Hey guys, a few notes: 1. Okay, I (Chris) am an idiot - dried spaghetti does not use egg. I'm personally only familiar with the process of making fresh pasta (and only a small subset, at that). Steph always fact-checks the VOs, but generally trusts that I know what I'm talking about re western food. I should've thought to double check but I didn't. Apologies. 2. Note that this technique is only a 'fix' for noodle soups that follow the 'assembly' method, as you don't want those soup to get starchy. If you're using the 'direct cooking' method (ala Huimian, Qiangguomian), there's not really too much of a spaghetti problem at all - just boil the sucker for longer (after all, Minestrone seems to handle itself just fine). For more information about the different styles of noodle souping, check out our post over on Substack (free, as always): chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/noodle-soup-101 3. For this dish then? When it comes noodle choices, of course you can use whatever you want. Dry, fresh, frozen, they would all work. Just follow the same precook - rinse - and braise process, and adjust the braising time accordingly. Traditionally, people usually like to braise it on the longer side for maximum absorbtiveness, with a softer and puffier noodle texture. 4. There’re also a lot of variations for soup bases. The one we showed in the video is a classic home style base that’s quick to whip up. The “small yellow croaker with snow vegetable” is THE classic braised noodle soup base around Shanghai, while in Yangzhou you’d often see a mix of wood ear, puffed pork skin, quail eggs, vegetable, sometimes sausage, and stock. So in this sense, feel free to whip up your own base. The other day we made a spicy red braised beef base (showed at the beginning of the video), and one day for lunch I made a quick baitang (white soup) base with napa cabbage, fish balls, tofu, and stock, also great. So if you want to make a kimchi base? Go for it. Miso? Why not? Thai green curry, of course it’ll be tasty. In a word, this is a technique that can help you noodle-soupify and “enter flavor” any soup base you like. 5. Oh! As promised, recipe for said 'small yellow croaker with snow vegetable' is here. Legit, with English subs: ua-cam.com/video/lwt_Z_JTFkY/v-deo.html 6. An interesting titbit about how (some) Chinese people view spaghetti (and pasta by extention). Pasta is very available at the imported food section at supermarkets in China. It’s something that people would buy, but it’s also something that most people - especially the older generation - don’t really know how to handle. I’ve heard some older people complained about spaghetti being really hard and they need to presoak it in cool water for a couple hours before cooking it (I was also shocked when hearing that treatment). I think this does show the inherent “hardness” of spaghetti in the context of an Asian soup. And I wish I know about this technique back then and I can tell them how to fix the “hardness”. 7. Then why not just stick with Chinese or Asian noodles you may ask. Well? Because... spaghetti and pasta are tasty, got a great texture, a relatively low GI for the workout crowd, and abroad at least might just be the only noodle you have. That's all for now :)
some italian longer pasta shapes like spaghetti are made with eggs though, and they might just be better subs for asian noodles than spaghetti, and just as easy to come across in the west. tagliatelle/linguine, spaghettoni alla chitarra and capelli d'angelo are all less dense and more permissive in absorbing flavours than spaghetti, and when fresh do not need to be boiled for nearly as long. you can absolutely assemble a noodle soup by throwing in fresh tagliatelle after 2 or 3 minutes of cooking, and capelli d'angelo are probably one of the very few long pasta shapes you will find naturally used in soup dishes in italy already (them and su filindeo both, but proper su filindeu is so hard to come across you'd be better off resourcing the proper noodles your dish requires for, and making it from scratch is absolutely out of the question)
also, i am putting myself in danger by saying this, but i have a feeling for lasagna sheets being a surprisingly okay cheat code for pretend-biangbiang noodles. if anyone reading attempts this, you did not hear this from me.
So those could make for nice biang biang mian in a pinch? I did happen to come across Chinese inspired lasagna using the latter mianshi kind just now among other dishes
In France, it was common that all the brands of dried pasta advertised they were made with so much fresh eggs. I don't know if the rules about false advertising has changed that. So if you were submitted to that same brainwashing as a kid, the error is understandable. I only learned about the so called eggs in my 60's.
So this is a trick from a Korean youtuber that, me living in Italy and not having access to Asian noodles like I used to back in North America or South Korea, I decided to just give a go. Basically soaking spaghetti in a water solution with cooked baking soda/sodium carbonate to a 1L to 4-5 grams of the stuff for about 4~ hours, then emptying the solution into the pot with more water and boiling the pasta for around 3-4 minutes. I tried this method on dishes like Taiwanese beef noodles, ramen, chow mein/yakisoba, to jajangmyeon. I sometimes switched noodles from spaghetti to other types of noodles (would not suggest using the egg noodles tbh but up to people's tastes) like linguine. It actually worked quite well enough that it's my go-to method for anything Asian-noodles related. Of course it isn't perfect but believe me when I say it's a jack of all trades for when one can't find Asian noodles around.
I was looking for a comment like this! Because I lived in Korea too, and I was told to just use baking soda in the cooking water to make spaghetti more like "Asian" noodles
This trick afaik, helps with making the texture of spaghetti springy, which is not necessarily what the video is about. Still a good thing to know though.
In my experience just throwing the soda in the cooking water already does a lot! I lived in Norway for a Year and, since any noodle but pasta was hard to come by there, this was basically the way I got a noodle texture that was more appropriate for soups and stir fries.
I once had a roommate from szechuan in Germany. He was a big proponent of cooking with what‘s easily availiable. He made delicious chinese food with spaghetti and olive oil :)
Trying to cook "what you know from home" while "working with what you got" is probably the origin of a very significant portion of established dishes all over the world and also frequently a topic on this channel. Once you "improvise" often enough, it just becomes its own dish I guess. I love to try and recreate "authentic" cooking, but if everyone was doing that all the time, we would have missed out on a ton of delicious stuff.
I am also a proponent of clearing my kitchen often before restocking it with new grocery. When I was in Japan, one time I was left with only a packet of udon and a packet of carbonara sauce and I was like why not. I tried it and never went back. Udon fit with pasta sauces so well. But I always felt like the Italians were gonna murder me any second. I felt so validated when I later heard a chef vouching for udon as a viable pasta substitute.
@@XxZarionxX Exactly. One of the most beloved tacos, Al Pastor, was created from Lebanese immigrants wanting to make shawarma with what they had around. I used to be very "authentic" driven as a reaction to all the bastardized/bland western adaptations of eastern food. But now I understand those foods less as "unauthentic" and more as just bad food/poorly thought out recipes. There is lots of "unauthentic" food now that's absolutely delicious because people understand more diverse ingredients better now and know how to use them together.
I find olive oil is a lot more versatile than cooking shows tell you, even extra virgin. Sure it's not ideal and you need to respect the smoke point, but in a pinch it'll replace butter or neutral oil and nobody will notice. It even adds a pleasant undertone to some cakes.
My observation of spaghetti noodles is that they're only suitable for hearty, hefty sauces, which isn't really a thing Chinese food does. That goes even for Western food too - there's just something wrong about chicken noodle soup made with spaghetti.
This does give me an idea that Tomato & Egg or Beijing-style Zhajiang (Fried Sauce) would just be a Chinese Marinara or a Bolognese. Haven't tried this out yet, but in theory this could work!
spaghetti might not go well with thin soups, but other pasta shapes can! Orzo, shells, and macaroni are perfect for soups, and classic in american cooking.
@@ampersand64 yeah, there's definitely hong kong style macaroni noodle soup. (which i sometimes make with shell, or even rice macaroni or rice ovalettes)
My mom used to make chicken noodle soup with spaghetti and I think what she does is break the noodles as small as humanly possible and she would let it soak in the broth after cooking and it turned out fine.
Ruwei has a similar concept in Filipino cooking - nuot. Slow cooking, braising, marinating, etc. serves to make the flavors seep in - nanunuot. And yeah, there's no direct translation in English but it's generally a cooking concept people are familiar with.
My mother is Filipino and she used this technique. Back in the 60s- early 70s , to make “ Misua” she would adapt spaghetti noodles with the technique that Chris described in the video. She would make pancit using spaghetti noodles.
The closest translation for Ruwei is probably Infusion. In western cooking we will talking about infusing flavors into different ingredients. Not a perfect match but probably the closest match.
my favorite dish since i was a kid is basically dried tofu So imagine getting the hardest tofu & you cook those in a beefstew/braised pork stew it till all the tiny spores inside the dried tofu is filled with your stew juice. That, is Ruwei.
1) yes there are dried spaghetti that use egg, we still call "fresh pasta" in Italy, but it can be dried and stored in packages; 2) We use that technique a lot in Italy, it is called "mantecatura" and it is usually used to finish a pasta dish. It is sometimes called "risottatura" referring to risotto, because the finishing is similar to a risotto, but without the need of butter and parmiggiano cheese.
@@NateyC214 Wild because in the US, blanching is boiling an item for a brief amount of time and then shocking it in cold water, like when you want to skin a tomato
I appreciate this insight! This feels like a crazy coincidence, I’m Vietnamese and me and my Italian boyfriend were just talking about this very topic last night since there are very few traditional Italian soup recipes that include pasta (pretty much only pastina and minestrone) but noodle soups are more common in East/Southeast Asian recipes. I like the explanation of rù wèi, and it’s trippy to watch a video about it right after we were discussing it lolol.
Honestly I think utensils are a huge part of this. Whereas chopsticks have been used throughout East Asia for a really long time, forks are relatively new on the scene for European food culture, so European soups are meant for spoon-only eating. Even something like a knoedel can be broken apart with a spoon. Noodle soups NEED to be eaten with chopsticks or a fork.
@@marihagemeyer8166 Me and Steph were talking about this too - the form factor of the noodle *really* lends itself to chopsticks well. If I'm making a spaghetti dish at home, I usually eat it with chopsticks. Just easier to eat than fork-twirling, in my opinion. I do think though that with the explosion of Sushi, Chinese food, etc in the west... because (most?) people can use chopsticks now, it can potentially give some room to get creative - wholly within western cuisines too. 'Chopstickifying' traditional western food is a really fun avenue of experimentation, imo
@@marihagemeyer8166 wait true. I never realized that maybe pasta isn't used a lot in soupy dishes is because soup in Europe is usually consumed by spoon instead of fork but in Asia we can essentially eat noodles in soupy bases bc we have chopsticks !!!
the direct translation of 'rù wèi' (入味) from Chinese into VNmese would be "nhập vị" then though i have only cooked stews, braises & soups with potato & carrot, or taro or eddoe (khoai sọ, its like taro but smaller), so my only experience with rù wèi are limited to root vegetables
So basically you cook dried commercial semolina pasta the same as homemade alkalai noodles ... precook at least halfway in a separate pot of water, then drain, rinse, and cook the rest of the way in your soup broth to keep the flavors discrete instead of murky and also improve flavor penetration. Makes sense.
Ive been doing that for more than a year on every pasta because of Babish. He is always finishing any pasta in the sauce in his recipes. My "asian spagetti" was always decent. So i guess was aciddently doing this right 😂
@@bubonic285 That's a sweeping generalization thats not completely true. Remember, we're talking about use in ASIAN SOUPS here (which almost NEVER call for western style commercial die-extruded dried pasta made from durum wheat semolina instead of the regular white flour flours used in most asian style wheat noodles (usually some high extraction bolted blend of hard white and soft white wheat). Normally, the only time precooking in a separate pot of water (before draining & finishing it in your broth) is mandatory is when you make your own fresh alkalai type noodles (if you dont the alkalai will impart a murky soapy dish water taint to your broth). For non-alkalai fresh homemade noodles, it is merely considered good technique (so that your carefully made broth doesnt turn murky), but not really mandatory. Seriously, who precooks stuff like orzo or pastini in separate water before adding to a soup, regardless of whether its western or asian ? ANSWER: ALMOST NOBODY.
Hey Chris- look up Yakamein. It’s also called Old Sober. It’s a staple down here in New Orleans. It’s a noodle soup that always has 4 very key ingredients: Spaghetti noodles Lots of Worcestershire in the beef broth Hard boiled eggs Lots of green onion on top Sort of like pho, sort of like beef soup, not really like anything else that exists. Excellent drinking food and excellent hangover food.
My mother used to make Asian inspired spaghetti noodles soup growing up. I don't remember the exact ingredients, but she would use basic chicken stock base soup mixed in with soy sauce and corn starch. The soup , or rather the sauce would have a thicker consistency that clings to the noodles and it help carry on the flavor without waiting for the noodles to absorb the flavor of the soup. Your video brought back memories, thanks!
Just a quick note: weimian is still quite commonplace throughout Jiangnan, especially it's most common variety, 菜煨麵(青菜煨面). it's always cloudy/milky and typically made with chicken stock(and chicken breast meat 嫩鸡煨面), but the fully vegetarian version is quite common among Buddhist monks along with 菜飯. It's also a common "chicken nooodle soup" for nursing people down with a bad cold/flu, or babies transitioning to solid foods/older people who don't have full use of their teeth. Baby bokchoy is our star leafy green as much as water spinach is in SE Asia. Yes, it's supposed to be mushy so a lot of people who aren't used to it might not enjoy it.
Yeah originally the angle here was "it's okay to have softer noodles" with a discussion on 入味, until we were like "wait... actually this general approach could solve some people's spaghetti issues". The 8-10 minutes was for the proper cooking time, 4-5 minutes was for the 'you might not like it mushy' one :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified i used to have an aversion to it as it was the burning heat of the noodles that doesn’t know how to cool down. it burned my mouth so many times as a child. as an adult i’ve grown to love its simplicity.
When I was in Italy, I used angellini and spaghetti to cook noodle dishes for my friends. Basically I told them that Chinese noodles are not eaten all dente but slightly morbido, so I basically cooked the spaghetti and angellini in the soup base until they were the same hardness or softness as Chinese lar mian. That allowed the dried spaghetti to absorb the soup flavours.
Seeing Steph try and get a bit of that monster of a Chicken Parm was perfect. Also, this is a perfect recipe break down and I'm definitely gonna try it out once I get into my new apartment.
I like the simplicity of this dish. I have often made spaghetti soup with a tomato sauce base. I like this parboiling technique, which should leave me with more broth to noodle ratio.
Really wanted to thank you for this video. I don't like keeping specialty noodles in my house and so I kept trying to make broth soups and ramen with spaghetti and found the flavor too overwhelmingly starchy. Just whipped up some mayo noodles with this braising technique and it really works. You've really improved my kitchen game, thanks!
Made this a few times since the video's upload date. The prep time for the broth is perfect for "no boil" spaghetti. Instead of parboiling the spaghetti, you just let it soak in room temp salted water for 1 to 1.5 hours. This gives me enough time to prep the veggies and broth. I'm gonna try this method with bucatini pasta later (hollow spaghetti). My coworker suggested soaking the pasta in dashi broth, I'll try that later in the week. The fish version you mentioned of this dish is my favorite. Perfect bachelor dish.
This twice boiled method is how naporitan is prepared in a lot of Japanese restaurants. They will cook the spaghetti in the morning, and then refrigerate it, and toss it into the pan with the sauce to soften further and take up the flavor.
Great video!!! In Italy we also have another type of spaghetti called "spaghettini" (-ini meaning smaller) they are thinner than regular, and personally that's why I dislike them, us Italians really love the consistency of thick pasta cooked al dente (I found it really interesting that in China this characteristic was the main problem with spaghetti😂). I don't know if they could be better for asian soups (also because I think they aren't so common outside Italy), but if you can get them I think it would be interesting to give them a try!
1:36 DID THE DOG GET SOME NOODLE, OR MAYBE EVEN SOME MEATBALL (or whatever that was on the far side of the bowl)? I NEED HIM TO GET A TREAT LOOK AT HOW NICE HE IS ASKING
Talking about ways to make pasta absorb flavor, I think you should check out "Pasta all'assassina". Spaghetti are first lightly fried and then cooked inside a thick tomato broth/sauce.
I have done this so many times during my youth when I was living on my own and trying to save money by cooking some spaghetti al dente, washing them off, then cooking them again in a soup made from mix of leftover instant noodles flavor packages and add some baked egg and sausages on top. But the highlight in those days was to make soup base from left over Indian curry the day before.
This technique is also used in some traditional italian dishes over here, an exemple being pasta e fagioli where pasta is actually online cooked in the beans broth until it reaches a sauce-like thick consistency from the starches of beans and pasta, this is also done in some other niche dishes like spaghetti all'assassina.
Have you ever looked at New Orleans style Yaka Mein? One of the oldest Chinese-American recipes (though it never really spread much beyond New Orleans), and it uses spaghetti as well.
I have just seen yuor playlists - Huzzzah! Absolutely wonderful. Very well done indeed. I think you could bulk out your start Chinese cooking playlist into a book, but I'm past that point and really appreciate these accessible collections. Thank you CCD
I'm guessing a lot of people reading this are familiar with the technique of boiling spaghetti in an alkalised solution (maybe a teaspoon of baking soda in the cooking water), to achieve a result similar to e.g. ramen, when none is available. Although I believe that's more to do with texture, rather than "sauce absorption". Any thoughts?
So I tried this trick with Kan Sui once. It's... interesting. The noodles *really* swell up - to me, the final texture was a dead ringer for those packaged 车仔面 that you get at 7/11, e.g. ma.gfsuper.com/cdn/shop/files/180g_40266eff-f806-4c62-8ec4-ce22d4e2c857_1024x.png?v=1685288357 albeit a bit thicker even. I think that it would be a very good trick to get to that specific noodle texture using spaghetti (so definitely do it for your cart noodles) but I probably wouldn't want it as a universal approach? It's possible that baking soda might have a less dramatic effect.
I did tried this tonight with cheap spaghetti I had. I really craved a noodle soup but didn't had any pre-packages packets nor suitable noodles. I recycled a batch of carmelized onion broth I had lyring around for the soup base (+ soy sauce etc.). Then I boiled the pasta in plain water with salt and baking soda (around a tea spoon) and used the technique in the video for the rest. Then I finished the plating with a poached egg. The result was amazing, the cheap spaghetti were 85% of the way there to an alkaline noodle ramen soup. I don't usually get any ramen packets let alone asian noodles around here so it completely blew me away to finally have a quick late night noodle soup solution.
I tried this out, and it’s pretty good. The effort to reward ratio makes it worthwhile, especially when I don’t have any Asian noodles on hand and don’t feel like making a batch by hand. The only change I made to this recipe is swapping dried shiitakes for the dried shrimps, since I do not eat shrimp. It’s a useful technique to know, so thanks Chris and Steph for letting us know about it.
It's not so distant from "risottatura", an italian cooking technique where you boil the pasta until it's aldente and then finish cooking it in a pan with the sauce and some pasta water, to let the starch make it all bind together
I frequently use thin spaghetti and capellini (basically extra thin spaghetti) for soups and other Chinese preparations. Most of the time I just add soda to the cooking water and rinse them well afterwards. The texture feels more elastic and they just blend in better, I totally get what you mean there. With regards to pasta imho, it also makes a difference what moulds were used to produce them, so pasta al bronzo (bronze moulds) is supposed to have a rougher surface and presumably absorb more flavour from the broth - they feel more like fresh noodles. I can't remember ever using them for Chinese cooking though (incidentally because the thin pasta types typically aren't available as al bronzo where I live, let alone cheap), so take that reference with a pinch of salt (and soda)...
Another possible contributing factor for the of Ru Wei is using pasta made with Teflon dies which gives a very smooth finish. Not sure though how easy it is to find artisan pasta made with bronze dies in South East Asia.
I find it absolutely crazy that u have to do all that to get the flavour absorbed. In my own experiment, especially with the thinker spaghetti noodles, just put them directly into the soup or stock, boil the pasta with the soup, and it’s filled with all that flavour!
There are amazing pasta options for soup, broken spaghetti work in a pinch. Generally for soup style pasta the shape should be spoonable. I really like Conchiglie since their shape allows them to hold a bean and some small vegetable pieces inside making for a fantastic vegetable soup even in a very light broth. The only problem I have with finishing the pasta in the soup is that it gets really soggy if you don't finish it that day so I tend to save some soup first before finishing the pasta.
Haha, I really wish we had a good word for 'ru wei', I've known that finishing pasta with the sauce made it better, but I don't think I ever thought about why until you brought it up!
Okay sir I'm at 2:31.... This is exactly how my mother taught me to make pasta. When shock our noodles. introduce olive oil or salt add them to the plate and it's a done deal.... My mother and grandmother were born in Greece and we ate Mediterranean food quite regularly 🤷♀️ this is legit how I grew up making pasta
This is awesome, I was trying to figure out how to finish up the spaghetti i bought but i dont wanna to cook it the western way. This video helps a lot!
You just put the water add the carrots in big rondels, basil or tomatoes from the start with the water and add the pasta when it boils. It stops the pasta from overcooking. Also use minimum pasta with minimum 13 grams of protein. Italians say 14 but that is overkill and very expensive. You can also use less water and add the tomatoe sauce when you want to slow the cooking process of the pasta. If the tomato sauce has lots of pesky tomato skins than add it from the start with the carrots and add chilli flakes, curry with turmeric 50-50 with 7-10 beads of allspice to break them faster this also works with meat in stews so you can make it tender in half the time.
Hi really interesting take on sphagetti and noodle soup (soup noodle?)! This reminds me of a kind of one pot rice noodle from Yunnan and Guizhou（小锅米线), where the rice noodle used are thick, tough and thoroughly dried, resembing dried sphagetti of size 7 to 12/13. Apparently that's for food perservation purpose (I've a bundle left unattended, and bugs have tried and failed to chew through that lol), and also is very resistant to prolonged cooking. Similar to bun used in bun bo hue. So as it goes, the method of cooking this one-pot rice soup noodle is to start with the broth (often salty, spicy and sour) with chilli paste and perserved veggie, then with the noodle in, and then in with whatever you can have available, like a personal hot pot, meat, fresh veggie, mushrooms, bean curds etc. Then lastly with garnishes. The noodle is often presoaked for a day and can stay in the pot cooking for as long as five to ten minutes. What comes out is very ruwei'd noodle in a personal hotpot.
入味 is an amazing concept, it explains so many things about the coherence of a meal. Thanks for teaching that! Also, couldn't you cook the spaghetti from the start in the soup? It would cloud it and the starch would thicken it for sure. But it would also help the noodles to 入the 味 of the soup.
I love your videos, and I was actually just wondering about how to make soup noodles with spaghetti! Just one question, should you salt the pasta cooking water as seen in the traditional western method? Why or why not? Also, I saw a technique on a different UA-cam channel that called for boiling spaghetti with baking soda to emulate a Chinese or Japanese style alkaline noodle. Maybe in a future video you guys can test this and discuss the results? Thanks!
salt difference between the soup base, and whats in the pasta noodle. osmotic reaction. a few weekends ago, i made a great pasta sauce, and after cooking the noodles MASSIVELY soaked up all of the sauce. even though it seemed too watery at 1st. i made the same recipe this past wednesday, and the noodles didn't absorb the watery sauce for crap........i had to think what i did wrong......i forgot to salt the noodles in this 2nd batch. thats what it was. in the 1st batch, i did salt the noodles, and not the sauce. so when the noodles were set in the sauce, they pulled in extra water from the sauce via osmosis, diluting the salt in the noodles. AND, were able to bring in a ton of flavor, even while off heat. so while a helpful video, i think osmosis is a bigger help here than anything, for getting more flavor into the "mostly done cooking noodles".
For noodle soup I always boil spaghetti in water with a 3/4 tsp baking soda (the way you would add salt) to al dente and then add it, works like a charm. I think it's a trick Alex French Guy Cooking shows in his ramen series.
The trick I've been using is to just boil the spaghetti in the soup/stock from the beginning. The soup's flavor absorb into the spaghetti pretty well by doing this. If you cook it for a long enough, most of the water would be evaporated and/or absorbed by the noodle and whatever is left would be a starchy sauce that clings onto the noodle.
another trick I found is using baking soda when boiling the noodles, jsut a teaspoon. it tenderizes the noodles and makes them chewier, great for these types of recipes
There’s a technique of boiling spaghetti in alkaline water, usually from adding a bit of baking soda. It results in much bouncier noodles, somewhat like the texture of ramen, but thicker. I wonder if combining the two techniques might yield something good.
There is also a technique to make alkaline noodles from pasta by adding baking soda to the cooking water. And indeed, it gives it a chewier bite. Another technique is it to slowly rehydrate pasta in room temp water so its bite gets even more similar to fresh noodles, so it is more evenly hydrated. Also I recommend thin spaghetti called spaghettini, vermicelli or capellini (such as Barilla no 1 or 3), that due to their smaller diameter can soak the soup much better and thus are more suitable for noodle soups. For instance, I use Barilla no 3 (or other spaghettini like De Cecco no. 11) and use both techniques to make ramen for cheap. I always wondered why Asian wheat noodles and Italian pasta feel so different yet being made from the same material.
Another method for somebody to try. What about pan frying the spaghetti with a small amount of water? a bit like the italian dish spaghetti all'assassina. The searing can create bubbles & pockets on the surface of the spaghetti. Which, I assume, could help to improve the spaghettis ability to wick up the soup.
Oh man, that opening another spaghetti not mixing with the soup and feeling like two different things is spot on. I still use spaghetti often but only out of convenience but clearly spaghetti doesn’t mesh with soup- it meshes with sauces.
If you think about it, spaghetti doesn’t really have any flavor per which isn’t too different from the noodles in Shanghai region. Hence, it’s good for dishes like scallion noodles, red braised lamb noodles or any 干拌，or non-soup based noodle dish where the noodle acts the same as it is meant to be- an agent for the sauce to hang on. I tried this with a classic brothless version of 雪菜肉丝面，and it worked wonders.
Interesting concept. Two things though. I think that for those of us living in a Western country with no easy access to Asian noodles, capellini or angel hair pasta is an easier solution for soups that can handle some slight amount of clouding. Your shocking pasta under cold water also made me think of something I did to make dried pasta suitable for stir-fried noodle dishes. See, they never taste right, the bite is either too soft, or too al dente. In retrospect the solution is sort of obvious, you have to let the starch undergo retrogradation, and the bonus is that humidity still redistributes inside the pasta during the process, so that al dente core disappears without you having to boil the pasta longer and let it absorb more moisture. So, if someone ever needs to make stir-fried noodles with dried pasta instead of egg noodles, boil pasta until al dente, drain it in a colander and let the steam escape, wait for an 30 minutes until it's room temperature and all the steam as escaped, and place it in a fridge overnight. Use like yesterday's rice. In a pinch, an hour at room temperature will do. It still won't have the same texture as say, cantonese egg noodles, but it's an interesting texture that doesn't taste wrong.
Hmm. Reminds me of stewed udon in Japan. My friend made that once, in a claypot with a red miso braise and offal (he was teaching me about the hormon cooking tradition). Delicious.
I saw a hack on WayofRamen's channel where you add baking soda to the cook water of the pasta, it increases the PH of the water helping the pasta get that springy texture you'd get in Chinese aklini style noodle, also I use capellini/angel hair as a perfect substitute for wonton noodles cooked using the same method.
The same happens with Italian dry pasta (e.g. Spaghetti) and sauce too, which is why per Italian tradition you remove them from the water slightly before they reach the desired consistency to then finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. In contrast to this video however, an Italian pasta sauce can benefit from the starchy water by adding a little of it to the sauce. Mantecatura. For this to work however, the pasta needs to be of good quality (just semolina and water, slowly dried at a low temperature) to carry the needed amount of starch.
This came up randomly for me and it's quite interesting! I'm a person who can't eat gluten due to medical reasons and I really miss being able to eat ramen. The typical gluten free substitute for ramen noodles is an unsatisfying thin rice noodle. I've been considering whether gluten free spaghetti could be a good substitute for ramen noodles because it's thicker and there are different kinds made with various grains, even pulses. But in my experience they are more delicate than regular spaghetti. I have not got around to experimenting with this yet, but it could be good content and I'd love to see someone else try.
i'm puertorican and my grandma makes a salchichon soup that uses spaghetti and i feel this in my core. she said the key was getting a thicker spaghetti and washing it then cooking it a little longer. i love when cultures converge. that being said some of the best americas style chinese food i've ever had was in puerto rico. they love lo mein.
Interesting to learn. But I don't agree there's a problem with spaghetti just because it's not good in Chinese soups. :-P Still, I'm sure this will come in handy for me in the future.
It could also make a difference how the spaghetti is extruded. From Italian cooking, the cheaper noodles made using teflon dies are very smoothe and don't grab the sauce much. The ones made using older brass dies have a bit more tooth to their surface, and absorb/hold the sauce better. I could see that affecting how they are in soup too?
During the pandemic my family couldn’t get any of the Chinese dried noodles so we opted for the angel hair pasta as substitute. This be interesting try to partially cook the pasta and finish it in the broth
well its the same idea you mentioned about finishing pasta with the sauce. ideally pasta is somewhat undercooked in the salted water before combining with the sauce and some of the water until the pasta is al dente.
OK, I know it has NOTHING to do with the content of the video (which is great and informative, as always), but STEPH'S HAIR LOOKS SO GOOD IN THIS??? I need to know her haircare routine.
I would cook the noodle directly in the stock. More flavor absorption, and the added starch holds more liquid on the noodle when slurping. Clouding is a non-issue for me as I don't start with clarified stocks to begin with. As long as the flavor is there and the noodle has a nice chew I consider it good eating.
Eat good quality pasta the same way you’re eating noodles. Go for Dececco brand or same style pasta that have been air dried slowly. You’ll see how much sauce it eats and of course finish it within the soup.
Just fyi there are shoyu pasta dishes which use a similar technique (partially cooked in the sauce). But it's not really a soup thing. It needs less sauce, but a thicker and stronger sauce. Tom yum and ma la pasta can also be made, but not soup style. Delicate noodles goes with delicate sauce.
Sichuanese liangmian cold noodles with spaghetti is actually pretty good. You want a firmer type of noodle that doesn't stick when cooked and not too ruwei since the seasonings are super strong
I ordered once from a local (Croatian) restaurant that's doing asian food and they used spaghetti instead of noodles. Not going there again, there's several other actually good asian restaurants. Sadly they don't offer anything soupy except a clear miso soup with tofu that I can easily make at home. There's noodles available in our stores, and you can easily make some (e.g. udon) noodles by hand, so there's definitely no excuse to use spaghetti other than cheaping out on ingredients.
I think this concept is applied to Italian pasta dishes. You don't exactly want sauce just on top of pasta. In some cases, it's best when slightly undercooked, then finished by putting the hot pasta straight into the sauce on another pan.
I wondered why anyone would use spaghetti in Asian soups, and a split second later realized the privilege of thinking something like that 😔 Not all things are readily available in many places. Thank you for this tip! I love cooking a simple Vietnamese suon heo nui soup, which also suggests pasta as an alternative to Viet macaroni (made with rice). But I found it too stiff with no bite (since it wasn't made for these soups), so I always opted for Viet macaroni. Maybe next time I run out, I'll try this tip with pasta and see how much better it fares compared to my first impression.
Have you tried different spaghetti thicknesses? Despite the online foodies condemning angel hair pasta as the worst pasta, I usually have some on hand because it's not half bad as an asian noodle substitute. Their thinness means that they cook quicker/become a similar texture in the same amount of time and the noodles themselves "pull up" more of the sauce/broth just due to the fact that there are more strands of noodles per gram, thus more surface area/surface tension. So the flavor may still not technically be "entering", but it pretends to be because it is clinging to the surface of the noodle
Hey guys, a few notes:
1. Okay, I (Chris) am an idiot - dried spaghetti does not use egg. I'm personally only familiar with the process of making fresh pasta (and only a small subset, at that). Steph always fact-checks the VOs, but generally trusts that I know what I'm talking about re western food. I should've thought to double check but I didn't. Apologies.
2. Note that this technique is only a 'fix' for noodle soups that follow the 'assembly' method, as you don't want those soup to get starchy. If you're using the 'direct cooking' method (ala Huimian, Qiangguomian), there's not really too much of a spaghetti problem at all - just boil the sucker for longer (after all, Minestrone seems to handle itself just fine). For more information about the different styles of noodle souping, check out our post over on Substack (free, as always): chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/noodle-soup-101
3. For this dish then? When it comes noodle choices, of course you can use whatever you want. Dry, fresh, frozen, they would all work. Just follow the same precook - rinse - and braise process, and adjust the braising time accordingly. Traditionally, people usually like to braise it on the longer side for maximum absorbtiveness, with a softer and puffier noodle texture.
4. There’re also a lot of variations for soup bases. The one we showed in the video is a classic home style base that’s quick to whip up. The “small yellow croaker with snow vegetable” is THE classic braised noodle soup base around Shanghai, while in Yangzhou you’d often see a mix of wood ear, puffed pork skin, quail eggs, vegetable, sometimes sausage, and stock. So in this sense, feel free to whip up your own base. The other day we made a spicy red braised beef base (showed at the beginning of the video), and one day for lunch I made a quick baitang (white soup) base with napa cabbage, fish balls, tofu, and stock, also great. So if you want to make a kimchi base? Go for it. Miso? Why not? Thai green curry, of course it’ll be tasty. In a word, this is a technique that can help you noodle-soupify and “enter flavor” any soup base you like.
5. Oh! As promised, recipe for said 'small yellow croaker with snow vegetable' is here. Legit, with English subs: ua-cam.com/video/lwt_Z_JTFkY/v-deo.html
6. An interesting titbit about how (some) Chinese people view spaghetti (and pasta by extention). Pasta is very available at the imported food section at supermarkets in China. It’s something that people would buy, but it’s also something that most people - especially the older generation - don’t really know how to handle. I’ve heard some older people complained about spaghetti being really hard and they need to presoak it in cool water for a couple hours before cooking it (I was also shocked when hearing that treatment). I think this does show the inherent “hardness” of spaghetti in the context of an Asian soup. And I wish I know about this technique back then and I can tell them how to fix the “hardness”.
7. Then why not just stick with Chinese or Asian noodles you may ask. Well? Because... spaghetti and pasta are tasty, got a great texture, a relatively low GI for the workout crowd, and abroad at least might just be the only noodle you have.
That's all for now :)
7. You forgot CHEAP and shelf stable! Great video BTW!! THANKS!
some italian longer pasta shapes like spaghetti are made with eggs though, and they might just be better subs for asian noodles than spaghetti, and just as easy to come across in the west. tagliatelle/linguine, spaghettoni alla chitarra and capelli d'angelo are all less dense and more permissive in absorbing flavours than spaghetti, and when fresh do not need to be boiled for nearly as long. you can absolutely assemble a noodle soup by throwing in fresh tagliatelle after 2 or 3 minutes of cooking, and capelli d'angelo are probably one of the very few long pasta shapes you will find naturally used in soup dishes in italy already (them and su filindeo both, but proper su filindeu is so hard to come across you'd be better off resourcing the proper noodles your dish requires for, and making it from scratch is absolutely out of the question)
also, i am putting myself in danger by saying this, but i have a feeling for lasagna sheets being a surprisingly okay cheat code for pretend-biangbiang noodles. if anyone reading attempts this, you did not hear this from me.
So those could make for nice biang biang mian in a pinch? I did happen to come across Chinese inspired lasagna using the latter mianshi kind just now among other dishes
In France, it was common that all the brands of dried pasta advertised they were made with so much fresh eggs. I don't know if the rules about false advertising has changed that. So if you were submitted to that same brainwashing as a kid, the error is understandable. I only learned about the so called eggs in my 60's.
So this is a trick from a Korean youtuber that, me living in Italy and not having access to Asian noodles like I used to back in North America or South Korea, I decided to just give a go. Basically soaking spaghetti in a water solution with cooked baking soda/sodium carbonate to a 1L to 4-5 grams of the stuff for about 4~ hours, then emptying the solution into the pot with more water and boiling the pasta for around 3-4 minutes.
I tried this method on dishes like Taiwanese beef noodles, ramen, chow mein/yakisoba, to jajangmyeon. I sometimes switched noodles from spaghetti to other types of noodles (would not suggest using the egg noodles tbh but up to people's tastes) like linguine. It actually worked quite well enough that it's my go-to method for anything Asian-noodles related. Of course it isn't perfect but believe me when I say it's a jack of all trades for when one can't find Asian noodles around.
I was looking for a comment like this! Because I lived in Korea too, and I was told to just use baking soda in the cooking water to make spaghetti more like "Asian" noodles
This trick afaik, helps with making the texture of spaghetti springy, which is not necessarily what the video is about. Still a good thing to know though.
@@Xzhh_yes, this video is about helping spaghetti absorb flavor of soups rather than sauces. The baking soda hack is used for texture.
In my experience just throwing the soda in the cooking water already does a lot! I lived in Norway for a Year and, since any noodle but pasta was hard to come by there, this was basically the way I got a noodle texture that was more appropriate for soups and stir fries.
I've even just added baking soda to my water as it boils to get it closer to ramen-like. 10/10
I'm just in awe of how in the thumbnail, the spaghetti lines up perfectly and neatly around the chopstick
That's the only reason why I clicked on it
I once had a roommate from szechuan in Germany. He was a big proponent of cooking with what‘s easily availiable. He made delicious chinese food with spaghetti and olive oil :)
@@13Luk6iul that's how chop suey in America and chifa in Peru got started
Trying to cook "what you know from home" while "working with what you got" is probably the origin of a very significant portion of established dishes all over the world and also frequently a topic on this channel. Once you "improvise" often enough, it just becomes its own dish I guess.
I love to try and recreate "authentic" cooking, but if everyone was doing that all the time, we would have missed out on a ton of delicious stuff.
I am also a proponent of clearing my kitchen often before restocking it with new grocery. When I was in Japan, one time I was left with only a packet of udon and a packet of carbonara sauce and I was like why not. I tried it and never went back. Udon fit with pasta sauces so well. But I always felt like the Italians were gonna murder me any second.
I felt so validated when I later heard a chef vouching for udon as a viable pasta substitute.
@@XxZarionxX Exactly. One of the most beloved tacos, Al Pastor, was created from Lebanese immigrants wanting to make shawarma with what they had around. I used to be very "authentic" driven as a reaction to all the bastardized/bland western adaptations of eastern food. But now I understand those foods less as "unauthentic" and more as just bad food/poorly thought out recipes. There is lots of "unauthentic" food now that's absolutely delicious because people understand more diverse ingredients better now and know how to use them together.
I find olive oil is a lot more versatile than cooking shows tell you, even extra virgin. Sure it's not ideal and you need to respect the smoke point, but in a pinch it'll replace butter or neutral oil and nobody will notice. It even adds a pleasant undertone to some cakes.
My observation of spaghetti noodles is that they're only suitable for hearty, hefty sauces, which isn't really a thing Chinese food does. That goes even for Western food too - there's just something wrong about chicken noodle soup made with spaghetti.
This does give me an idea that Tomato & Egg or Beijing-style Zhajiang (Fried Sauce) would just be a Chinese Marinara or a Bolognese. Haven't tried this out yet, but in theory this could work!
Nah Chinese food definitely has hearty sauces. They're usually paired with much thicker noodles though.
spaghetti might not go well with thin soups, but other pasta shapes can!
Orzo, shells, and macaroni are perfect for soups, and classic in american cooking.
@@ampersand64 yeah, there's definitely hong kong style macaroni noodle soup. (which i sometimes make with shell, or even rice macaroni or rice ovalettes)
My mom used to make chicken noodle soup with spaghetti and I think what she does is break the noodles as small as humanly possible and she would let it soak in the broth after cooking and it turned out fine.
Ruwei has a similar concept in Filipino cooking - nuot. Slow cooking, braising, marinating, etc. serves to make the flavors seep in - nanunuot. And yeah, there's no direct translation in English but it's generally a cooking concept people are familiar with.
im filipino and i barely even hear that word anywhere-
My mother is Filipino and she used this technique. Back in the 60s- early 70s , to make “ Misua” she would adapt spaghetti noodles with the technique that Chris described in the video. She would make pancit using spaghetti noodles.
@@arlynnecumberbatch1056Wdym? We hear it all the time in advertisements, “nanunuot ang sarap” roughly translates to “the deliciousness is seeping in”.
@@arlynnecumberbatch1056 "CHICKEN-INASAL, NUOT-SARAP!"
@@asinglefrenchfry2983 well i dont watch ads
The closest translation for Ruwei is probably Infusion. In western cooking we will talking about infusing flavors into different ingredients.
Not a perfect match but probably the closest match.
Saturation is what id translate it to, it’s the ability to soak into food based on time and the chemical composition of food
No, we talk about flavors melding and marrying.
my favorite dish since i was a kid is basically dried tofu
So imagine getting the hardest tofu & you cook those in a beefstew/braised pork stew it till all the tiny spores inside the dried tofu is filled with your stew juice.
That, is Ruwei.
1) yes there are dried spaghetti that use egg, we still call "fresh pasta" in Italy, but it can be dried and stored in packages;
2) We use that technique a lot in Italy, it is called "mantecatura" and it is usually used to finish a pasta dish. It is sometimes called "risottatura" referring to risotto, because the finishing is similar to a risotto, but without the need of butter and parmiggiano cheese.
As a Canadian, we use it all the time too we just call it blanching. For sure the best way to soak that sauce into the pasta.
me I just thougt that is the normal way to do it.
@@NateyC214 Wild because in the US, blanching is boiling an item for a brief amount of time and then shocking it in cold water, like when you want to skin a tomato
@@redjoker365 I have never heard of the term Blanching used in the way described here either, and I'm Canadian and having worked as a cook.
@@Beliserius1 same. Blanching is as redjoker365 described it
Uhhhmmm, actually there IS a word for ruwei in english
It's called "flavor town" XD
joking aside, this is looks fun to make
huh ? haha , favour infused is more like it
@@sdqsdq6274 You didn't get the reference
@@sdqsdq6274 Guy Fieri didn't die on the cross for our sins to be disrespected like this
It's not direct translate... But using "marinated well" is a great idea
@@redjoker365 How could he die on the cross? His flaming hair would have burned the crucifix to the ground while they were trying to nail him up
I appreciate this insight! This feels like a crazy coincidence, I’m Vietnamese and me and my Italian boyfriend were just talking about this very topic last night since there are very few traditional Italian soup recipes that include pasta (pretty much only pastina and minestrone) but noodle soups are more common in East/Southeast Asian recipes. I like the explanation of rù wèi, and it’s trippy to watch a video about it right after we were discussing it lolol.
Honestly I think utensils are a huge part of this. Whereas chopsticks have been used throughout East Asia for a really long time, forks are relatively new on the scene for European food culture, so European soups are meant for spoon-only eating. Even something like a knoedel can be broken apart with a spoon. Noodle soups NEED to be eaten with chopsticks or a fork.
@@marihagemeyer8166 Me and Steph were talking about this too - the form factor of the noodle *really* lends itself to chopsticks well. If I'm making a spaghetti dish at home, I usually eat it with chopsticks. Just easier to eat than fork-twirling, in my opinion.
I do think though that with the explosion of Sushi, Chinese food, etc in the west... because (most?) people can use chopsticks now, it can potentially give some room to get creative - wholly within western cuisines too. 'Chopstickifying' traditional western food is a really fun avenue of experimentation, imo
but Ravioli in brodo... yum!
@@marihagemeyer8166 wait true. I never realized that maybe pasta isn't used a lot in soupy dishes is because soup in Europe is usually consumed by spoon instead of fork but in Asia we can essentially eat noodles in soupy bases bc we have chopsticks !!!
the direct translation of 'rù wèi' (入味) from Chinese into VNmese would be "nhập vị" then
though i have only cooked stews, braises & soups with potato & carrot, or taro or eddoe (khoai sọ, its like taro but smaller), so my only experience with rù wèi are limited to root vegetables
So basically you cook dried commercial semolina pasta the same as homemade alkalai noodles ... precook at least halfway in a separate pot of water, then drain, rinse, and cook the rest of the way in your soup broth to keep the flavors discrete instead of murky and also improve flavor penetration. Makes sense.
Ive been doing that for more than a year on every pasta because of Babish. He is always finishing any pasta in the sauce in his recipes. My "asian spagetti" was always decent. So i guess was aciddently doing this right 😂
that's how you're supposed to cook pasta anyway
@@bubonic285 That's a sweeping generalization thats not completely true. Remember, we're talking about use in ASIAN SOUPS here (which almost NEVER call for western style commercial die-extruded dried pasta made from durum wheat semolina instead of the regular white flour flours used in most asian style wheat noodles (usually some high extraction bolted blend of hard white and soft white wheat).
Normally, the only time precooking in a separate pot of water (before draining & finishing it in your broth) is mandatory is when you make your own fresh alkalai type noodles (if you dont the alkalai will impart a murky soapy dish water taint to your broth). For non-alkalai fresh homemade noodles, it is merely considered good technique (so that your carefully made broth doesnt turn murky), but not really mandatory.
Seriously, who precooks stuff like orzo or pastini in separate water before adding to a soup, regardless of whether its western or asian ?
ANSWER: ALMOST NOBODY.
Ruwei in English is "married" -- as in "the flavors are married well," or "leftovers will marry flavors in the fridge overnight."
infused, absorbed, melded, etc
It didnt enter yet, it has to be consummated
Hey Chris- look up Yakamein. It’s also called Old Sober. It’s a staple down here in New Orleans. It’s a noodle soup that always has 4 very key ingredients:
Spaghetti noodles
Lots of Worcestershire in the beef broth
Hard boiled eggs
Lots of green onion on top
Sort of like pho, sort of like beef soup, not really like anything else that exists. Excellent drinking food and excellent hangover food.
My mother used to make Asian inspired spaghetti noodles soup growing up. I don't remember the exact ingredients, but she would use basic chicken stock base soup mixed in with soy sauce and corn starch. The soup , or rather the sauce would have a thicker consistency that clings to the noodles and it help carry on the flavor without waiting for the noodles to absorb the flavor of the soup. Your video brought back memories, thanks!
Just a quick note: weimian is still quite commonplace throughout Jiangnan, especially it's most common variety, 菜煨麵(青菜煨面). it's always cloudy/milky and typically made with chicken stock(and chicken breast meat 嫩鸡煨面), but the fully vegetarian version is quite common among Buddhist monks along with 菜飯. It's also a common "chicken nooodle soup" for nursing people down with a bad cold/flu, or babies transitioning to solid foods/older people who don't have full use of their teeth. Baby bokchoy is our star leafy green as much as water spinach is in SE Asia. Yes, it's supposed to be mushy so a lot of people who aren't used to it might not enjoy it.
Yeah originally the angle here was "it's okay to have softer noodles" with a discussion on 入味, until we were like "wait... actually this general approach could solve some people's spaghetti issues". The 8-10 minutes was for the proper cooking time, 4-5 minutes was for the 'you might not like it mushy' one :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified i used to have an aversion to it as it was the burning heat of the noodles that doesn’t know how to cool down. it burned my mouth so many times as a child. as an adult i’ve grown to love its simplicity.
@@BenjiSun I'm having onion soup noodles with eggs and I just burned my mouth on it, ouch 🤣
When I was in Italy, I used angellini and spaghetti to cook noodle dishes for my friends. Basically I told them that Chinese noodles are not eaten all dente but slightly morbido, so I basically cooked the spaghetti and angellini in the soup base until they were the same hardness or softness as Chinese lar mian. That allowed the dried spaghetti to absorb the soup flavours.
Seeing Steph try and get a bit of that monster of a Chicken Parm was perfect.
Also, this is a perfect recipe break down and I'm definitely gonna try it out once I get into my new apartment.
*Me who always overcooks my spaghetti* "Nah nah bro I was maximising ruwei trust"
I like the simplicity of this dish. I have often made spaghetti soup with a tomato sauce base. I like this parboiling technique, which should leave me with more broth to noodle ratio.
Still one of the best Chinese cooking channels. Thank you!
Really wanted to thank you for this video. I don't like keeping specialty noodles in my house and so I kept trying to make broth soups and ramen with spaghetti and found the flavor too overwhelmingly starchy. Just whipped up some mayo noodles with this braising technique and it really works. You've really improved my kitchen game, thanks!
3:50 was tooo funny but most western people aren’t gonna understand the levels of funny that was. Great editing!!! 😂😂
TOO SIMPLE, SOMETIMES NAIVE
(One of our proud Hong Kong moments....)
@@sydneyfong TOO YOUNG
Made this a few times since the video's upload date. The prep time for the broth is perfect for "no boil" spaghetti. Instead of parboiling the spaghetti, you just let it soak in room temp salted water for 1 to 1.5 hours. This gives me enough time to prep the veggies and broth. I'm gonna try this method with bucatini pasta later (hollow spaghetti). My coworker suggested soaking the pasta in dashi broth, I'll try that later in the week. The fish version you mentioned of this dish is my favorite. Perfect bachelor dish.
This twice boiled method is how naporitan is prepared in a lot of Japanese restaurants. They will cook the spaghetti in the morning, and then refrigerate it, and toss it into the pan with the sauce to soften further and take up the flavor.
This is an excellent tip - best I've seen from a cooking channel all week!
Great video!!! In Italy we also have another type of spaghetti called "spaghettini" (-ini meaning smaller) they are thinner than regular, and personally that's why I dislike them, us Italians really love the consistency of thick pasta cooked al dente (I found it really interesting that in China this characteristic was the main problem with spaghetti😂). I don't know if they could be better for asian soups (also because I think they aren't so common outside Italy), but if you can get them I think it would be interesting to give them a try!
"Angel hair" is widely available in the US
1:36 DID THE DOG GET SOME NOODLE, OR MAYBE EVEN SOME MEATBALL (or whatever that was on the far side of the bowl)? I NEED HIM TO GET A TREAT LOOK AT HOW NICE HE IS ASKING
Talking about ways to make pasta absorb flavor, I think you should check out "Pasta all'assassina". Spaghetti are first lightly fried and then cooked inside a thick tomato broth/sauce.
I have done this so many times during my youth when I was living on my own and trying to save money by cooking some spaghetti al dente, washing them off, then cooking them again in a soup made from mix of leftover instant noodles flavor packages and add some baked egg and sausages on top. But the highlight in those days was to make soup base from left over Indian curry the day before.
I tried this recipe today. WOW. It’s taste amazing. Thank you so much 🙏🏼
This technique is also used in some traditional italian dishes over here, an exemple being pasta e fagioli where pasta is actually online cooked in the beans broth until it reaches a sauce-like thick consistency from the starches of beans and pasta, this is also done in some other niche dishes like spaghetti all'assassina.
Have you ever looked at New Orleans style Yaka Mein? One of the oldest Chinese-American recipes (though it never really spread much beyond New Orleans), and it uses spaghetti as well.
I literally have done this for years when adding pasta to soup.
Even better for storing and serving later by keeping your noodles seperate.
I have just seen yuor playlists - Huzzzah! Absolutely wonderful. Very well done indeed. I think you could bulk out your start Chinese cooking playlist into a book, but I'm past that point and really appreciate these accessible collections. Thank you CCD
"and with that, your UA-cam thumbnail is done!"
Looks so good 👍
This video answered the question I had always had in the back of my mind. Great content!
I'm guessing a lot of people reading this are familiar with the technique of boiling spaghetti in an alkalised solution (maybe a teaspoon of baking soda in the cooking water), to achieve a result similar to e.g. ramen, when none is available. Although I believe that's more to do with texture, rather than "sauce absorption". Any thoughts?
So I tried this trick with Kan Sui once. It's... interesting. The noodles *really* swell up - to me, the final texture was a dead ringer for those packaged 车仔面 that you get at 7/11, e.g. ma.gfsuper.com/cdn/shop/files/180g_40266eff-f806-4c62-8ec4-ce22d4e2c857_1024x.png?v=1685288357 albeit a bit thicker even. I think that it would be a very good trick to get to that specific noodle texture using spaghetti (so definitely do it for your cart noodles) but I probably wouldn't want it as a universal approach? It's possible that baking soda might have a less dramatic effect.
I did tried this tonight with cheap spaghetti I had. I really craved a noodle soup but didn't had any pre-packages packets nor suitable noodles.
I recycled a batch of carmelized onion broth I had lyring around for the soup base (+ soy sauce etc.). Then I boiled the pasta in plain water with salt and baking soda (around a tea spoon) and used the technique in the video for the rest. Then I finished the plating with a poached egg.
The result was amazing, the cheap spaghetti were 85% of the way there to an alkaline noodle ramen soup. I don't usually get any ramen packets let alone asian noodles around here so it completely blew me away to finally have a quick late night noodle soup solution.
This is a fascinating dish, and it looks delicious. Thanks for sharing it, looking forward to trying it once the weather gets colder
Ruwei is such a useful concept to understand when cooking any kind of food.
I tried this out, and it’s pretty good. The effort to reward ratio makes it worthwhile, especially when I don’t have any Asian noodles on hand and don’t feel like making a batch by hand. The only change I made to this recipe is swapping dried shiitakes for the dried shrimps, since I do not eat shrimp. It’s a useful technique to know, so thanks Chris and Steph for letting us know about it.
It's not so distant from "risottatura", an italian cooking technique where you boil the pasta until it's aldente and then finish cooking it in a pan with the sauce and some pasta water, to let the starch make it all bind together
Love all your content especially these obscure ones! Thanks guys!
We use this technique for spaghetti in noodle soup at home. Glad to see you've discovered it
I wonder if the final result would change much using bronze cut spaghetti instead.
I frequently use thin spaghetti and capellini (basically extra thin spaghetti) for soups and other Chinese preparations. Most of the time I just add soda to the cooking water and rinse them well afterwards. The texture feels more elastic and they just blend in better, I totally get what you mean there.
With regards to pasta imho, it also makes a difference what moulds were used to produce them, so pasta al bronzo (bronze moulds) is supposed to have a rougher surface and presumably absorb more flavour from the broth - they feel more like fresh noodles. I can't remember ever using them for Chinese cooking though (incidentally because the thin pasta types typically aren't available as al bronzo where I live, let alone cheap), so take that reference with a pinch of salt (and soda)...
Another possible contributing factor for the of Ru Wei is using pasta made with Teflon dies which gives a very smooth finish. Not sure though how easy it is to find artisan pasta made with bronze dies in South East Asia.
I find it absolutely crazy that u have to do all that to get the flavour absorbed. In my own experiment, especially with the thinker spaghetti noodles, just put them directly into the soup or stock, boil the pasta with the soup, and it’s filled with all that flavour!
We do have a dedicated word for flavor or sauce absorption.
That word is sop. As in, the breading sops up tomato sauce on a chicken parm sandwich.
1:56 Wow! Your hair is stunning Steph!
So cool, I always wondered why it does not come together. Thanks for the fix!
There are amazing pasta options for soup, broken spaghetti work in a pinch. Generally for soup style pasta the shape should be spoonable. I really like Conchiglie since their shape allows them to hold a bean and some small vegetable pieces inside making for a fantastic vegetable soup even in a very light broth. The only problem I have with finishing the pasta in the soup is that it gets really soggy if you don't finish it that day so I tend to save some soup first before finishing the pasta.
Haha, I really wish we had a good word for 'ru wei', I've known that finishing pasta with the sauce made it better, but I don't think I ever thought about why until you brought it up!
infuse.
Okay sir I'm at 2:31.... This is exactly how my mother taught me to make pasta. When shock our noodles. introduce olive oil or salt add them to the plate and it's a done deal.... My mother and grandmother were born in Greece and we ate Mediterranean food quite regularly 🤷♀️ this is legit how I grew up making pasta
Have you ever made German potato salad or anything that requires you to soak The boiled products in oil and seasoning??
I see la yu/ gochugaru Noodles in my future..
This is awesome, I was trying to figure out how to finish up the spaghetti i bought but i dont wanna to cook it the western way. This video helps a lot!
Hah, I instantly guessed what you were up to!
Great recipe for a quick and simple soup too!
You just put the water add the carrots in big rondels, basil or tomatoes from the start with the water and add the pasta when it boils. It stops the pasta from overcooking. Also use minimum pasta with minimum 13 grams of protein. Italians say 14 but that is overkill and very expensive. You can also use less water and add the tomatoe sauce when you want to slow the cooking process of the pasta. If the tomato sauce has lots of pesky tomato skins than add it from the start with the carrots and add chilli flakes, curry with turmeric 50-50 with 7-10 beads of allspice to break them faster this also works with meat in stews so you can make it tender in half the time.
My favorite Thai place in my hometown did Pad Kee Mao with Spaghetti. I always loved it a lot for that dish
Hi really interesting take on sphagetti and noodle soup (soup noodle?)!
This reminds me of a kind of one pot rice noodle from Yunnan and Guizhou（小锅米线), where the rice noodle used are thick, tough and thoroughly dried, resembing dried sphagetti of size 7 to 12/13. Apparently that's for food perservation purpose (I've a bundle left unattended, and bugs have tried and failed to chew through that lol), and also is very resistant to prolonged cooking. Similar to bun used in bun bo hue. So as it goes, the method of cooking this one-pot rice soup noodle is to start with the broth (often salty, spicy and sour) with chilli paste and perserved veggie, then with the noodle in, and then in with whatever you can have available, like a personal hot pot, meat, fresh veggie, mushrooms, bean curds etc. Then lastly with garnishes. The noodle is often presoaked for a day and can stay in the pot cooking for as long as five to ten minutes. What comes out is very ruwei'd noodle in a personal hotpot.
my first thought went to the way spaghetti is boiled. Thanks for the useful method.
入味 is an amazing concept, it explains so many things about the coherence of a meal. Thanks for teaching that!
Also, couldn't you cook the spaghetti from the start in the soup? It would cloud it and the starch would thicken it for sure. But it would also help the noodles to 入the 味 of the soup.
I love your videos, and I was actually just wondering about how to make soup noodles with spaghetti! Just one question, should you salt the pasta cooking water as seen in the traditional western method? Why or why not? Also, I saw a technique on a different UA-cam channel that called for boiling spaghetti with baking soda to emulate a Chinese or Japanese style alkaline noodle. Maybe in a future video you guys can test this and discuss the results? Thanks!
Not usually. The dough itself will have salt, and hopefully there'll be some flavor absorption from the dish :)
salt difference between the soup base, and whats in the pasta noodle. osmotic reaction. a few weekends ago, i made a great pasta sauce, and after cooking the noodles MASSIVELY soaked up all of the sauce. even though it seemed too watery at 1st.
i made the same recipe this past wednesday, and the noodles didn't absorb the watery sauce for crap........i had to think what i did wrong......i forgot to salt the noodles in this 2nd batch. thats what it was.
in the 1st batch, i did salt the noodles, and not the sauce. so when the noodles were set in the sauce, they pulled in extra water from the sauce via osmosis, diluting the salt in the noodles. AND, were able to bring in a ton of flavor, even while off heat.
so while a helpful video, i think osmosis is a bigger help here than anything, for getting more flavor into the "mostly done cooking noodles".
For noodle soup I always boil spaghetti in water with a 3/4 tsp baking soda (the way you would add salt) to al dente and then add it, works like a charm. I think it's a trick Alex French Guy Cooking shows in his ramen series.
The trick I've been using is to just boil the spaghetti in the soup/stock from the beginning. The soup's flavor absorb into the spaghetti pretty well by doing this. If you cook it for a long enough, most of the water would be evaporated and/or absorbed by the noodle and whatever is left would be a starchy sauce that clings onto the noodle.
another trick I found is using baking soda when boiling the noodles, jsut a teaspoon. it tenderizes the noodles and makes them chewier, great for these types of recipes
There’s a technique of boiling spaghetti in alkaline water, usually from adding a bit of baking soda. It results in much bouncier noodles, somewhat like the texture of ramen, but thicker. I wonder if combining the two techniques might yield something good.
There is also a technique to make alkaline noodles from pasta by adding baking soda to the cooking water. And indeed, it gives it a chewier bite. Another technique is it to slowly rehydrate pasta in room temp water so its bite gets even more similar to fresh noodles, so it is more evenly hydrated. Also I recommend thin spaghetti called spaghettini, vermicelli or capellini (such as Barilla no 1 or 3), that due to their smaller diameter can soak the soup much better and thus are more suitable for noodle soups. For instance, I use Barilla no 3 (or other spaghettini like De Cecco no. 11) and use both techniques to make ramen for cheap.
I always wondered why Asian wheat noodles and Italian pasta feel so different yet being made from the same material.
Another method for somebody to try. What about pan frying the spaghetti with a small amount of water? a bit like the italian dish spaghetti all'assassina. The searing can create bubbles & pockets on the surface of the spaghetti. Which, I assume, could help to improve the spaghettis ability to wick up the soup.
Oh man, that opening another spaghetti not mixing with the soup and feeling like two different things is spot on. I still use spaghetti often but only out of convenience but clearly spaghetti doesn’t mesh with soup- it meshes with sauces.
If you think about it, spaghetti doesn’t really have any flavor per which isn’t too different from the noodles in Shanghai region. Hence, it’s good for dishes like scallion noodles, red braised lamb noodles or any 干拌，or non-soup based noodle dish where the noodle acts the same as it is meant to be- an agent for the sauce to hang on. I tried this with a classic brothless version of 雪菜肉丝面，and it worked wonders.
Interesting concept. Two things though.
I think that for those of us living in a Western country with no easy access to Asian noodles, capellini or angel hair pasta is an easier solution for soups that can handle some slight amount of clouding.
Your shocking pasta under cold water also made me think of something I did to make dried pasta suitable for stir-fried noodle dishes. See, they never taste right, the bite is either too soft, or too al dente. In retrospect the solution is sort of obvious, you have to let the starch undergo retrogradation, and the bonus is that humidity still redistributes inside the pasta during the process, so that al dente core disappears without you having to boil the pasta longer and let it absorb more moisture.
So, if someone ever needs to make stir-fried noodles with dried pasta instead of egg noodles, boil pasta until al dente, drain it in a colander and let the steam escape, wait for an 30 minutes until it's room temperature and all the steam as escaped, and place it in a fridge overnight. Use like yesterday's rice. In a pinch, an hour at room temperature will do.
It still won't have the same texture as say, cantonese egg noodles, but it's an interesting texture that doesn't taste wrong.
Hmm. Reminds me of stewed udon in Japan. My friend made that once, in a claypot with a red miso braise and offal (he was teaching me about the hormon cooking tradition). Delicious.
I saw a hack on WayofRamen's channel where you add baking soda to the cook water of the pasta, it increases the PH of the water helping the pasta get that springy texture you'd get in Chinese aklini style noodle, also I use capellini/angel hair as a perfect substitute for wonton noodles cooked using the same method.
The same happens with Italian dry pasta (e.g. Spaghetti) and sauce too, which is why per Italian tradition you remove them from the water slightly before they reach the desired consistency to then finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. In contrast to this video however, an Italian pasta sauce can benefit from the starchy water by adding a little of it to the sauce. Mantecatura. For this to work however, the pasta needs to be of good quality (just semolina and water, slowly dried at a low temperature) to carry the needed amount of starch.
In Japan/Brazil, we have a technique where we use baking soda to make spaghetti more alkaline. It can be used as a lazy substitute for ramen/soba!
This came up randomly for me and it's quite interesting! I'm a person who can't eat gluten due to medical reasons and I really miss being able to eat ramen. The typical gluten free substitute for ramen noodles is an unsatisfying thin rice noodle. I've been considering whether gluten free spaghetti could be a good substitute for ramen noodles because it's thicker and there are different kinds made with various grains, even pulses. But in my experience they are more delicate than regular spaghetti. I have not got around to experimenting with this yet, but it could be good content and I'd love to see someone else try.
i'm puertorican and my grandma makes a salchichon soup that uses spaghetti and i feel this in my core. she said the key was getting a thicker spaghetti and washing it then cooking it a little longer. i love when cultures converge. that being said some of the best americas style chinese food i've ever had was in puerto rico. they love lo mein.
Interesting to learn. But I don't agree there's a problem with spaghetti just because it's not good in Chinese soups. :-P Still, I'm sure this will come in handy for me in the future.
It could also make a difference how the spaghetti is extruded. From Italian cooking, the cheaper noodles made using teflon dies are very smoothe and don't grab the sauce much. The ones made using older brass dies have a bit more tooth to their surface, and absorb/hold the sauce better. I could see that affecting how they are in soup too?
During the pandemic my family couldn’t get any of the Chinese dried noodles so we opted for the angel hair pasta as substitute. This be interesting try to partially cook the pasta and finish it in the broth
I never thought I could cook spaghetti in a soup with andante. Thanks.
1:38 Never seen Steph with hair hair down. Wowie.
she looks ethereal!
Ahh I noticed this problem and i would just stir fry with spaghetti but braising them is a brilliant idea!
well its the same idea you mentioned about finishing pasta with the sauce. ideally pasta is somewhat undercooked in the salted water before combining with the sauce and some of the water until the pasta is al dente.
OK, I know it has NOTHING to do with the content of the video (which is great and informative, as always), but STEPH'S HAIR LOOKS SO GOOD IN THIS??? I need to know her haircare routine.
I would cook the noodle directly in the stock. More flavor absorption, and the added starch holds more liquid on the noodle when slurping. Clouding is a non-issue for me as I don't start with clarified stocks to begin with. As long as the flavor is there and the noodle has a nice chew I consider it good eating.
Wonderful! Is there a possibility that you have a recipe for hongtang? I did a quick search and nothing came up. Thanks!
You can also use baking soda in the water you cook the noodles in before rinsing to give it a more "Asian Noodle" flavor
Excited to try this!
Eat good quality pasta the same way you’re eating noodles.
Go for Dececco brand or same style pasta that have been air dried slowly. You’ll see how much sauce it eats and of course finish it within the soup.
Just fyi there are shoyu pasta dishes which use a similar technique (partially cooked in the sauce). But it's not really a soup thing. It needs less sauce, but a thicker and stronger sauce.
Tom yum and ma la pasta can also be made, but not soup style.
Delicate noodles goes with delicate sauce.
Sichuanese liangmian cold noodles with spaghetti is actually pretty good. You want a firmer type of noodle that doesn't stick when cooked and not too ruwei since the seasonings are super strong
I ordered once from a local (Croatian) restaurant that's doing asian food and they used spaghetti instead of noodles. Not going there again, there's several other actually good asian restaurants. Sadly they don't offer anything soupy except a clear miso soup with tofu that I can easily make at home. There's noodles available in our stores, and you can easily make some (e.g. udon) noodles by hand, so there's definitely no excuse to use spaghetti other than cheaping out on ingredients.
I think this concept is applied to Italian pasta dishes. You don't exactly want sauce just on top of pasta. In some cases, it's best when slightly undercooked, then finished by putting the hot pasta straight into the sauce on another pan.
I wondered why anyone would use spaghetti in Asian soups, and a split second later realized the privilege of thinking something like that 😔 Not all things are readily available in many places.
Thank you for this tip! I love cooking a simple Vietnamese suon heo nui soup, which also suggests pasta as an alternative to Viet macaroni (made with rice). But I found it too stiff with no bite (since it wasn't made for these soups), so I always opted for Viet macaroni. Maybe next time I run out, I'll try this tip with pasta and see how much better it fares compared to my first impression.
Is there a way to adapt spaghetti for cold noodle dishes like those found in Sichuan?
Have you tried different spaghetti thicknesses? Despite the online foodies condemning angel hair pasta as the worst pasta, I usually have some on hand because it's not half bad as an asian noodle substitute. Their thinness means that they cook quicker/become a similar texture in the same amount of time and the noodles themselves "pull up" more of the sauce/broth just due to the fact that there are more strands of noodles per gram, thus more surface area/surface tension. So the flavor may still not technically be "entering", but it pretends to be because it is clinging to the surface of the noodle
Who tf is shitting on angel hair? Hold my garlic, I'll throw hands.
Now I can add Pasta into my favorite Asian soups. Thanks
Oh the old recipe book brings back memories from the 80's
great recipe and technique
happy dog got through things