Lanzhou Lamian (Hand-Pulled Beef Noodle Soup)

Variations

• The customer picks the thickness. Maoxi (fine as a capillary), xi, erxi, sanxi, erzhuzi, jiuye (flat like a chive leaf), dakuan (wide) and pidaikuan (wide as a belt). You say which when you order and it is pulled to that gauge on the spot. All that changes is the number of folds.
• "One clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow" (一清二白三红四绿五黄) is the scorecard: clear broth, white daikon, red chilli oil, green coriander and garlic chives, yellow noodles. That clarity comes first tells you what kind of dish this is.
• It is Hui Muslim cooking, so there is no pork in it, and the shops outside Lanzhou that trade under the name are almost all halal. It is also why the broth is built on beef and bones alone.
• The same name as Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and the opposite dish. In Lanzhou this is simply called niurou mian, beef noodle, which is what Taiwan calls its own. But the Taiwanese bowl is braised red with soy and doubanjiang and uses thick chewy cut noodles; this one is clear and the noodles are pulled to order. ko.wikipedia keeps the two articles side by side and cross-references them.
• Against kalguksu, udon and soba: those are rolled and cut. A cut noodle has a square section and edges for broth to cling to; a pulled noodle is round and smooth and holds less. A clear broth and a pulled noodle is not an accident of history.
• Against ramen: both use alkali, but ramen noodles are cut, not pulled. The same chemistry doing springiness and colour in one bowl and extensibility in the other.
• The bowl in the photograph is the wide gauge with no chilli oil on it, so two of the five colours — the red and the white — are missing. What you get instead is an unusually honest look at how clear the broth is actually supposed to be.
• No alkali? Bake bicarbonate of soda at 120°C for an hour and it becomes a stronger alkali. With neither, the dough can still be pulled with salt alone, but it snaps far more often.

Tips

• Half of this is the flour. 12% protein or more. Plain flour tears at about the fourth fold.
• The other half is resting. Kneading builds gluten; resting lets it relax. Freshly kneaded dough springs back when you pull it; properly rested dough goes where you pull it. Skip the three half-hour rests and no amount of hand strength will pull it (dough and gluten).
• The alkali is not there for colour. Cooking noodles says alkaline noodle water clouds a broth and tells you to rinse — this is the dish that explains why the alkali is in there at all. At high pH the dough stretches far more smoothly and the thinning strands break less. The yellow is a by-product.
• Every fold doubles it. Count them and you control the gauge: four folds is 16 strands, six is 64, eight is 256. Stop at four or five the first time.
• Do not pull with your arms. Hold both ends and tap the middle on the bench; the dough's own weight stretches it. Hauling on it snaps it in the middle.
• Be generous with the dusting flour, between the strands at every fold. Strands that weld together do not come apart.
• Never boil the broth. Three hours at a bare shiver. One hard boil and it will not go clear again (stocks and broth).
• Boil the noodles apart and rinse them. Those two things are what protect the clear broth.
• Forty seconds. Fresh-pulled noodles are nothing like dried. When they float they are all but done.
• If the pulling defeats you, roll and cut instead. What you get is closer to kalguksu — a different noodle — and that difference is what this page is about.