Lanzhou Ramen (兰州拉面)

An auntie from Lanzhou taught me how to make Ramen home style. I am sure restaurants do it differently since this is time consuming to stretch one noodle string at a time.

Ingredients:

All purpose flour - 6 cups
Water - approx 2 cup
Oil - approx. 1/3 cup

Steps:

1. Put flour in a mixing bowl, add water gradually until the flour can be knead together into a dough. The dough should not be too soft. Cover the dough and let it sit for one hour.

2. Take the dough and knead it until it is soft and smooth. This is the hard work part. I used the stand mixer with a dough hook to do it. Divide the dough into 6 equal parts. Knead them to balls, then use a rolling pin to roll them into about 4" round discs.

3. For each disc, rub with oil thoroughly on both sides, and wrap with shrink wrap. Let them sit for one hour.  If you do not plan to eat them in one setting, you can store these discs in Ziploc bag and put in refrigerator.

4. Boiling a large pot of hot water.
5. Use a rolling pin, roll the disc in one direction into long strip, about 1/4" thick; then cut into 1/4" wide strips.

6. Pick up each strip, one at a time, with two hands, and stretch carefully. Once  noodle is stretched thin enough, drop the string in the boiling water. The noodle is easy to cook, so it is okay even if you string is thick.

 7. Once you throw in the last string into the boiling water, wait a minute, and you can fish out the noodle into a bowl, and add any sauce/soup you want.