Making Chinese Egg Noodles From Scratch At Home

This is Daddy from Busy Daddy Cooks. Today we are making Chinese Egg Noodles from scratch at home. To make Chinese Egg Noodles at home, you only need 3 ingredients. Bread flour, eggs and water. First, measure out your wet ingredients. Knock 2 eggs in a bowl. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature. Then, add in enough water to make 125 grams. The size of the egg here doesn't really matter, just as long as you make up 125 grams. I have here 250 grams of bread flour. You can also use all-purpose flour. But bread flour gives you a chewier, bouncier texture. Pour in the egg mixture and use a chopstick or a fork to stir and combine. You can also pour the flour onto your countertop, but I find that the flour will get all over the place and it makes it very difficult to clean up. Putting the flour in a bowl keeps the flour in that bowl and it makes it a lot easier to clean up. Stir until you cannot stir anymore, then start using your hands. At first, the dough will look like lumpy oats. I've seen recipes that uses a stand mixer to knead the dough. Chinese Egg Noodles is not one of those recipes. Because the dough is too hard and too stiff for a stand mixer. Keep kneading till you pick up all the flour from the bowl. The bowl and your hands will be relatively clean. When you've gotten all the flour into a dough ball, remove it to the countertop and continue to knead it for about 5-10 minutes. The dough will feel stiff and difficult to knead. This is what you want. So, resist the urge to add more water to make a softer dough. At the end of a few minutes of kneading, you will end up with a dough ball that has a lumpy texture. This is fine. Wrap up the dough with a plastic wrap and let it rest for half an hour. This will allow the dough to relax. Make sure that you wrap it up tightly and there are no openings. Otherwise, a dry layer of skin will form on the dough surface. After 30 minutes of resting, the dough will feel softer than before. Now, we want to develop more gluten so that it can stretch better and give you a chewier, bouncier texture. There are 2 methods of doing this. First, we can continue to knead the dough for another 10 minutes. After a few minutes of kneading, you will get a smooth surface texture. Although the dough is softer, it is still dry and it does not fold together easily. This is how it should be. Another way of doing this is to think of someone that you don't like, take out your rolling pin and whack the dough for 10 minutes. Sprinkle in some swearing and this becomes a lot more satisfying method than just kneading the dough. After 10 minutes of kneading or banging and swearing, wrap up the dough and let it rest for another 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, cut the dough in half, flour your countertop and roll it out to about 1.5mm thick. Always start by rolling from the centre outwards. But do not go over the edge or you will get a flat taper like this. Once you get it down to the thickness you want, sprinkle more flour on the top and fold it into 3 to 4 layers. Use a very sharp knife and cut it into 2mm strands. If you have a manual pasta maker, use this to help you roll out and cut the dough. It's a lot easier. Start with the highest or thickest setting and work your way down till you get a sheet that's about 1.5mm thick. Then, use the cutter to cut up the noodles. You can wrap up the noodles tightly and store them in the fridge for up to 2 days. Or you can freeze them in their individual bundles. When frozen, put them in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer for up to 2 months. There is no need to thaw the frozen noodles. Just take the frozen noodles and dump it into boiling water. This is how you make Chinese Ink Noodles from scratch at home.