Cold days, just crave this hot bite
If you come to Jiuzhaigou in winter, push open the wooden door of a Tibetan house and you’re bound to run into this scene—. If you push open the wooden door of a Tibetan house in Jiuzhaigou in winter, you’ll be able to see this scene – an iron pot bubbling on the fire, a Tibetan woman pulling the noodles neatly, and the aroma of sauerkraut mixed with yak meat drilling straight into your nose.
This is Jiuzhaigou people can not be separated from the pickled cabbage noodles, is not a mountain delicacy, but can let you even soup with the noodles sucked all the way.
What Are Tibetan Sour Pickled Cabbage with Hand-torn Noodles?
Tibetan Sour Pickled Cabbage with Hand-torn Noodles in Chinese is called (suan cai mian kuai).
It’s actually the Tibetan version of hand-rolled noodles in sour soup. The noodles are thick like the pages of a book, the pickles are crunchy with the strength of the plateau sunshine, the soup is boiled with yak bones to white, sprinkle a handful of wild onion minced, hot into the stomach, the frozen hands and feet immediately come to life.
Tourist Wang said: “last time I climbed the mountain frozen shivering, a bowl of belly, sweat from the brain to the soles of the feet!”
The Three Tough Tricks of Tibetan Sour Pickled Cabbage with Hand-torn Noodles
1. Sauerkraut is Wild Enough:
Naturally fermented with alpine cabbages and mountain spring water, the altar is buried in the cellar and stored enough for 180 days before it is opened. The sour flavor is not pungent, but rather a little fruity, like a bite of crisp apple.
2. The noodles are tough enough:
Barley flour mixed with wheat flour, and the amazons’ arms are swung round when kneading the noodles. Cooked noodles chopsticks can not be clamped, teeth have to make a little bit of strength, chewing like eating rubber candy in the clouds.
3. Soup base is fresh enough:
Yak bones are cracked and simmered overnight, and the soup is dripping with golden oil. Uncle Zhaxi from the cottage said, “Outsiders can’t learn how to do this, our yaks here drink water from the Divine Spring Waterfall.”
At five in the morning, the 67-year-old Zhuo Ma Grandma is busy.
– Kneading to listen to the sound : the dough fell on the wooden case “popping” sound, she said that this is called “wake up gluten”.
– Sauerkraut is the best way to show your skill: You can’t touch the oil when it’s fermenting, and every three days you need to add a spoonful of sour water from an old jar, just like raising a jar of live treasures.
– Pulling noodles by feel: pull a ball of noodles thrown into a long strip, thumb a press a pull, thickness depends on decades of experience.
Last year, some tourists want to learn, the noodle piece pulled like rags, Zhuo Ma Grandma laughed and patted her leg: “You this noodle block under the pot, I’m afraid to run after the spoon!”
The secrets of good food are in these mountain products
1. Old-fashioned sauerkraut:
The cabbage is grown in the hills behind the cottage, and the frosted ones are sweeter. The pepper leaves added during fermentation are picked from the tops of trees gnawed on by squirrels – Tibetans say the leaves picked by squirrels are the most flavorful.
2. Hybrid Flour:
Thirty percent barley flour adds chewiness, seventy percent wheat flour adds wheat flavor, and the stone-ground flour has a slightly grainy texture.
3. Yak Bone Soup:
It must be the old yak that has been free-range for five years, and the bones are filled with the fragrance of the meadow.
Hidden in the Bottom of the Bowl
In Jiuzhaigou, there are rules for eating pickled vegetable noodles —
– When a child hides an egg in the bottom of his bowl, his ama will say, “The God of the Mountains rewarded it, eat it and grow taller.”
– When visitors come, they add a spoonful of wild mushroom sauce, which is made from last summer’s matsutake mushrooms.
– When marrying a girl, the bride has to pull a bowl of noodles in front of the public. The more complete the noodles are, the more successful the day will be.
The tour guide Yang secretly said: “Last time I led a tour, sixty-year-old American uncle ate and had to buy altar sauerkraut, said than he ate in New York pickled cucumber enough flavor 100 times!”
How do you eat it authentically?
1. Drink the soup first:
Spoon a spoonful of soup and blow it three times, and the flavor with freshness in sourness will run from the tip of the tongue to the sky.
2. Eat garlic:
Peel a clove of garlic and take a bite, then shiver the noodles, so spicy that you can’t stop inhaling.
3. Soup with rice:
Don’t waste the leftover soup, buckle the bowl of rice and stir the open, Tibetan boy can even dry three bowls.
Beware of these “ghost” sauerkraut noodles!
1. Look at the color:
Authentic soup base is milky white, with a light yellow (the color of yak butter), too bright may be the MSG run.
2. Smell Sourness:
The sourness of natural fermentation has a grassy aroma, and the pungent one may be made by vinegar essence.
3. Touch the noodle block:
Cooked noodle block is not hard even when it cools down, and there are fine air holes when you break it open, like it can breathe.
Ditch mouth open noodle shop Nima big brother set up a sign: “pickles pickled, noodle block ama pulled, too expensive to go elsewhere!” As a result, business is even hotter.
A bowl of noodles, linked to the stomach of generations
Nowadays there is an electric grinder in the village, but Zhuo Ma Grandma still insisted on using a stone mill: “The machine grinds the noodle is too docile, and you can’t eat the temper of the mountain wind.”
Her little granddaughter is only six years old, and she can already squat by the stove and knead the noodle lumps.
Perhaps in another twenty years, this sour aroma will still be wafting in the early mornings of Jiuzhaigou, waiting for some traveler with a red nose, pushing the door and shouting, “Grandma, have a bowl of noodles, with more pickles!”
