2.5K views Sep 2009
Watch Alton Brown visit Mister Chow, where chef Danny Yip stretches and folds dough into hundreds of long hand-pulled noodles, then explains how to eat them.
0:06 Hi, I'm Alton Brown, the uh, host and culinary commentator for the uh, Food Network series Iron Chef America, and uh, ingredients are are a big deal to me, especially uh, today, what goes into noodles. 0:17 Now, I was hoping that we could get into Mr. Ping's place uh, to examine the noodle making phenomenon, but ever since Kung Fu Panda came out, it's been a little tough to get a table in there, 0:26 and that's why we're here in Beverly Hills at the next best thing, Mister Chow. 0:30 In the hands of the master, this can be magically converted into something you would actually want to eat. 0:36 I do not have the magic in my hands, so I'm going to put the dough down, back away, and wait for a master. 0:44 Here comes Danny Yip, the executive pasta chef at Mister Chow. 0:48 Now just watch what he does with this, because this may be the best culinary magic trick you've ever seen. 0:53 It's just a rope of dough, right? Being stretched and kind of tossed around, nothing magical about that. 0:57 Well, just, just you wait a minute. 1:01 That's just flour. It's not pixie dust or anything, nothing magical. 1:06 A little bounce, a little twist. 1:10 It's very rhythmic. It's very kind of hypnotic. 1:15 You're getting very sleepy. 1:18 Bounce, twist, bounce, bounce, twist, bounce. Same thing over and over again. 1:24 But it's, it's still just a rope-a-doe, right? It's nothing special. 1:27 It's not like noodles or anything. 1:32 Hey, it's long, but it's, it's not noodles. 1:42 He picks it up again. 1:45 All right, okay, so, all right, so he's, so, so he's, now he's making noodles, right? 1:49 So there's, there's like, what, 8? So that means that this time there should be 16. 1:53 Or would it be 8 squared? I don't know. Little stretch, little fold. 2:02 Now look at that. Now that looks like, looks like hundreds of noodles. 2:06 Huh? How's he do that? 2:10 A little flour? 2:15 Abracadabra. Nice trick. Okay, let's take a little closer look at what, uh, Mr. 2:22 Yip is doing and try to figure out what's really going on here. 2:25 Okay, here comes Mr. Yip again, and he has a very, very elastic yet plastic dough. 2:29 It's really just some, uh, flour, some water, and a little bit of salt. 2:33 Now he's bouncing it against the board like that to create what's called gluten. 2:36 You see, wheat flour has the ability to form this kind of protein mesh that is very, very stretchy and can, uh, allow for things, well, like that. 2:43 Now, every time he twists, he's actually creating a bunch of noodles. 2:46 You see that twist? And then he bounces again, and then the twist. 2:49 Every time he's doing that, more and more noodles being created. 2:52 You just can't see them yet. Okay, now when he puts it down, watch, he's gonna, ah, cutting off the end. 2:57 That is going to allow for the unfurling of the noodles later on. 3:00 It's there, you see, closer shot, you can see that there are actually dozens, maybe even hundreds of noodles already in there. 3:05 They've just been very tightly wound together. Now, the stretching, he doubles it over, he pulls, he rolls the end, he drags in the flour, he doubles it again, he bounces, he rolls the end, 3:15 a little bit more flour. Each time, the number of already, I don't know, dozens of noodles being doubled over and over and over on themselves. 3:21 So by the time he's done with this process, he's got, I don't know, hundreds maybe of noodles in there. 3:26 Stretch, roll the end, drag in flour, and pull. He could only do this with wheat flour because it's got those proteins that are necessary. 3:34 And there he's got a stick, and there, noodles, very, very long noodles. 3:39 Of course, those are too long even for a skilled, uh, noodle schlorper to schlorp. 3:43 So he's going to cut those down into a reasonable size. Yeah, that's a little bit more like it. 3:48 And into boiling water or just simmering broth, depending on how he wants to present them. 3:53 That, my friends, is the work of a master. Don't try this at home. 4:02 Mm. It's like a magic trick, only one you can eat. Now, a few pointers on eating your noodles. 4:09 Keep in mind that they are a symbol of longevity, so you don't want to cut them up with a knife, okay? 4:13 That would be bad luck. Uh, another thing, I don't care what your mom taught you, it's okay to pick up the plate or the bowl while you eat. 4:20 And, uh, as for slurping, well, it would just be plain rude not to. 4:25 Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to have my lunch. 4:31 I'm here, I want to have my lunch, okay? 
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