- Order up.
Hope you like it.
(bowls sliding across table)
(sipping soup)
- This is really good.
- Naw, come on,
you should try my dad's secret ingredient soup,
he actually knows the secret ingredient.
- What are you talking about?
This is amazing.
- [Master Monkey] Wow, you're a really good cook.
- [Master Mantis] I wish my mouth was bigger.
- Tigress, you've got to try this.
- [Oliver Babish] Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to Binging with Babish
where this week we're taking look
at the secret ingredient noodle soup from "Kung Fu Panda".
The only known ingredients of which are noodles and soup,
and maybe what looks like a daikon radish.
The only other thing we know
is that there is no actual secret ingredient,
so we need to take every effort to make each element
as special as possible.
Let's start with the soup.
I'm going for a pork bone based broth
inspired by the flavors from the Guangxi province.
The most important ingredient of which are the bones.
Which as you can see, I'm having some second thoughts
about here because these bones smell
like they've been frozen for a long time.
And when you're putting this amount
of time and energy into a recipe,
you need to get some ingredients that you fully trust.
I got these bones very inexpensively
from Pino's Prime Meats, and they only smell like pork.
Now we could make this broth strictly out of bones,
but I'm going to add some short ribs
and this pig's tail to provide a little bit more meat
and collagen to give the broth more body.
Into a very tall and narrow stockpot they go.
Just the bones and meats at first.
And, are we sure this is a pigs tail fellas?
We're gonna cover those with cold water
and bring them to a simmer on the stove top.
This is going to draw any blood, and scum,
and impurities out of the bones and meat
which is going to form a gray foamy scummy layer
on top of the water.
Skim this off, drain, and scrub the bones
and meat clean until they look like this.
And now back into the emptied and clean stockpot they go.
Along with a handful of aromatics,
which you can mix and match as you see fit,
or as they are available.
I'm gonna start with a little handful of licorice root,
a healthy sized chunk of cassia bark,
or Chinese cinnamon, or just cinnamon really.
Toss that in there along with a few pieces
of dried tangerine peel.
You could probably also use fresh orange peel.
I'm almost gonna add a handful of dried longan fruit,
a handful of dried star anise pods,
a whole onion, quartered,
and a handful of fresh ginger, roughly peeled.
And this might not be traditional
but I'm gonna add a couple of carrots
just to round out the flavors.
Then I've got something special here,
some dried Chinese scallops.
These are very expensive.
This little handful was like $18
and they smell pretty, very, very bad.
But they are a huge umami booster for soups,
stews, and broths.
So we're going to add maybe four,
seems like a good amount, I guess, I dunno.
And then we are again covering everything
with cold water and bringing to a bare simmer.
We're gonna take one more opportunity
at the beginning of the boil to skim off any scum.
And then we're lettin' this guy go slow and low
for at least four hours, and up to 12.
Now, unlike say a tonkotsu ramen broth,
we want this to just barely bubble
so it stays nice and clear.
Once the flavors and colors are nice and deep,
and your whole house smells like warm
spicy pork water, strain, cool in an ice bath,
refrigerate overnight, and get some restorative sleep.
Especially if you're about to do what I'm about to do.
No, not bang your head on the table.
I'm only doing that because I'm a food YouTuber,
and I've come to the unassailable conclusion
that it's about time that I fulfill my destiny
and try to make hand pulled noodles.
A skill that supposedly takes 10 years to master.
I have two days, so go ahead and lower your expectations.
There are basically four elements to any hand pulled noodle.
Flour, water, salt, and an alkaline solution.
I'm using this commercially available mix
of potassium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate.
You can find it at many Asian grocers.
If you cannot go ahead and check out my ramen video
in the upper right-hand corner right now,
to see how to make baked baking soda.
The next thing to nail down is the ratio
of these ingredients.
There's conflicting information all over the internet,
and the recipe can apparently be affected
by things like your altitude, or the humidity in the air.
So take this recipe with a grain of potassium carbonate,
so to speak, because everyone seems to have a recipe
for the perfect hand pulled noodles.
And everyone else seems to think
that everyone else is wrong.
I tried a litany of different hydration ratios
and kneading tactics,
and these are the ones that worked best for me.
Did you hear the air quotes around best?
I hope you did because this, no matter what you do
is going to be a very difficult process.
I've got a dough here of 500 grams bread flour,
306 grams of water, five grams of salt,
and four grams of potassium carbonate.
I mixed it until just combined in a stand mixer
and now I'm going to knead it into submission
for 40 minutes, here we go.
The objective here is to develop the gluten,
or rather overdevelop it until the dough
more closely resembles chewed chewing gum than dough.
If like me, you are not an experienced
hand pulled noodle puller, you might not even come close
to that consistency in this amount of time.
So give it your very, very best for 40 minutes straight,
and then cover with plastic wrap
and left rest for 15 to 20 minutes.
Which will allow your gluten to kick its feet up
and relax a little bit.
As you can see I've got my other experiments
here in the foreground.
And as you can see our gluten
has become very well developed.
But we have to take it several orders
of magnitude beyond that.
And if you're a hand pulled noodle newbie like me,
old-fashioned kneading is only gonna get you so far.
Now we're gonna get into something
I'm gonna call tug kneading,
or the act of gently tugging on the dough
until it's elongated, folding it over on top of itself
and repeating the process.
This is not only going to continue to develop,
but also apparently help align our gluten,
which as I understand it,
for some reason needs to be aligned.
Now this process might take you 20 minutes,
it might take you 45 minutes, it might take you two hours.
The only indicators that you're close to being done
are the right texture,
and maybe a more athleisure appropriate shirt.
About the only advice that I can offer you
at this point is just don't give up.
I mean, sure, anyone can go to their local Asian grocer
and get fresh noodles that are arguably better
than what you can make yourself.
And it would be cheap,
and it would be easy, and it would be convenient,
and it wouldn't physically exhaust you.
But I can't quite remember what my point was here.
And as you can see, our dough is starting to get closer
to the right texture.
So we're just gonna keep goin'.
And something important to keep in mind
is your dough's hydration.
During all these lengthy tugging sessions
it's bound to lose some moisture.
So every four to six turns, you might want to pat it down
and brush it down with water
before folding it in half once again.
It should straddle the line somewhere between
a very hydrated bread dough, and pasta dough.
Pounding it against the table as you stretch also helps.
Not entirely sure why, but I see it in every video.
Anyway, go ahead and take a break
once you've worked up an actual head sweat,
and become so delirious from all the dough
that you've kneaded over the past 14 hours
that you forget to put your apron back on.
But finally, all that effort is yielding results.
At long last, my dough finally resembles chewed bubble gum.
So that means we can finally work
on the only remaining ingredient of our soup,
some daikon radish.
Or at least that's what it looked like
Po was putting in the soup.
So I'm just gonna peal and slice off
a bunch of slices and put them in the broth as I heat it up.
Maybe let those simmer for about 20 minutes
until they're nice and soft.
Just enough time to finally do the deed,
and pull some noodles.
I've got half the dough here
which I'm also going to divide in half
so it's a little easier to work with.
Keep the other pieces covered,
and let's give our guy a stretch.
Give it a few slaps on the tabletop,
this seems to prevent it from tearing too much.
Stretch it out nice and long,
give it a little roll to make sure that it's even,
and then since we don't want the noodles
to stick to themselves
we're gonna dust this guy down with flour.
Once it's all evenly dusted, it's time to fold it,
stretch it, and repeat until we have noodles.
Now the 10 years of training it takes
to become a noodle master covers not only your ability
to develop a glutenous dough in like 20 minutes,
instead of the three some-odd hours it took me,
but it also covers your ability to actually stretch
out the noodles because this is extraordinarily hard.
And after two failed tries I decided to give up
before I ruined all my dough.
Opting instead to stretch out each noodle one at a time.
This makes for a somewhat flat, pretty uneven noodle,
but it's better than kneading multiple batches of dough
for hours and hours with no noodles to show for it.
And so there you have it,
a handful of my very best attempt at hand pulled noodles.
Do I recommend trying this at home?
Absolutely not.
Unless you need a new lifelong hobby.
Anyway we're treating them just like we would
pretty much any fresh noodle,
cooking quickly and gently for no more than 90 seconds.
During this time we're gonna check our broth for seasoning,
mine needs a lot of salt.
Make sure it tastes as righteous as it smells,
and then it's time to serve up.
First, we're just gonna scoop out the noodles
using a sieve and dump them into an empty bowl.
And then over top we ladle our broth,
marrying together flavor and texture.
Make sure you don't forget a couple slices of daikon radish,
and then it's time to tuck in.
These might not be the prettiest noodles
in the world, but they're mine.
And don't you let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
I'm very happy to report that they're delightfully light,
and chewy, and springy, and the broth is deep,
and rich, and warm, and spicy, and complex.
It's served very simply in the movie
but I'm going to add a handful of Chinese chives
or scallions, and a dollop of chili oil,
two things I'm quite simply not going to enjoy
noodle soup without.
Now while this was delicious,
the sting of failure prevented me
from entering it into the clean plate club.
I have an idea for how to hack the noodles,
but if we're gonna do that
we might as well make our own chili oil from scratch.
Because believe it or not it's miles ahead
of the store bought stuff.
Into a small saucepan goes a handful of szechuan peppercorn,
star anise pods, cassia bark, a knob of peeled ginger,
and three lightly crushed cloves of garlic.
Then over that, we're gonna pour two to three cups
of a neutral flavored oil, I'm going with canola.
We're gonna gently swirl that over medium heat
on the stove top until the oil reaches
about 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
At which point we're going to strain it
and pour it over a cup of szechuan chili flakes.
Make sure you're doing this in a very heat proof bowl,
otherwise you might be looking at a disaster
for both your countertop, and the skin of your feet.
Give it a little mix, make sure that those flavors
have gotten to know each other
before setting aside for about 30 minutes to cool.
Just enough time to negotiate our noodles.
Here I have some of the dough
after its initial 45 minute knead.
As you can see it's off to an ugly start,
but as we laminate it and pass it through
over and over again, rolling it out like pasta dough,
it becomes supple, and tame,
and perfect for passing through a spaghetti cutter.
What results is almost more reminiscent of ramen noodles.
So while maybe less impressive,
they are at least in my mind
perfectly suitable for the task at hand.
Same deal, boiling water for no more than 90 seconds
until they're tender but chewy.
Drain into an awaiting warm bowl.
Maybe don't use a spider like this
unless you want a perilous noodle situation.
And serve with the boilin' hot broth ladled gently over top.
And there you have it, a much more achievable
but still distinctly homemade secret ingredient noodle soup.
You guys will excuse me for a second, I am just a mess.
Give my apron a bit of a bachelor shower here.
And of course we're garnishing
with Chinese chives, and our homemade chili oil.
And while these noodles might've been way prettier
while remaining just as delicate and springy
as the hand pulled ones,
I almost preferred my first batch.
Imperfection is sometimes what makes something unique,
or distinctive, or familiar.
And had I learned nothing from Mr. Ping,
that there is no secret ingredient,
there is no secret way to make perfect noodles.
The only perfect noodles can be found in one place,
in your heart.
And oh my God nevermind, it was delicious,
I ate the whole bowl.
(calm music)