- Order up. Hope you like it. (bowls sliding across table) (sipping soup) - This is really good. - Naw, come on, you should try my dad's
secret ingredient soup, he actually knows the secret ingredient. - What are you talking about? This is amazing. - [Master Monkey] Wow,
you're a really good cook. - [Master Mantis] I wish
my mouth was bigger. - Tigress, you've got to try this. - [Oliver Babish] Hey, what's up guys. Welcome back to Binging with Babish where this week we're taking look at the secret ingredient noodle
soup from "Kung Fu Panda". The only known ingredients of
which are noodles and soup, and maybe what looks like a daikon radish. The only other thing we know is that there is no
actual secret ingredient, so we need to take every
effort to make each element as special as possible. Let's start with the soup. I'm going for a pork bone based broth inspired by the flavors
from the Guangxi province. The most important ingredient
of which are the bones. Which as you can see, I'm
having some second thoughts about here because these bones smell like they've been frozen for a long time. And when you're putting this amount of time and energy into a recipe, you need to get some ingredients
that you fully trust. I got these bones very inexpensively from Pino's Prime Meats, and
they only smell like pork. Now we could make this
broth strictly out of bones, but I'm going to add some short ribs and this pig's tail to
provide a little bit more meat and collagen to give the broth more body. Into a very tall and
narrow stockpot they go. Just the bones and meats at first. And, are we sure this
is a pigs tail fellas? We're gonna cover those with cold water and bring them to a
simmer on the stove top. This is going to draw any blood, and scum, and impurities out of the bones and meat which is going to form a
gray foamy scummy layer on top of the water. Skim this off, drain, and scrub the bones and meat clean until they look like this. And now back into the emptied
and clean stockpot they go. Along with a handful of aromatics, which you can mix and
match as you see fit, or as they are available. I'm gonna start with a little
handful of licorice root, a healthy sized chunk of cassia bark, or Chinese cinnamon, or
just cinnamon really. Toss that in there along with a few pieces of dried tangerine peel. You could probably also
use fresh orange peel. I'm almost gonna add a
handful of dried longan fruit, a handful of dried star anise pods, a whole onion, quartered, and a handful of fresh
ginger, roughly peeled. And this might not be traditional but I'm gonna add a couple of carrots just to round out the flavors. Then I've got something special here, some dried Chinese scallops. These are very expensive. This little handful was like $18 and they smell pretty, very, very bad. But they are a huge
umami booster for soups, stews, and broths. So we're going to add maybe four, seems like a good
amount, I guess, I dunno. And then we are again covering everything with cold water and
bringing to a bare simmer. We're gonna take one more opportunity at the beginning of the
boil to skim off any scum. And then we're lettin'
this guy go slow and low for at least four hours, and up to 12. Now, unlike say a tonkotsu ramen broth, we want this to just barely bubble so it stays nice and clear. Once the flavors and
colors are nice and deep, and your whole house smells like warm spicy pork water, strain,
cool in an ice bath, refrigerate overnight, and
get some restorative sleep. Especially if you're about
to do what I'm about to do. No, not bang your head on the table. I'm only doing that because
I'm a food YouTuber, and I've come to the
unassailable conclusion that it's about time
that I fulfill my destiny and try to make hand pulled noodles. A skill that supposedly
takes 10 years to master. I have two days, so go ahead
and lower your expectations. There are basically four elements
to any hand pulled noodle. Flour, water, salt, and
an alkaline solution. I'm using this commercially available mix of potassium carbonate
and sodium bicarbonate. You can find it at many Asian grocers. If you cannot go ahead and
check out my ramen video in the upper right-hand corner right now, to see how to make baked baking soda. The next thing to nail down is the ratio of these ingredients. There's conflicting information
all over the internet, and the recipe can apparently be affected by things like your altitude,
or the humidity in the air. So take this recipe with a
grain of potassium carbonate, so to speak, because everyone
seems to have a recipe for the perfect hand pulled noodles. And everyone else seems to think that everyone else is wrong. I tried a litany of
different hydration ratios and kneading tactics, and these are the ones
that worked best for me. Did you hear the air quotes around best? I hope you did because
this, no matter what you do is going to be a very difficult process. I've got a dough here of
500 grams bread flour, 306 grams of water, five grams of salt, and four grams of potassium carbonate. I mixed it until just
combined in a stand mixer and now I'm going to
knead it into submission for 40 minutes, here we go. The objective here is
to develop the gluten, or rather overdevelop it until the dough more closely resembles chewed
chewing gum than dough. If like me, you are not an experienced hand pulled noodle puller,
you might not even come close to that consistency in
this amount of time. So give it your very, very
best for 40 minutes straight, and then cover with plastic wrap and left rest for 15 to 20 minutes. Which will allow your
gluten to kick its feet up and relax a little bit. As you can see I've got
my other experiments here in the foreground. And as you can see our gluten has become very well developed. But we have to take it several orders of magnitude beyond that. And if you're a hand pulled
noodle newbie like me, old-fashioned kneading is
only gonna get you so far. Now we're gonna get into something I'm gonna call tug kneading, or the act of gently tugging on the dough until it's elongated, folding
it over on top of itself and repeating the process. This is not only going
to continue to develop, but also apparently help align our gluten, which as I understand it, for some reason needs to be aligned. Now this process might
take you 20 minutes, it might take you 45 minutes,
it might take you two hours. The only indicators that
you're close to being done are the right texture, and maybe a more athleisure
appropriate shirt. About the only advice that I can offer you at this point is just don't give up. I mean, sure, anyone can go
to their local Asian grocer and get fresh noodles
that are arguably better than what you can make yourself. And it would be cheap, and it would be easy, and
it would be convenient, and it wouldn't physically exhaust you. But I can't quite remember
what my point was here. And as you can see, our dough
is starting to get closer to the right texture. So we're just gonna keep goin'. And something important to keep in mind is your dough's hydration. During all these lengthy tugging sessions it's bound to lose some moisture. So every four to six turns,
you might want to pat it down and brush it down with water before folding it in half once again. It should straddle the
line somewhere between a very hydrated bread
dough, and pasta dough. Pounding it against the table
as you stretch also helps. Not entirely sure why, but
I see it in every video. Anyway, go ahead and take a break once you've worked up
an actual head sweat, and become so delirious from all the dough that you've kneaded over the past 14 hours that you forget to put your apron back on. But finally, all that
effort is yielding results. At long last, my dough finally
resembles chewed bubble gum. So that means we can finally work on the only remaining
ingredient of our soup, some daikon radish. Or at least that's what it looked like Po was putting in the soup. So I'm just gonna peal and slice off a bunch of slices and put them
in the broth as I heat it up. Maybe let those simmer
for about 20 minutes until they're nice and soft. Just enough time to finally do the deed, and pull some noodles. I've got half the dough here which I'm also going to divide in half so it's a little easier to work with. Keep the other pieces covered, and let's give our guy a stretch. Give it a few slaps on the tabletop, this seems to prevent it
from tearing too much. Stretch it out nice and long, give it a little roll to
make sure that it's even, and then since we don't want the noodles to stick to themselves we're gonna dust this guy down with flour. Once it's all evenly dusted,
it's time to fold it, stretch it, and repeat
until we have noodles. Now the 10 years of training it takes to become a noodle master
covers not only your ability to develop a glutenous
dough in like 20 minutes, instead of the three
some-odd hours it took me, but it also covers your
ability to actually stretch out the noodles because this
is extraordinarily hard. And after two failed
tries I decided to give up before I ruined all my dough. Opting instead to stretch out
each noodle one at a time. This makes for a somewhat
flat, pretty uneven noodle, but it's better than kneading
multiple batches of dough for hours and hours with
no noodles to show for it. And so there you have it, a handful of my very best
attempt at hand pulled noodles. Do I recommend trying this at home? Absolutely not. Unless you need a new lifelong hobby. Anyway we're treating
them just like we would pretty much any fresh noodle, cooking quickly and gently
for no more than 90 seconds. During this time we're gonna
check our broth for seasoning, mine needs a lot of salt. Make sure it tastes as
righteous as it smells, and then it's time to serve up. First, we're just gonna
scoop out the noodles using a sieve and dump
them into an empty bowl. And then over top we ladle our broth, marrying together flavor and texture. Make sure you don't forget a
couple slices of daikon radish, and then it's time to tuck in. These might not be the prettiest noodles in the world, but they're mine. And don't you let anyone
ever tell you otherwise. I'm very happy to report that
they're delightfully light, and chewy, and springy,
and the broth is deep, and rich, and warm,
and spicy, and complex. It's served very simply in the movie but I'm going to add a
handful of Chinese chives or scallions, and a dollop of chili oil, two things I'm quite
simply not going to enjoy noodle soup without. Now while this was delicious, the sting of failure prevented me from entering it into
the clean plate club. I have an idea for how
to hack the noodles, but if we're gonna do that we might as well make our
own chili oil from scratch. Because believe it or not it's miles ahead of the store bought stuff. Into a small saucepan goes a
handful of szechuan peppercorn, star anise pods, cassia bark,
a knob of peeled ginger, and three lightly
crushed cloves of garlic. Then over that, we're gonna
pour two to three cups of a neutral flavored oil,
I'm going with canola. We're gonna gently swirl
that over medium heat on the stove top until the oil reaches about 325 degrees Fahrenheit. At which point we're going to strain it and pour it over a cup
of szechuan chili flakes. Make sure you're doing this
in a very heat proof bowl, otherwise you might be
looking at a disaster for both your countertop,
and the skin of your feet. Give it a little mix, make
sure that those flavors have gotten to know each other before setting aside for
about 30 minutes to cool. Just enough time to negotiate our noodles. Here I have some of the dough after its initial 45 minute knead. As you can see it's off to an ugly start, but as we laminate it and pass it through over and over again, rolling
it out like pasta dough, it becomes supple, and tame, and perfect for passing
through a spaghetti cutter. What results is almost more
reminiscent of ramen noodles. So while maybe less impressive, they are at least in my mind perfectly suitable for the task at hand. Same deal, boiling water
for no more than 90 seconds until they're tender but chewy. Drain into an awaiting warm bowl. Maybe don't use a spider like this unless you want a
perilous noodle situation. And serve with the boilin' hot
broth ladled gently over top. And there you have it,
a much more achievable but still distinctly homemade
secret ingredient noodle soup. You guys will excuse me for
a second, I am just a mess. Give my apron a bit of
a bachelor shower here. And of course we're garnishing with Chinese chives, and
our homemade chili oil. And while these noodles
might've been way prettier while remaining just
as delicate and springy as the hand pulled ones, I almost preferred my first batch. Imperfection is sometimes
what makes something unique, or distinctive, or familiar. And had I learned nothing from Mr. Ping, that there is no secret ingredient, there is no secret way
to make perfect noodles. The only perfect noodles
can be found in one place, in your heart. And oh my God nevermind, it was delicious, I ate the whole bowl. (calm music)
hand pulled noodles looks tedious
The guys who actually make it make it look so damned easy.
Wow u/OliverBabish you've outdone yourself. This was an epic video and I can't wait to try the broth.
I will not be trying the noodles
John Wayne Bobbitt soup
What does he mean when he says the bones smell like they've been frozen for a long time?
I kind of figured the broth base was vegetable in the movie, considering pigs are eating the soup...
This looks amazing! And so tasty! The ingredients seem so hard to get though.
Quite confident that the noodles being smacked on the counter is supposed to be an easy and quick way to continuously flour the noodles to prevent sticking more than anything else. I figure it allows you to stretch them a little without working your arms
This was interesting (and frustrating) to watch, but so out of the realm of everyday home kitchen cooking. I get it that your videos are well known for being difficult or unobtainable for the everyday family home cooker, but this had me just rolling my eyes. I respect your effort, but I think more relatable and realistic dishes are way more interesting.