net to scoop them out of the pot and drain off any excess water. It's essential to do this quickly, as the noodles can become mushy and overcooked if left in the water for too long.

Assembling the Dish

Now that your noodles are cooked and ready to go, it's time to assemble the dish. Start by adding a generous helping of the meat sauce to the bottom of the bowl. You can add as much or as little sauce as you like, depending on how spicy you want your dish to be.

Next, add in sliced scallions, which will add a nice crunch and freshness to the dish. Be sure to chop them finely so they distribute evenly throughout the sauce. Then, add in the noodle sauce, which is primarily composed of soy sauce and black vinegar. This will help to balance out the flavors and create a harmonious harmony of sweet, savory, and spicy notes.

Finally, sprinkle some chili crisps on top of the noodles for added heat. You can adjust the amount of chili oil to your liking, but be careful not to add too much – you want to maintain a good balance between spice and flavor.

Tips and Variations

One of the best things about hand-rip noodles is their versatility. Feel free to experiment with different sauces and ingredients to create unique variations on this classic dish. Some ideas might include adding diced vegetables, such as carrots or bell peppers, to the sauce for added texture and nutrition.

If you prefer a milder flavor, try reducing the amount of chili oil or omitting it altogether. On the other hand, if you're feeling adventurous, add in some diced jalapenos or serrano peppers to give your dish an extra kick.

The Secret to Success

So what's the secret to making delicious hand-rip noodles? It all comes down to technique and attention to detail. By taking the time to carefully prepare each component of the dish – from the sauce to the noodles themselves – you'll be rewarded with a truly exceptional eating experience.

And remember, the key is to enjoy your noodles fresh off the pot! Don't let them sit for too long, as this can cause the flavors to meld together and become dull. Instead, serve them hot and savor every bite of that perfect balance between sweet, savory, and spicy.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthank you I'm Jason y I'm the CEO of champ Famous Foods here in New York City we serve specialty Chinese food from my hometown of Xi'an China in the shanxi province today I'm here in the Test Kitchen showing you one of our signature dishes our Beyond hand rib noodles with pork jajang meat sauce the pork jajan sauce is actually a sauce from northern China Northern East Asia Korea Beijing there's many different areas serving this dish along the region but it's very personal to me because I used to eat it pretty often as a kid and of course our bum bum noodles are very distinct to our shanxi Province region and it's something that champ Famous Foods serve in our stores all the time so putting those two together it's going to be a really delicious and really significant dish for us today so here we have a bowl of the all-purpose flour first we're going to add the salt into the flour it just helps the texture noodles and also a little bit of the flavor we're going to start just imitating a machine mixer with our fingers slowly add the water no need to rush this you start seeing the dough grouping together the more it's coming off the sides of the bowl it's no longer just the powder sometimes you just gotta kind of hold the bowl and kind of go into it when you're making the dough for use in the restaurants you really can't do this because as you can see it does take some time but with the help of machines you know mixer machines really large ones it comes out actually more consistently than handmade the goal is to have a clean bowl with no flour and no mask is stuck on the sides no slush nothing like that the glass is pretty much free of flour now it doesn't need to be perfectly smooth you still see some crevices here and some uneven Parts I'm gonna put it back back into the bowl to rest I'm going to cover with plastic wrap so it's not going to dry up and get all crusty and we're going to let this rest for about 20 minutes and then it'll be ready to be cut into pieces for the noodles the doll has gone through some trials and tribulations it's basically needed rested needed two sets and then arrested for 20 times each at room temperature and as you can see after resting is actually really smooth now it's bouncier it should still have a bit of toughness to it it's not supposed to be like super squishy like marshmallow so we're gonna cut these first you just want the dough to be about 100 grams each give or take and now what we're gonna do is just for each piece we're just going to roll it out into like a flatter rectangular shape so once you get these pieces some vegetable oil right here we'll just rub it on and the only reason we do this is just so that it retains the moisture and the smoothness of the dough until we're ready to use it for pulling noodles and for these pieces because you already oil them you can lay them sort of on top of each other just a few more pieces and we're pretty much prepped let it sit for maybe half a day or so in the fridge it's sort of a resting process because just now you know we we messed the dough a little bit so it's tightened up a little bit we need a little time for it to ease off you know not be so tense and then um that would be perfect for pulling so we're going to leave it a few hours at least and then we're going to come back to it and we're gonna be ready to use them to make our noodles before we get started on the pork Dijon sauce we gotta prepare our vegetables and aromatics so that is ready to go foreign so we have the pork now we're going to prepare the vegetables that we need for this dish particularly for cooking the pork we're gonna need some scallions or green onions and we're just gonna slice them into smaller a fourth of an inch pieces next we're going to cut a small piece of Ginger we also have some essential sauces and liquids that we need for this dish now uh this is a sweet flour paste it's used as the main flavoring of this meat sauce next ingredient is our shaoxin cooking wine it doesn't need to be super accurate because the thing about cooking one is it just evaporates when you're cooking we're just going to mix this up into a thick sauce and this is the last component of the pork jajang meat sauce so here we have the green cabbage which is cooked with the noodles in the same pot just to give the noodle dish a little bit of textural variation because the noodles are chewy the cabbage is going to be a little crunchy so that adds that texture so we want to cut these into inch and a half pieces lastly we have a crunchy cucumber cut them into slivers we're going to set that aside we've meased out all of our ingredients now we're ready to go to the stove all right so we're at the stove we have our pan Which is a decent sized enough pan in order to fit all of our ingredients as well as the meat I'm just gonna let the pan get heated a little bit before we put the oil in and when we're using oil we're just using regular vegetable oil canola oils of that sort we're going to put the pork in first and immediately we just want to make sure to break up the meat this part comes together pretty quickly it should be done at a high temperature so you have some of the caramelization but you don't want to burn the meat either right about there it would be a good amount so I'm going to turn it off so I'm going to use a sawed spoon so we're not taking too much of the juice too much the oil out the Fat's basically done a lot of its job in cooking the meat at this point so we don't need too much of it we're starting with the clean pads we're going to wait for the oil to heat up again before we put in the aromatics so the oil is hot at this point I'm gonna put in the ginger so stir around a little bit we'll put in the scallions really just sweat it a little bit get the flavor out try not to burn it the scallion should turn Greener and a little bit wilted but not brown or black or burnt same with the ginger I'm going to add my pork back in make sure you stir around so no meat is stuck on the sides the meat's already cooked so you don't need to cook it too long it's really just about mashing the ingredients and now we're going to take the reserved sauce which is the cooking wine and the sweet flour paste or sweet soybean paste and we're going to add it in so see how it's a really thick consistency and that's really again adding to the body of the sauce it's actually becoming more of a sauce rather than a stir-fry and we're going to turn the fire to medium so it doesn't burn the sauce so there's a lot of sugar in the sauce and it's already very thick so we really don't want to reduce it too quickly or burn the sugar but we do want the flavor to get deeper into the meat and we're going to add a little bit of more sweetness to it with a little bit of just white sugar the sweetness helps balance out the saltiness of the sauce all right so the sauce is done I'm gonna just let it sit with a fire all just a little bit while I go over and make the hand rib noodles foreign for these dough pieces it takes two to make one of our regular sized servings so I'm going to take two pieces here and I'm gonna make sure to cover the rest so they don't get dry and crackly roll the pieces out so they're a little bit more even not roll is super thin but just kind of spread it out into a little bit bigger of a rectangle and then you're just going to take the roller and you're going to make an indentation across the long way or the horizontal way of each piece the purpose of that is to guide the shape of the noodles so that when you're pulling it it'll keep along that line instead of going kind of off and then you'll have thick ends and things like that to do the next step you got to pick up the pieces but when you pick it up be careful not to pinch too hard but also don't let go be careful not to linger too long holding the pieces otherwise these things will make the ends very thick you'll risk breaking off where you're holding them so that's just a tip from me I'm gonna pick the first piece up I'm gonna hold it kind of like a book first stretch it apart just pass your shoulder and then you're gonna start swing up and down slopping on the counter while you're pulling it ever so slightly more apart so that's why I mean by kind of lingering as I'm talking I linger a little too much and it'll break but it's okay even the bricks pick up the end and then keep going that sound that you hear the Bam Bam bounce out that's why we call this noodles so once you get to a certain length four feet at least we're going to take the middle or the slight indentation is gonna rip it apart you don't have to rip it all the way through but just making sure that you rip enough that the ends are sort of even the lines are sort of even in terms of thickness so you're really doing a lot in your wrist not so much like this just use the swing of the dough to pull it further and further apart all right so again I'm just going to take the middle split it so now the noodles are ready I'm gonna go over and drop it into the pot we're just going to drop it right into the hot boiling water right after we drop the noodles in we should add in the cut cabbage so just a handful as much as you prefer so it's been about three minutes I'm gonna take the noodles and the Cabbage out with the with the spider net so noodles are done it's time to assemble the dish we got some ingredients here first of course we have our meat sauce the most important the one that we just cooked pork jajang sauce and then I'm gonna put in some sliced scallions as well the noodle sauce which is primarily soy sauce and black vinegar and then our chili crisps I like spicy so I added a lot of chili oil everything's in there I'm going to just use tongs to mix it up and you really should do this quickly after cooking noodles because the noodles are very fickle they really should be enjoyed right away so I add a little bit more of the pork and a little bit of the Cucumber for garnish this is pork hand ripped noodles oh my gosh you know I like it spicy so the spice is definitely there but the pork the sweetness of it the meat sauce it's a gentle sweetness that works really well with the spice so it's very well rounded it's not a dish where it's just all about heat it's why this dish is actually kind of a sleeper hit on our menu our noodles being very wide and chewy it actually carries the sauce very well and it's kind of like an envelope it catches all the pieces of meat the heat is not overwhelming because the sweetness of the sauce rounds it out and it's just very approachable very familiar tasting in a way at least for me because of that sweetness that's my dish noodles the process is very simple so I really hope you get to enjoy some noodles at home remember the best way is to enjoy it fresh on the pot and don't let it sit too long and have fun with it\n"