Beijing Hand-pulled Noodles

Before we enjoyed Serenitea, my best friend and I tried out the Beijing Hand-pulled Noodles just across the tea establishment in San Juan. He got the Braised Beef La Mian (拉麵) while I tried the Beef Chao Mian (炒麵). Literally La Mian means stretched noodles. "The hand-making process involves taking a lump of dough and repeatedly stretching it to produce many strands of thin, long noodle."



According to Wikipedia, in the Beijing style of preparation, "the dough is twisted, stretched delicately by waving the arms and body, untwisted, looped to double the strands, and then repeated. When stretching, they coordinate waving their torso and arms to increase the potential length of the noodle beyond that of the puller's arm span. Flour dusting is more liberally employed in this style than in the Lanzhou style of preparation."