Stir fry silver needle noodles is a classic Hakka recipe. The noodles are unique and the taste is delicious. Although the type of noodles used in this dish is not a limiting factor, I want to demonstrate how to make it from scratch because it is simple and enjoyable to make.
250 grams of rice flour and 80 grams of tapioca flour should be combined. Whisk thoroughly to incorporate them well.
Bring 200 grams of water to a boil. Mix the flour while simultaneously adding the hot water. To prevent burning your hands, once the water has been thoroughly blended, cover it and let it cool until lukewarm.
How to make loh shi fun by hand rolling
1. Prepare the dough Mix all ingredients in a heat-proof mixing bowl. Whisk to combine Bring 1 cup of water to a rolling boil. The water has to boil vigorously with large bubbles. This is very important or the dough won’t turn out right. When water has comes to a boil, don’t turn off the heat yet, let it boil for another minute
Then pour 120 ml out into a heatproof measuring glass and pour over the flour mixture immediately
Stir with a spatula to get chunks of dough. This will partially “cook” the dough
Let it cools off a little bit, then when it’s cool enough to handle, use your hands to knead into a dough. The dough may appear a bit wet a first but don’t be tempted to add any more flour. Give it a knead and the water will continue to get absorbs by the dough and eventually becomes smooth and stretchy
Divide the dough in half. Work with one at a time and keep the other covered. You can roll the dough out into a long rod and then cut into 1/2-inch piece. I just pinch off about 2-3 grams of the dough and roll it in between my palms to form a silver pin. Thick in the middle and pointy at both ends. If the dough gets slightly sticky, simply dust your palm with a bit of rice flour. Dust a plate with a bit of rice flour and put the hand-rolled noodles on the plate and dust with a small amount of rice flour to prevent sticking to each other
2. Boiling the noodles Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Lightly dust your hands with a bit of rice flour. Gently add the shaped noodles a bit by a bit to prevent sticking to each other instead of dumping everything all at once into the boiling water. Stir lightly and noodles will float to the top. The noodles cook quickly, about 1 minute or less.
Put the cooked noodles immediately in a pot of fresh water, don’t need to be ice water. This will stop the cooking and prevent sticking to each other. Then drain off water and transfer to a bowl and toss lightly with a bit of oil if you are not using them immediately
Ratio of flours
While testing the recipes, I experimented with the rice flour to cornstarch ratio while maintaining the minimum tapioca and liquid amounts because I wanted the food to be chewy but not overly so. 1. This ratio of rice flour to corn starch yields very chewy noodles, in my experience. My family didn’t like it. Although neither my own personal preference nor yours may favor it 2 The ratio of rice flour to corn starch in the noodles is 7:3. however, there is still a slight chewiness, not too much. When compared to no rice flour, corn starch produces much softer noodles. 2 with some chewiness.
In order to keep the dough from drying out, you then divide it into 4 portions and work with each one individually. Slice a portion of dough into small pieces after rolling it into a long, thin rope. Apply more pressure to the ends of the rope you made by rolling a small amount of dough between your hands to create the tapered needle tip. It’s a lot like making pasta; after a few tries, you’ll even be able to roll out two at once.
I usually have a few bags of tapioca, wheat, and rice starch, rice flour, and flour lying around. Rice flour is fantastic for coating tofu or anything else you want to fry up and be super crunchy, though they might not be very common in everyone’s pantry, they are in a lot of Asian pantries. If you have the time, wheat starch and tapioca starch are also necessary to make rice noodles, and if you’ve ever made Crystal Dumplings—the french macarons of dumplings—you probably already have a dozen bags of each on hand to make a second batch right away if the first one turns out strange.
After rolling out all of your noodles, boil them for 5 minutes to make sure they are bouncy and chewy. I seem to always have carrots and spinach as my quarantine vegetables, so I also shared an easy peasy stir fried needle noodle recipe below. At this point, you can add the noodles into soup or stir fry them with whatever is chilling out in the fridge.
I feel like January felt like it lasted 5 million years, and now the rest of 2020 is moving at the speed of light. How is it possible that May begins on Friday? The warmer weather, the scent of fresh spring air filling our living room, and the longer, sunnier days are all positive aspects. Like a wilting house plant that has recently been relocated to a more sunny location and received a thorough watering, I can feel a small lift in my spirits. We’ve started going to our neighborhood garden every day to water our new vegetables, and I’m so incredibly happy to be there, even if it’s just for 15 minutes to see our little seedlings grow. On rare occasions, we even engage in human interaction by having a brief conversation with a new garden friend over distance. It’s the best.
Popular in Hong Kong and parts of Southeast Asia are silver needle noodles. They are sometimes called mouse tail noodles but that’s unappetizing. Many people messaged me after I posted a sneak peek of the noods a few weeks ago to tell me about their memories of making these with their grandmothers. My family didn’t consume silver needle noodles, so I regrettably don’t have any memories of making them with my PauPau. But as I did learn from my PauPau, the procedure is remarkably similar to making the dough for crystal dumplings!
