Hello everyone, I am Xiao Gao Jie.
Today we will make noodles with meat sauce,
to see how to deal with a very stiff dough.
Let's make the dough first.
Dissolve salt and soda ash with room temperature water.
If you don't have soda ash, use hot water to dissolve baking soda.
Let it cool first, then mix with flour.
No baking soda? Just leave it out.
All-purpose flour.
Add water little by little while stirring.
Then the flour is turned into small flaky pieces.
For a particularly dry dough,
This is to distribute the water evenly between flour.
As a result the kneading becomes easier.
It feels very dry, but it can stick together.
Knead it into a ball. It doesn't matter the surface is smooth or not.
Don't rush to knead it now.
Wrap it up.
After half an hour, it's still a dry dough,
but you feel it become softer.
The purpose of this step is to knead the dough evenly.
It doesn't matter if it is smooth or not.
Give it another half an hour.
After half an hour, come back.
Gently knead it a couple of times, the dough is smooth now.
The more times it rests, the less effort you knead the dough.
Before rolling into noodles, rest the dough for an hour to fully relax the gluten.
Prepare some chicken legs, or any other meat.
Cut into small cubes.
When the oil is not very hot, add chicken.
Water will come out, stir fry until you don't see any water in the pan.
Add ginger paste,
regular soy sauce,
dark soy sauce,
five spice powder,
White pepper powder,
and chili sauce.
You can use other sauces too,
sweet bean sauce, or chili bean sauce.
Stir-fry till fragrant.
Then add hot water.
Simmer for few minutes.
Sprinkle green onion before taking it out.
An hour later we start to roll our dough.
Dust a little cornstarch.
Press down with your hand.
It is very thick.
Press outwards from the middle first.
Then press it thinner,
so that it can be rolled up on a rolling pin.
While pushing forward, press down.
Then change the angle.
Slowly the dough is flattened.
Right now it is much bigger.
Before this point, we moved from the middle to the sides when we pressed.
From now on, just press the two ends only, not the middle anymore.
If you continue to press hard in the middle.
The middle part will become bigger than it surroundings.
Then a big bubble will appear.
This is the thickness we want.
Have you noticed that I did not dust dry flour during rolling.
The dough is rest and knead well, it won't stick, and no dusting flour is needed.
Its surface is smooth and its edges will not crack.
Before cutting it into noodles, coat a thin layer of cornstarch.
Roll it up.
Fold.
Cut.
Have you noticed
the arrangement of the layers.
The upper layer is always narrower than the one layer under.
So it won’t shift its position during cutting.
Especially for cutting very thin noodles.
Gently shake it.
It won't stick.
Prepare a bowl and put some regular soy sauce.
Chinese vinegar,
Sesame oil and green onions.
Boiling water.
After the water boils, pour a ladle of water in the bowl.
The noodles are boiled for a minute.
Boil some vegetables.
Put in the meat sauce we made.
Finally, a spoonful of chili oil.
When the noodles were just made,
from the look, you knew it would be delicious.
It is so smooth from the outside, and it can slide into your mouth.
You took the time to rest and knead the dough,
so the noodles are chewy between teeth.
Served with meat sauce and chili oil,
It is so satisfied to have a bowl of noodles like this.
Thank you for watching. I'm Xiao Gao Jie. See you in the next time ^^