Preventing Pasta Slabs
Jesse, how do you cook the really wide rice noodles for a dish like Pad See Ew or Chow Fun? I mean the 1″ or wider kind that I think are only available fresh. I buy them from the freezer section at Lotus but can never get the dense, gelatinous slab apart. I end up with white, gooey globs of noodle in my stir-fries.
Moira
I’ve never worked with the exact noodles you’re asking about, but when I worked at an Italian restaurant, we cooked a variety of fresh and frozen pasta, including wide noodles. The two main keys to getting your pasta to come out well are 1) lots of water and 2) stir, stir, stir.
Many times, people try to cook pasta in too small a pot of water. I keep trying to convince Aurora that she needs to get out the big pot every time she cooks pasta, but she resists the idea because the pasta will fit in the smaller one and she doesn’t want to heat up all that water if she doesn’t have to. But, heat up all that water. It really is necessary, especially when cooking the larger noodles.
In addition to there being a larger volume of water to dilute the starch that cooks out of the noodles, the larger pan gives the noodles more room to move as they cook–and you more room to stir them. Helping them swim around the pan is important to unsticking the noodles and preventing them from coming out as a giant slab of pasta.
Lastly, be certain that your water is at a full boil when you add your pasta to it. If you’re putting pasta into water that’s cooler than that, that will contribute to the sticky, gelatinous nature of the results.
May 30th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Just wanted to add that, particularly for frozen noodles, it’s important to use a very large amount of water at full boil, as it will come back to a boil more quickly after you put the noodles in. That will also keep the noodles from overcooking before coming unstuck.
I’m sorry to ask a question that may seem condescending, Moira - you do boil your rice noodles before using them in stir-fries, right? I only ask because I’m in the middle of teaching one of my friends to cook - and she once asked what it meant when water started turning white (it was boiling).
You may also want to seek out dried rice noodles instead of frozen. I find that the texture of rice noodles suffers a little from the freezing, and much prefer to use dried. You only need to dunk the dried noodles into some hot water and let them rehydrate for a few minutes before using, no boiling required.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Thanks, Jesse and Samantha. I’m wondering if I have a slightly different problem, though, because they’re rice noodles, rather than wheat noodles. They’re not available dried, unfortunately. (Not these wide ones.) They come stuck together in a 6×6x2″ slab of freshly made noodles that have been chilled (either refrigerated or frozen), and so they really only need to be separated and reheated. But there aren’t directions on the package, and the people I’ve asked at Lotus say you can just stir fry them, but don’t say how to separate them. (Wikipedia and Google don’t help much, either, but there’s a picture at the very bottom of this page: http://www.foodsubs.com/NoodlesRice.html)
I’ve tried putting them in a large pot of vigorously boiling water, or soaking them in warm water and pulling them apart with my fingers, but they just break into thick clumps. They’re a little clumpy when served at Chinese and Thai restaurants, too, but I’m wondering if there’s some special kitchen technique that would unstick this gluey rice slab.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 am
Are the noodles supposed to be 6×2″ or 6×6″? From the picture, it looks like they’re 6×2″, in which case the 6×6x2″ block is a stack of noodles 6″ high. I’d try breaking that stack in half while the noodles are frozen or partially thawed. Hopefully, it will cleave between two noodles. Then, maybe you can break each piece again. You probably won’t be able to break off individual noodles, but smaller stacks might come apart more easily.
It’s also possible that there’s no trick and it’s just a badly prepared product.
June 5th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I was thinking about this today while fixing my annie chun’s noodle bowl - the instructions for the noodles say to rinse them in hot water and then fill the bowl with water and the seasoning and to microwave. would Moira’s frozen noodles unstick a little bit with this technique?
I am SO Curious about what these noodles are like!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
all,
This rice noodle in Chinese is called ‘he fen (河粉）‘, which was made by steaming a thin layer of (rice flour+water). You can see a picture here, http://www.foodsubs.com/NoodlesRice.html. The noodle is cooked (or semi-cooked) already and preferred to be used fresh, not frozen. They are typically used either in soup noodle or stir-fry. You will usually cut the slab into proper width of your preference. You can separate them at this point by hand, with a bit of vegitable oil. For stir-fry, restaurant chefs tend to deep-fry them briefly to create a bit of crispy texture. At home, you can stir-fry the noodle first and put them back later to mix with other stirred ingredients. Hope this helps to answer your question.