How to make curly ramen noodles
Silicon flaps on the cutter = curly ramen noodles
I really enjoy Bon Appetit’s ‘Pastry Chef tries to make XYZ’ series. In it Claire their pastry chefs tries to recreate a gourmet version of common dishes. In the latest she is trying to make gourmet ramen noodles.
One of the things that caused her the most headache was trying to get the wavy or the curly noodles. She ended up cutting apart a cookie rack to be able to weave the noodles through.
As I watched Claire try to make wavy ramen noodles, I figured there had to be an easier way. In fact I remembered there was an easier way but I could not quite remember where I had seen it. To the Google machine!
Googling around I found a few people saying that the curls or waves only came from the frying mechanism, and that you should not try to recreate that as it is not authentic etc etc. However then I found this video from Eater profiling a legit ramen noodle maker in LA and their thumbnail included curly noodles!
They show the curly noodles coming out of the noodle cutter at 2:02
Then I finally remembered where I had seen an at home curly noodle technique.
Alex the French Cooking Guy had created a pretty intense noodle making machine. I seemed to remember that he had created a contraption to make curly noodles. I was correct in my recollection.
He starts talking about the wavy or curly ramen noodle generator at 6:38
He show his inspiration which was a gallery of pictures taken at the Sun Noodle factory which was the very factory profiled in the first video I had watched! The photo gallery shows how they make curly noodles.
Here is the curly noodle cutters. Silicon flaps cause the curl to develop as the noodles are cut.
Alex made his own version like so.
Which resulted in some nice curly noodles.
Conclusion
Curly ramen noodles are an authentic version of ramen noodles, and yes you can make them at home.
