When I decided to make chewy biang biang noodles at home, I learned that patience — and good thwacking skills — are the key to success
The sound of biang biang noodles is like a siren call to me. Sure, the rhythmic thwacking isn’t Beethoven’s Fifth or anything, but I know on the other side of those slapping notes are delightfully chewy ribbons ready to be submerged in hot soups or dressed in chile crisp.
Growing up in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley, hand-ripped noodles have always been readily available to me. When I lived in New York City, Xi’an Famous Foods’ cumin-kissed lamb noodles were a mere subway ride or stroll away. The abundance of noodles means that I never even thought about making the noodles at home, as fun and musical as it seemed.
But with the rising cost of dining out, and my own desire to strengthen my culinary prowess in the kitchen, I decided to attempt making hand-ripped noodles at home.
I enlisted the help of sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung, who with their parents, Billy and Judy, run the Woks of Life blog and authored the subsequent cookbook of the same name. Across the Woks of Life blog, there are dozens of noodle recipes, including one for biang biang cumin lamb. The family themselves went to Xi’an Famous Foods to perfect their technique, learning from another parent-child duo, David and Jason Wang — so I knew they could give me expert tips on making my own noodles.
To begin, it’s important to distinguish biang biang noodles from hand-pulled noodles. “The hand-pulled noodles take real training and time to master that Lanzhou style,” Sarah explains. Lanzhou-style noodles require evenly pulling and bringing noodles together and pulling again, like a cat’s cradle that produces infinite strands. Biang biang noodles, by comparison, have a simpler approach. “For biang noodles, you basically take a rectangle of dough and you sort of slap it to stretch it before you rip it in half,” Sarah adds. Instead of dozens of threads, biang noodles are one long ribbon, split in two. “I’ve also heard them described as hand-ripped noodles.”
The ripping of biang noodles makes them less uniform than their Lanzhou-style counterparts, which is perfect for me, someone who is decidedly not a perfectionist and just wants to eat well. I also love the way the ripping leads to ruffled edges, which chile oil seems to cling to. “The charm of it is the irregularity because it gives it a unique mouthfeel,” Kaitlin says. “Also, the dough is super simple, so I definitely think this is doable at home.”
The dough requires a mere three ingredients: bread flour, salt, and water. Everything can be mixed by hand; in fact, when the Leung sisters went to learn from David Wang at Xi’an’s Famous Foods, they noticed he did all the work this way. “If you want to be closer to your dough, then do it by hand,” Sarah suggests.
If you have a stand mixer, however, the recipe becomes even more simple. I threw my flour, salt, and water in my mixer fitted with a dough hook, turned on the machine, and walked away. The Woks of Life recipe suggests letting the dough knead for 20 minutes so I followed that advice. By the end of the 20 minutes, my dough ball was smooth and elastic enough to break off a piece and stretch it slightly, an indicator the Leung sisters use to tell that the dough is done. From there, it’s all about resting.
“The key to making the dough and ensuring it is elastic enough to pull is letting it rest,” Kaitlin says. The Leungs’ recipe says to allow the dough to rest for an hour or two, but after the first hour, mine still felt pretty tight and inflexible. I wound up letting the dough rest for four hours until it was pliable and stretchy, the way it’s supposed to feel when it’s time to start thwacking away.
Once the dough was ready, I divided it into 10 relatively equal parts and, using my palm, flattened each into a small rectangle roughly five inches long, two inches wide, and a quarter-inch thick. Although this method differs slightly from the Woks of Life’s, it comes from another good source: Jason Wang. I knew I wasn’t going to use all the dough right away, so I took two rectangles for noodle-pulling and covered the rest in plastic to chill in the fridge.
From there, I used a chopstick to indent both rectangles down the center lengthwise, pressing hard enough that a mark remained but not so hard that the dough became translucent. This guiding line helps when it comes time to tear the noodle in half after stretching.
From there, it was time to make music. If you’re lucky, you have a kitchen island or prep table that is large enough for banging noodles. I, unfortunately, do not, so I tried creating my own prep table by placing a large sheet pan over my stovetop. For the purpose of creating imperfect noodles, this worked out just fine.
I began wiggling the noodles and banging them down onto my sheet pan, pulling and stretching in what felt like an awkward rhythm. Sure enough, the noodles began to elongate, but not without some fight. I kept my fingers pinched on each end of the noodle and twisted my wrists, swaying the strand this way and that, trying to get the dough to stretch even further. I have to admit, it’s a lot harder than it looks! The dough, at times, felt resistant, trying to shrink back to its original rectangular shape. When all was said and done, I was able to stretch my noodle out about three feet. Although I’ve seen hand-ripped noodles pulled far longer than this, I didn’t mind so much because I prefer thick and chewy noodles.
After all the thwacking, I found the indentation and pulled my noodle apart, so instead of one long strand it became a lengthy, thinner circle of dough. The best part about this recipe is that after all the time spent waiting for the dough to rest, the noodles take a single minute and change in boiling water to finish cooking.
You can do all sorts of things with the noodles once they’ve been made. “The two ways to serve them for me are in soup or in a sauce,” Sarah says. “I’ve never actually tried to stir fry them; I make the sauce and then just toss it in the wok.”
A traditional route would be to make a spicy lamb stew layered with the flavors of cumin, like the most popular dish at Xi’an Famous Foods. You can add the noodles to soups or make a version of you po mian, or sizzling chile oil noodles.
I went with the laziest method I could conjure (hey, I had just spent hours waiting for these noodles to be stretchable) and topped mine with Chinese black vinegar, store-bought chile oil, soy sauce, and some sliced green onions. Even with such a simple application, the dish was a revelation. The chewy noodles became a canvas for the tang of vinegar and savory hit of chile oil. I later used the leftover noodle dough for a Lao-inspired chicken noodle soup; in a dish with less heat and more simplicity, the noodles still remained the star.
The texture of the noodles is the best part, so bouncy and toothsome that it’s hard for me to believe they cost nearly nothing to make. The most expensive ingredient was time, which, seeing that it was mostly inactive, felt well worth it to me.
Would I make these hand-ripped noodles again? Definitely. In fact, I think prepping the noodle dough in the morning to have fresh noodles by dinner time is a routine I want to incorporate into the new year. And with Lunar New Year coming up, and noodles’ symbolism for longevity and good fortune, I definitely will be thwacking my way to chewy, blissful prosperity again soon.
Lily Fossett is a freelance illustrator based in Bath, UK. She has a passion for portraying narrative in her illustrations and uses digital media to explore color and texture.
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