Hi everyone, welcome to Souped Up Recipes. I'm Mandy. Today, we're making
Lomein noodles from scratch. Last year, when I bought them
from my local Asian market, the price was $3.59 per pound. This year, it
becomes $4.99. I mean, $1.40 doesn't look much, but it's almost a 40% increase. I'm shocked by
the inflation, so I decided to show you how to make it at home. We're gonna calculate how much
cheaper and discuss if it is worth the labor. You will need one pound of all-purpose flour
or bread flour. Normally, you should use bread flour to make noodles because it has
a higher protein content in general, so your noodles will come out nice and chewy,
but Lomein noodles are full egg noodles which means you do not use any water to form the
dough. Egg contains a lot of protein which improves the texture of the dough, so
for this recipe, it's completely fine to use all-purpose flour. I bought this from
Walmart. It costs about 36 cents per pound. We will need 4 to 5 eggs。 Every egg
is different and every brand of flour has a different water-absorbing rate, so I
cannot give you a fixed ratio. As for now, I'm adding 4 eggs and keeping one on the side
to adjust. We will talk about that later. Add 1/2 tsp of salt, then get a spatula and
give that a pre-mix. I'm using a stand mixer to knead the dough. Let it run at medium speed
for about 10 minutes. You can also do it by hand. It will take about 10 to 15 minutes. In about 5
minutes, I noticed that my flour is crumbly and it could not form into a large piece of dough.
That means it is too dry. This will be perfect if you are making low-hydration noodles, but we
are making Lomein, so I think it needs about 2 tbsp of egg to help to form the dough. I didn't
want to split the egg, so I added a whole one plus two more ounces of all-purpose flour.
Continue to knead for the rest of the time. Now, all the flour has formed into a big
piece of dough. I'm going to show you how to check if the consistency is correct.
Make sure your hand is clean and dry. Grab a piece of dough. Squeeze it tightly, then
release it. If the dough falls off immediately, you're good to go. If the dough sticks to your
fingers, you have to add more flour to make it less sticky. The next step is to roll the dough
into sheets and cut them into noodles. This can be done by hand. You can check this video
for the demo. However, my arthritis is not allowing me to do such heavy work anymore, so I'm
going to use a pasta roller and a noodle cutter. Cut the dough into a few manageable pieces.
Then flatten each piece a little bit so it can go through the machine easier. Put on the
attachment. Start with the thickest setting. Let the dough go through the machine. It will be
rough and the edge is jagged. That's fine. Just fold the sheet in half and feed it through the
machine a few times until the surface is smooth. Do the same thing to all four pieces of dough.
Then you can gradually lower the thickness and continue to feed the sheets through the
machine until they reach the desired thickness. For Lomein noodles, I normally use level 3 as
the final setting. Apply a generous amount of cornstarch on the surface. If you use wheat flour,
it will prevent the sticking for a short time, but the noodles will stick together if you store
them for hours because gluten tends to connect to each other. Cornstarch doesn't contain any gluten,
so it will separate the noodles for a long time. Switch the attachment to the noodle
cutter and feed the sheet through. Add more cornstarch into the mixing bowl, then
toss the noodles to coat nicely. Shake off the excess flour. Look at that, you have some perfect
homemade lo mein noodles. Due to the egg content, these noodles don't stay good in the fridge,
but you can freeze them for up to 6 months. Alright, we are done. Let's see
how much noodles we have made. I made 753 grams of lomein noodles. That is
roughly about 1.7 pounds which means it costs 85 cents to make one pound of lomein noodles.
Compared to the price that I get from the Asian market, I saved $4.14 per pound of noodles, but
is it really worth the labor? I'm gonna leave that question to you because everybody is different.
I love noodles and I own the KitchenAid, so it doesn't take that much effort, and I
usually process five pounds of noodles at once and freeze them, so I will save about $20 each
time and I'm totally happy about that. However, you may not eat noodles often and the grocery cost
in your area might be different, so please leave a comment below because I'm curious to hear what
you think. By the way, I have tons of recipes that require Lomein noodles. I'll put the links in the
description. Go check them out if you need them. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.
Bye~
