Spicy Beef Noodle Soup with Chinese Hand Pulled noodles
This Spicy Beef Noodle Soup, with homemade hand pulled noodles, will leave your tummy happy and your taste buds dancing with a fragrant broth packed with garlic, star anise, ginger and numbingly warm Sichuan peppercorns.
1/8cupChinese black bean pastemix with siracha for more spice to taste
1large tomatocut into small chunks
1/4cupsoy sauce
2tablespoonsof rice vinegar
1/2tablespoonsugar
1large piece of dried tangerine peel
flat hand pulled noodles
Chopped scallion and cilantroto garnish
Instructions
Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Slowly add and mix in the water until mixed in and no more dry flour. It will be sticky. Knead the doug on a floured surface. Adding flour as needed knead for 10 to 15 minutes, or until you get a smooth and springy ball. Place the dough in a floured bowl, cover with a damp dish towel and then a lid on top of the bowl. Leave to rest on the counter for at least 2 hours while you make the soup. Prepare the soup...
Fill one large pot with the cold water. To it, add the ginger, scallions, Shaoxing wine and beef. Bring to a boil with a cover on the pot. Once it boils lower heat down to a simmer for 10 minutes. Set pot aside.
Over medium low heat, place the oil in a second large pot. Toss in the Sichuan peppers, garlic cloves, onion, star anise and bay leaves. Stir and cook until until the onion and garlic starts to soften. Mix in the bean paste, and siracha if using it. Add the tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes. Mix in the soy sauce, rice vinegar and sugar. Remove from heat.
Strain the broth from pot 1 with a fine mesh sieve into pot 2 and discard of the impurities. Add the beef, ginger, and scallions to pot 2.
Add the tangerine peel and bring the pot to a boil again over high heat. Cover and simmer on a low heat for 1 hour.
Turn off the heat but keep the pot, lid on, on the burner for another full hour.
When the hour is up get back to the noodles. Flour your working surface and knead the dough a few times. Divide the dough into 4 balls. With a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a round disc about 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) thick. Cover the discs as you go with plastic wrap to prevent the dough from drying. Leave to rest for another 30 minutes.
Slowly warm up the soup again and bring another medium pot of water to a roaring boil.
Working one disk of dough at a time, slice the disc into several strips about 1 inch wide. Take one strip at a time and gently pull out the entire strip a bit. Then from one end pull the strip of dough into a long flat even noodle right into the boiling water. It’s normal for the strip to break 2 to 3 times as you pull. Pull another 2 to 3 strips of dough the same way.
Boil the noodles until cooked, about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove the noodles from the pot into a bowl and set aside. Pull and cook the remaining 3 disks of dough in the same manner.
Divide the noodles into 6 bowls and top with the soup and beef. Garnish with scallions, and cilantro