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Noodles

kett.john

Anyone on the Chefsteps team (or in this community) know how to make Chinese hand-pulled noodles? And are will to share their techniques on making the dough and actually pulling the perfect noodle?

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Matt_67991

http://forum.chefsteps.com/profile/558/mikey

kett.john

Oh! Thank you

Daniel_Steinberg_913930

this link isn’t working for me - is there an updated link?

loal4

Tim did a Serious Eats article on it. I tries it once with limited success. Here's the link.

https://www.seriouseats.com/hand-pulled-lamian-noodles

I did have great success with this simpler style of noodles. Have fun!

https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/hand-pulled-noodles/7q9431de3

sasha.marx

Tim also has a killer biang biang mian noodle recipe from back when we worked together at Cook's Science.

Flat Hand-Pulled Noodles (Biang Biang Mian) with Chili Oil Vinaigrette recipe.
Noodling Around article about his R&D which involved an epic noodle crawl across Boston.

tim.d.chin

Oh, this is one of my lifelong cooking projects/passions!

My old article/recipe goes into depth about the science and mechanics of noodle pulling. The takeaways:

You must develop gluten initially
You need a way to break some of the disulfide bonds in gluten to relax the dough enough to stretch it repeatedly
- You can do this chemically, or mechanically (much harder/time intensive)
For better or worse, you need to practice! Even with a well-performing dough

The recipe above leverages glutathione in deactivated yeast (nutritional yeast) to relax the dough. It doesn't use penghui (which contains a different dough relaxer/reducer), because at the time, penghui was notoriously hard to source in the States. It works, as long as the nooch is fresh enough. The downsides:

Readers complain about lack of chew/bite compared to traditional lamian noodles
Readers complain about the "funk" smell of nutritional yeast
There is a slight yellow color to the dough
The recipe is highly dependent on the freshness/source of nutritional yeast (so user success rate is variable)
The pulling process is finicky, since the dough is more delicate than traditional lamian doughs

If you want a more "authentic" lamian recipe, I'd point you here:

https://chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/chinese-hand-pulled-noodles

Chris and Steph provide a dupe formula for penghui using a combo of:

Salt
Sodium carbonate
Sodium tripolyphosphate
Sodium metabisulfite

I've tried this formula, and it works well! But personally, I'm not huge fan of sodium metabisulfite for the slightly sulfurous aroma it imparts.

Some day, I may share my updated, improved recipe(s) for lamian (I'm keeping those close to the chest). But for now, I'll leave you with a gentle roadmap:

Use a 55-60% hydration dough (AP or 00 flour work well) (salt % is to taste)
Mix and develop gluten either mechanically or over time (a 30-60 min rest is sufficient)
Relax the dough by using either:
1. Penghui solution
2. Deactivated yeast (or any form of glutathione)
3. Mechanical kneading (15-25 minutes in a stand mixer of sustained kneading; yes, this is taxing on your mixer)

Short of that, again it's just practice! The formula is maybe 10-15% of the journey, the rest is hand skill and reps. I'd recommend Youtube or Bilibili for insight into hand skills.

Hope this helps!

whenric

Hey Tim! Don't know if you saw this or not, but here's a NY Times article about an italian version of hand-pulled noodles. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/05/19/dining/sardinia-rare-pasta-food-travel.html