Three Chinese Pasta Shapes from the Northwest
Noodle sheets, Cat ear, and Knife cut noodles - plus a soup to use them in
So it seems like most people are aware of the mountain of different noodle dishes on this side of the world – from Cantonese wonton noodles, to old Beijing Zhajiangmian, to Sichuanese Dan Dan noodles… Chinese noodles are far from an unknown quality. But what seems to get lost in the mix there is the fact that – just like in Italy – there’s a bunch more ‘pasta shapes’ than just… noodles.
Much of these come from the two provinces that I’d probably label as the epicenter of noodle culture here: Shanxi and Shaanxi. There’s a mountain of different varieties here, of course – it’d be impossible to cover them all in one post like this. So we’ll go over three that’re a bit more commonly seen in home kitchens:
Mianpian (面片) Noodle Sheets. Simple, classic. While there’s a more complex way to go about this sort too (based off of Biang Biang noodles), we’ll be doing an extremely straightforward variant. If you’re new to noodle making – whether Western or Chinese – it’s pretty much impossible to go wrong with Mianpian.
Maoerduo (猫耳朵) Cat Ear Noodles. These are a bit more involved because they require shaping many small individual pieces of pasta, but are pretty straightforward. These can be made by hand with no special equipment, but often use a special ‘cat ear noodle maker’ which’s basically the exact same thing as a gnocchi board.
Daoxiaomian (刀削面) Knife sliced Noodles. The ever popular daoxiaomian… this one unfortunately does take a bit of special equipment, which we’ll go over a bit later.
Then to use those up, I’ll show you an absolutely classic soup from the Chinese northwest called “huimian”. It’s one of my favorite things to order at a NW-style noodle shop. I think you’ll like it.
How to Make the Noodles
So just FYI the dough for the noodle sheets and the cat ears are completely identical.
Ingredients, Noodle Sheets:
Flour, 200g. Either all purpose flour or Chinese noodle flour are both ok here.
Salt, ½ tsp.
Water, 92g. Apologies for the weird quantity here. This dough is 46% hydration.
Process, Noodle Sheets:
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, then stir in the salt.
Slowly drizzle the water in bit by bit, aiming for the dry parts. Going bit by bit helps ensure that the flour absorbs the water evenly. You should be looking at something shaggy-ish by the end like this.
Knead for 10 minutes. Until a smooth dough forms. Alternatively, you can use a stand mixer on speed two for the same about of time. It should look something like this by the end
Cover, rest for 30 minutes.
Press, then roll the dough thin. You’re looking for something that’s about two or maybe three millimeters. Something like this should work ok.
Slice the dough into ~2 inch ribbons, then slice each ribbon into ~two inch pieces. Slice the ribbons at about a 45 degree angle to get something ‘diamond shaped’.
And that’s it! Those’re ready to toss in some boiling water.
Ingredients, Cat Ear Noodles:
Again, this’s all basically the same as the noodle sheets up to the shaping. So forgive a bit of copy/pasting:
Flour, 200g. Either all purpose flour or Chinese noodle flour are both ok here.
Salt, ½ tsp.
Water, 92g. Apologies for the weird quantity here. This dough is 46% hydration.
Process, Cat Ear Noodles:
Now, you’ve got three choices when it comes to equipment here:
Shape by hand. Really not too bad, promise.
Use a cat ear noodle maker/gnocchi board. Gives the noodle these really cool little grooves, and also helps get the job done faster.
Shape by hand using a sushi mat. Helps mimic those grooves, just in case you don’t have the cat ear noodle maker/gnocchi board.
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, then stir in the salt.
Slowly drizzle the water in bit by bit, aiming for the dry parts. Going bit by bit helps ensure that the flour absorbs the water evenly. You should be looking at something shaggy-ish by the end like this.
Knead for 10 minutes. Until a smooth dough forms. Alternatively, you can use a stand mixer on speed two for the same about of time. It should look something like this by the end
Cover, rest for 30 minutes.
Roll the dough out thin, ~3-4 millimeters. Just like the noodle sheets, but this time you don’t need to be as paranoid about the thickness.
Slice the dough into ~1.5 inch squares. Slice into 1.5 inch ribbons, then line up a few ribbons and slice in the other direction to get squares.
Roll the cat ears. The process here will depend on the equipment you choose:
If going by hand: take a square, then press down while ‘smearing’ the square away from you. This will help the noodle curl.
If using the cat ear noodle maker/gnocchi board: place the square on the board, then roll it away from you. Like so.
If using the sushi mat: press down and away in the same way, but… do it over a sushi mat. The grooves’ll be a touch wider, but it still works great.
Ingredients, Daoxiaomian:
Basically the same as above, but at a lower hydration. We went with 40% hydration here, but full disclosure that there’s many recipes for Daoxiaomian that go much lower – 30… or even 25 percent. Those doughs are extremely difficult to work with (you really need to press the dough together, with force), so we chose 40%. It’s a touch on the soft side, but it still gives you a proper texture… and the dough is vastly easier to work with.
If you want a challenge though, during testing we successfully went down the 30% hydration. You really really need to press the dough together well though. We ended up actually tossing it in a plastic bag and kneading it with our feet to get it to work lol.
Flour, 200g. Either all purpose flour or Chinese noodle flour are both ok here.
Salt, ½ tsp.
Water, 80g. So yeah, 40% hydration.
Process, Daoxiaomian:
So right – daoxiaomian isn’t a dish that you want to do without the correct equipment. If you’ve ever seen restaurants making it, they’re probably using something called a ‘piandao’ (片刀). It’s basically a thin curved knife – the idea is that the dough will travel up the groove and make a… noodle.
If there’s nothing like that available where you live, feel free to MacGyver a solution. This ain’t any kind of high technology product.
That said, the piandao is pretty difficult to do well. I’ll explain how to use it, but many home cooks reach for an alternative gadget called a ‘dantoudao’ (单头刀). It looks like a fancy vegetable peeler and does a much better job with smaller batches of dough (like you’d usually do at home). This is what we usually use ourselves. I think it might be very hard to get outside of China, but it really turns Dao Xiao Mian from ‘a chore’ to ‘something you could potentially do on a weeknight’.
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, then stir in the salt.
Slowly drizzle the water in bit by bit, aiming for the dry parts. Going bit by bit helps ensure that the flour absorbs the water evenly. You should be looking at something similarly shaggy-ish by the end like this.
Knead for 10 minutes. Until a rough dough forms. Alternatively, you can use a stand mixer on speed two for the same about of time. It should look something like this by the end
Cover, rest for 30 minutes.
Get a pot of water up to a boil. Doaxiaomian get cut straight into the pot. The technique differs depending on the tool you’re using:
If using the dantoudao: Literally just cut straight into the pot. It’s actually pretty idiot proof, even an oaf like me can do it.
If using the piandao: Hold the dough, then with your knife starting at the bottom parallel to the dough, quickly slice in an up-and-down motion. It’s really difficult to explain in words, so if you find yourself with a piandao, definitely refer to the video for a visual.
Cook for about three minutes, or until a touch past al dente.
How to make Hui Mian
Makes two large bowls.
Ingredients, Hui Mian:
This is almost a Western supermarket club dish, sans the tofu and the wood ear mushrooms. If it makes a difference, feel free to skip those two things if they’re annoying to source.
Any of the above noodles. The most classic noodle here would be the noodle sheets, but you do see it with cat ears as well. Dao Xiao Mian would be a touch unconventional but would still work great.
Aromatics: ~3 cloves garlic, ~2 inches ginger (姜). Both minced.
Tomatoes, 2. Peeled and diced.
Firm tofu (老豆腐), 100g. Sliced into 1 inch cubes.
Mu’er Wood Ear Mushrooms (木耳), 5g. Reconstituted in cool water.
Baby bok choy (上海青) -or- whatever vegetable, 70g. Cut across into one inch strips.
Eggs, 2. To be scrambled then added into the soup.
Green mild chili (青椒), one. Sliced. Use whatever mild chili you like – I imagine an Anaheim or a Poblano would be cool. Or use a bell pepper if you need.
Tomato paste (番茄酱), 1 tbsp. This is a real ingredient in Northwest cooking, promise (it’s rarely seen in China outside of the Northwest though). If you waltz into a supermarket in China however and show them the Chinese characters within the parentheses though, do get ready for some confusion: tomato paste, ketchup, and tomato sauce all share the same name in Mandarin.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tbsp. For use while stir-frying.
Light soy sauce, 1 tbsp.
Oil, ¼ cup. For frying. Don’t skimp on the oil.
Water, 4 cups. For the soup. If you really want you could swap for stock, but I’d personally save my stock for something else.
Seasoning for the soup: 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp five spice powder (五香粉). Obviously, season to taste. We actually ended up tossing an extra ½ tsp of salt and a sprinkle of MSG at the end there.
Chili oil (油辣子), ~3 tbsp. I’ll include a quick all purpose chili oil down in the notes below, but to be completely frank we were pretty lazy and just used the oil from some Lao Gan Ma chili crisp. Not best practice, but hey, it’s a good shortcut if you don’t feel like making some chili oil.
Process, Hui Mian:
Reconstitute the Mu’er. Reconstitute the mu’er using cold water – make sure you got a big enough pot and a good bit of water, because they’ll expand to a much greater size. 30 minutes should be enough.
Mince the garlic and ginger, julienne the mild chili, slice the firm tofu into one inch cubes, slice the baby bok choy.
Peel then dice the tomatoes. We usually do the whole make a little “X”, toss into boiling water, then into a bowl of cool water thing. One tip though: basically everyone I see online recommends using ice water to dunk it in. I think it’s silly to waste a tray of ice on this step – just use a bowl of cool water. It’s fine.
Tear the reconstituted mu’er into a couple pieces. Just to make everything more bite sized.
Make homemade chili oil, if using. As explained below.
Scramble some eggs, set aside. No special Chinese technique here or anything – crack open a couple eggs, and whisk thoroughly until no stray strands of egg while remain. Heat up ~1-2 tbsp of oil in a skillet over a medium flame until bubbles form around a pair of chopsticks, then toss in the eggs and scramble them around til done. One special thing though is that it might actually be helpful to scramble the eggs with a pair of chopsticks actually – would help break the bigger curds into smaller curds.
In a pot or a wok, fry the ingredients and make the soup. We like using our stainless steel wok for this kind of thing so that it doesn’t strip the seasoning of our primary wok. Regardless, toss in your oil (again, ¼ cup worth – do not skimp on the oil), swap the flame to high, then immediately:
Garlic and ginger, in. Fry for ~30 second, until fragrant.
Tomatoes and tomato paste, in. Fry over a high flame until the tomatoes break down and look saucy. ~5 minutes.
Swirl a tablespoon of liaojiu over your spatula and around the sides of the wok. Quick mix. (or if using a pot, uh… just swirl it in straight I guess).
Do the same move with the one tablespoon of soy sauce.
Mu’er and firm tofu, in. Gently mix and fry for ~30 seconds.
Water, in. Bring it up to a boil then down to a heavy simmer (~medium flame).
Cover, simmer for 15 minutes.
Get everything back up to a boil. Toss in your noodles, cover, and boil for ~90 seconds. If using something ‘pre-boiled’ like the Dao Xiao Mian, just give it a mix and let it cook for ~15 seconds.
Bok choy, scrambled eggs, mild chili… all in. Quick mix, cook together for ~30 seconds. Taste, add more salt if it needs it.
Add the chili oil. Brief mix. Heat off.
Fin.
Note on how to make a quick chili oil:
Use ~1 tbsp of chili flakes to ~4 tbsp of oil. For bonus points, toast some dried chilis yourself, then toss in a coffee/spice grinder for a bit to get flakes. A quality store bought chili flake is also fine though.
Add the chili flakes to a metal heat-safe bowl, and the oil to a pan. Over high heat, get the oil up to almost smoking, ~190C then turn off the heat. Wait until the oil is back to about ~150C then toss it in with the chili flakes and stir. The reason for going up then down in temperature is so that (1) when getting up to temperature the oil can ‘cook’ and get a more pleasant taste and (2) the best temperature to add the oil into the chilis is ~150C, which gives it the most vibrant color.
If you happen to have any Sichuanese hongyou ‘red oil’ on hand, feel free to use that instead. Or you can also go super lazy like us and just some a bit of the Lao Gan Ma.