The famous Changsha rice noodles are actually tasteless.

Sixty percent of the delicious enjoyment brought to you by a bowl of powder is melted into the bowl of soup under the powder.

I never drank soup before, and I always felt that there was a layer of oil floating on the surface of the soup. After adding various ingredients and seasonings, it was salty, spicy, and quite harsh to the throat. But then one day, after finishing my noodle soup at a noodle shop near Dingwangtai, I took a sip of soup and realized that the noodle soup I had made before was just the water used to cook the noodles.

The noodle shop has two large pots, both of which are placed outside the shop door. There is translucent white soup in one pot. This is no coincidence. It is just the real "cooking soup". The secret is all in the other pot.

The soup in this pot is milky yellow, with a layer of golden oil floating on the surface, and half of a pig bone as thick as a child's arm is exposed. The cavity of the bone is filled with marrow containing fat, and the meat on the bone has been cooked until it melts, becoming one with the soup. Also floating were small bags made of gauze, tied with silk thread, containing various spices listed as "secret recipes" by the store.

When the rice noodles are cooked, the person in charge of cooking them quickly scoops the snow-white rice noodles into the bowl that has already been filled with black soy sauce, bright grains of MSG and green green onion leaves. . The person in charge of serving the soup picked up a long-handled spoon from the soup pot and used the bottom of the spoon to push away the floating oil on the soup surface. The spoon sank and he scooped up half a spoonful of the fragrant bone broth. Wow - thick. The soup goes into the bowl, no more, no less, just enough to cover the rice noodles in the bowl. When the soup in the spoon is put into the bowl, the person does not stare closely with his eyes, but immediately turns around to scoop out the soup. More soup or less soup depends entirely on the feel of the hand, and the movements are very skillful. I have been going to this store frequently since then, and I have never seen the soup spilled or the soup filled with too little food, causing dissatisfaction among customers.

Later, I went to many famous noodle shops in Changsha and found that these noodle shops basically use pork bones to make a thick soup. A few of them also put some in the soup and cut it into half a palm. Boil large pieces of pork belly together until the fat meat is minced and the lean meat is shredded. This soup is oilier and more fragrant than pork bone soup, but it is also easy to get cloying.

Another fourth part of the deliciousness of Changsha rice noodles lies in the "code".

What Changsha people call "mazi" is actually "toppings", "sauce" and "stewed food", which refer to the "dishes" of various flavors placed on top of the cooked noodles.

Changsha rice noodles are generally divided into "fried noodles" and "simmered noodles". Of course, stir-fried pork with chili pepper is the first choice. It can be used to stir-fry noodles and taste the authentic Hunan flavor. Stir-fried pork with chili often uses locally grown "snail peppers", cut with hobs, and pork belly with skin (nowadays, many restaurants do not use skin-on meat, which is a pity.) Stir-fry over high heat, add garlic cloves, and a large amount of soy sauce. Stir-fry until the peppers are fully cooked, there is no "squeaking" sound when eating, and the pork is shrunken, and it is burned into an attractive dark red color by the soy sauce, then it is ready to be taken out of the pan. Sometimes the chili peppers are still "squeaking" without being satisfied, so they put them on the white rice noodles soaked in bone broth and serve them to the diners' tables. Just mix it with two chopsticks and you can eat it with the spiciness of the chili pepper, the umami flavor of the noodle soup, and the steaming heat. If it's winter, your whole body will feel hot immediately. In summer, there will already be beads of sweat on the tip of your nose.

For simmering, the store usually steams or stews it in advance, and simmers it in a basket next to the pot where the noodles are cooked. You can eat it as you go. When out-of-town guests come, I suggest you choose steamed pork with black bean pepper or steamed pork ribs, or steamed pork with dried beans. If there are meat patties and steamed eggs in the basket, it's almost like winning a lottery. This is the taste that Changsha "Laokouzi" (Changsha dialect, generally refers to a person who is very experienced in a certain field) likes. The pork is 30% fat and 70% lean, chopped into fine pieces, then mixed with minced mushrooms, salt and soy sauce are mixed like a dumpling filling, and finally sprinkled with pepper like a ritual, put it into a steaming bowl and compact it tightly, and finally add a The eggs are steamed with the meat. After steaming, the yellow egg yolk is wrapped in white egg white and soy sauce-colored minced pork. When you dig it in with chopsticks, the egg-flavored meat and shiitake mushrooms are so fragrant that you can finish a bowl even if you eat empty mouth.

But unfortunately, as the tastes of Changsha people become more and more serious, this kind of meat pie and steamed eggs gradually no longer appears in the noodle shop.

If we insist on talking about the rice noodles themselves, they can only account for one part of the deliciousness.

There is only one type of authentic Changsha noodles, which is handmade flat noodles, which tastes tasteless. Most rice noodles nowadays are made by machines, but in some old neighborhoods in Changsha, you are still lucky enough to eat handmade rice noodles.

This kind of handmade rice noodles is cut finer than machine rice noodles. The vermicelli will be a little uneven in thickness, but it is this uneven thickness that makes the taste richer. Compared with the chewy Guilin rice noodles and the chewy Guangxi snail noodles, Changsha handmade noodles are softer, thinner and more spongy. This soft powder can quickly absorb the rich powder soup, and diners only need to squirt lightly to bring the soup into their mouths. The rice flour bounces on the back of the teeth and on the tip of the tongue, like a pair of girl's hands gently clasping it, fragrant and soft. No wonder Chen Xiaoqing, the chief director of "A Bite of China", also had to sigh - "Beautiful rice noodles are like a girl's breasts."

However, if office workers want to take a bowl of handmade noodles back to the office and taste it slowly, they have to be quick on their feet. If you wait too long, the delicate rice noodles will become "mushy" and break into several pieces with the chopsticks, making it tasteless.

"Heavy pick, light pick, two rows of melted rows across the bridge, quick drying, wide soup, light oil and heavy oil to avoid green soup from falling into the pot." This is familiar to everyone who loves noodles in Changsha. Changsha people are delicious, and they are always a bit picky about what they eat. They don’t want to treat their taste badly, so they have such special words for being “picky” about noodles.

"Heavy picking" and "light picking" mean adding more and less rice noodles; "erpiao" requires the noodles to be "cooked but not dissolved" and chewy; "dissolved row" requires the noodles to be cooked but not chewy. Break it into pieces; "cross the bridge" means to separate the noodles and noodles; "bring it to a quick dry" means no soup and more oil! "Broad soup" and "buckle soup" are picky about the amount of soup; "light oil" and "heavy oil" are best understood; if you call "free green", don't put onions, it's best to ask if you don't want garlic; ", that is, I like to eat noodles that are not too cooked, put them in a pot and boil them immediately.

The most noteworthy thing here is "bringing quick work". Generally speaking, if you want to eat noodles, you need to bring quick dry ones, which are less than those who eat noodles. Put the cooked alkaline noodles into a bowl with prepared base ingredients, add no or very little soup, seal the noodles, pour oil on them, and then let the diners mix mustard, potherb mustard, chopped chili, and minced garlic according to their own taste. , dried chili or black bean sauce, peanuts, Xiaoshan radish, or even oily residue - you can get whatever you want! Mix these ingredients and noodles as quickly as possible. There are noodles in the ingredients and ingredients on the top. Pick up a pair of chopsticks and shake your cheeks hard. In an instant, you will have all the delicious food in the world in your mouth.

Take something with you after eating, and don’t forget to ask the boss for a bowl of noodle soup (bone soup, not boiled noodle soup). I had just eaten the alkaline noodles without soup, and my throat was still a little dry. Drinking a bowl of fragrant pink soup not only moistened my throat, but also washed away all the delicious food in my stomach. What a flavor!