Fixing Spaghetti's Asian Soup Problem (with an old technique)

Drawing inspiration from Yangzhou's weimian to increase Spaghetti's substitutability

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I think there’s always a temptation for recipe writers to try to squeeze Spaghetti into Asian noodle dishes. You want to try to make things accessible for people, and perhaps there’s no noodle that’s more accessible than Spaghetti. You can find Brian Lagerstom reaching for it in his weeknighting series, you see Gritzner (cleverly) trying to morph his pasta into ramen… you’ve seen it before. It’s a common move.

Zero judgement on my part. I’m all aboard the “no need to be culturally obsessive” train. But I do struggle with calling for it myself, because… the stuff’s different, right?  

I think if you sat down and had a bite of Spaghetti side by side Sichuanese noodles, Japanese ramen, or Thai Guaytiew... the difference would be screamingly obvious. All the talk online seems to revolve around alkalinity, but I think that’s far from the real crux of the issue here:

Spaghetti is hearty as hell.

The Chinese noodle that I would compare it most closely to is Cantonese wonton noodles – you know, the sort that’re so firm and dry that you need to (famously) bounce up and down on a heavy bamboo pole just to knead the thing. They’re both really low hydration. The Cantonese wonton noodles do firm things up with a powerful alkaline, but then again Spaghetti uses Durum wheat. Sort of a wash, in my view.

In China, Spaghetti is sort of infamous for being too hard. It’s one of the things you can see Chinese students abroad complain about (along with smelly pork). Steph’s uncle swears by soaking the spaghetti overnight first (though I wasn’t very impressed). But it’s not just China – like, in Japan, the old school recipes for Naporitan featured a complex process of softening via par-boiling and holding in the fridge overnight. Italians are (rightly) proud of the firmness of their pasta - and Spaghetti is a firm noodle.

Now, for mixed noodle dishes, it’s not all that much of an issue. I mean, the nation of Italy seems to get by just fine. So simply following the general Italian spaghetti protocol for, say, a Dan Dan noodle will still yield you something delicious. Definitely different (at the very least, will need to be served pre-mixed in the Italian style), but tasty nonetheless.

Unfortunately? The same can’t be said of soup noodle dishes. If I boiled up some spaghetti and blindly ladled in some Tonkotsu broth, the end result ends up being incredibly unsatisfying. To me, at least. It feels like two separate ‘things’ in the same bowl: there’s the flavor of the soup, there’s the texture of the noodles, and… ne’er the twain shall meet. There’s not really much going on inside of the spaghetti – in short, it’s not very ruwei.

‘Ruwei’: Chinese for “Flavor Absorptiveness”

I try not to throw too many Chinese words around, but it’s an important Chinese culinary concept. It refers to the quality of how much flavor an ingredient has absorbed or is able to absorb. The character-by-character translation for the curious:

We, of course, have the idea in the western culinary tradition… but as far as I can tell we’ve never bothered ascribing an adjective to it. Ruwei is why you finish that pasta in the sauce. Ruwei is why potatoes and carrots are the best part of braises. Ruwei is why you deep fry a cutlet for a chicken parm sandwich - so that the flavor of the tomato sauce can really enter into that breading.

Firm noodles have a fantastic texture, but they can really struggle being ruwei. Cantonese wonton noodles compensate by being wire-y thin. Italy has their own approach to solving the issue.

But you do have to do something.

And that’s where our dish today comes in.

Two Strategies for Noodle Soup-ifying Spaghetti

Now, as we discussed in our Noodle Soup 101 post, as we see it there are two general frameworks for how to cook a noodle soup: The Direct Cooking Method and The Assembly Method. While this is our personal mental model, it does seem to describe most noodle soups out there:

Noodle Soup 101

Now, if you’re following the direct cooking method, you can basically just use spaghetti straight up. Making a Northwest style Huimian? Just toss that spaghetti in the soup, go for it. You’ll need to adjust the cooking time in the soup to be a bit longer - which may or may not require a couple adjustments with some of your other ingredients - but this is not a difficult nut to crack.

The issue is with the assembly method.

With a lot of these soups, the entire reason the noodles are cooked separately is so that the soup doesn’t get all… starchy. The whole idea of a Cantonese wonton noodle is to have a fantastically clear, cleanly ‘liquid’ soup base - the quickest way to piss off your Cantonese in-laws would then to take that base and fuck it up with a bunch of loose starch.

Enter? Weimian (煨面), and old dish from the Jiangzhe region, which also uses a thicker, firmer noodle.

Now, the technique here isn’t rocket science, and there’s a non-zero probability that you might accidentally done it anyway:

1. Step one: partially cook the noodle. Cook the thing until almost al dente - we like taking it out a shade before, but al dente would also be okay.

2. Step two: shock the noodle with cool water, thoroughly rinsing off any residual surface starch. This is very much the opposite idea of a lot of pasta dishes - you want to avoid starch in your soup.

3. Step three: finish the noodle in the soup.

Scallion Oil Weimian: Ingredients, Sourcing, and Substitutes

Now, to illustrate the technique, we’ll be doing the simplest possible Weimian in this video: Scallion Oil Braised Noodles. There are other more complex Weimian - notably, Snow Vegetable with Fish - but they follow the same general idea.

This version here is so incredibly close to being ‘western supermarket club’ that I reserve the right to one day add it to our Western Supermarket Club playlist.

• Spaghetti, 100g. You can also use a more run-of-the-mill Chinese style noodle, but do refer to the note below the recipe re cooking times.

• Dried shrimp, 10g. I know this isn’t super common everywhere, but no way around this one. It’s very available online if you don’t have any locally.

• Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 20g. Or about a tablespoon, for soaking the dried shrimp. If Shaoxing wine is hard for you, use brandy, sake, or a dry sherry (or just go with your gut).

• Scallion, 35g. These will be separated into both the whites and greens.

• Lard, 1.5 tbsp. You could also use your oil of choice, but lard would be the maximally delicious. Schmaltz could also be nice if you don’t eat pork.

• Hot water, 2 cups. Hot, boiled water from the kettle.

• Seasoning for the soup:

  Salt, ¼ tsp.

  MSG (味精), ¼ tsp. Available in the west under the brand “Accent”

  Sugar, 1 tsp.

  Soy sauce (生抽), 1.5 tbsp.

Scallion Oil Weimian: Recipe

Serves one.

In a small bowl, add:

• 10g Dried Shrimp

• 20g (~1 tbsp) Shaoxing wine

Allow to soak as you follow the next steps. Then, slice into 1.5” sections, separating the whites from greens:

• 35g scallions

And reserve. Then, in a pot, boil:

• 100g Spaghetti

until al dente or a touch before al dente. Strain, and rinse thoroughly to stop the cooking process. Reserve.

In a hot wok or pot, swirl in

• 1.5 tbsp lard

and over a medium-low flame, add in the sections of scallion white. Fry until lightly golden, ~2 minutes. Add most of your scallion greens (leaving some for garnish), fry until crispy, ~8 minutes. Remove the fried greens, leaving the whites.

Add the shrimp together with the wine. Up the flame to medium. Once the wine has mostly reduced away, ~3 minutes, add:

• 2 cups hot water

• ¼ tsp salt

• ¼ tsp MSG

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1.5 tbsp soy sauce

Mix and bring to a boil.

Add the cooked spaghetti, and allow to return to a boil. Then, swap the flame down to medium-low. Braise the noodles for 4-5 minutes, or until your desired doneness.

Transfer to a serving bowl, sprinkle over your crispy fried scallion greens, as well as the handful of greens you reserved for garnish.

Note: If using a more run-of-the-mill Chinese dried noodle, boiling the noodles for 2-3 minutes in the soup should be sufficient.