George Bryant

Liangpi noodles and seitan recipe

Seitan extracted from wheat flour and noodles made from the remaining starch

Posted 2023-10-30

Making seitan from flour gives you a byproduct of a load of starchy water - which is exactly what you need to make liangpi noodles!

Go straight to liangpi noodles

Seitan

Time

Seitan

Prep: 0m
Cook: 20m active + (2h resting) + 10m active + (30m resting) + 10m active + 2h simmering + (4-8h resting) + 10m active

Ingredients - Seitan

1.2kg plain or bread flour (bread flour has more gluten so works better)
750ml water
2L broth/stock, or enough to cover the seitan

(I only used 1/3 of these quantities)

Method - Washed flour seitan

Preparing the initial ball

In a large bowl, combine flour and water and mix until you have a shaggy ball
Turn the mixture onto a clean counter and knead until you have a fairly smooth ball that springs back when you poke it (10-15 minutes). You can do this with a dough hook in a mixer.
Cover the ball with cool water and allow to rest for 1-2 hours.

Washing the flour

After resting, pour out and discard the water and cover the ball with fresh, cold water.
Start kneading the dough in the water to wash out the starch.
Once the water gets really opaque and thickens with starch, strain the seitan through a sieve/colander and reserve the water for the noodles.
Repeat the rinsing with a fresh batch of cold water. Keep kneading until you get a spongey mass that clings together really well. This takes 3-5 passes of kneading. Keep going until the water is only lightly cloudy instead of opaque and white.
Squeeze out as much water as you can and let the seitan rest in a colander to drain for 20-30 minutes.

Preparing the seitan to cook

Prepare your broth in a slow cooker (or a pot at a low simmer)
After draining+resting, stretch your seitan to 30-40cm long.
Use a knife to cut the seitan into 3 strands, leaving about 2-3cm at the top uncut to hold it together.
Braid the strands together and tuck the ends into the braid.
Leave to rest again for 5-10 minutes.
Stretch out the braid to 45-50cm and tie a large knot. Add on as many knots as you can on top and tuck the ends in.
Put the braided and knotted seitan into your broth and cover it. Set the lid to venting if you’re using an Instant Pot.
Simmer for 2 hours (slow cooker setting on Instant Pot)
Once cooked through, transfer to a container and cover with some of the broth (so it doesn’t dry out).
Allow to cool until cold enough to refrigerate, then let rest in the fridge for 4-8 hours

Shredding and cooking

After the long chilled rest, shred the seitan with a fork. At this point it can be stored in the fridge for 2-3 days, or frozen for weeks.
To cook, you can marinate and pan-fry, or use however you’d use shredded cooked chicken.

Liangpi noodles

Ingredients - Liangpi noodles

200ml starchy water from making seitan
100ml fresh water
1/2 tsp salt

Note: This is a good starting point (2:1) but you might want to use more starchy water or less plain water (up to 4:1 ratio) eventually to make the noodles firmer - apparently this makes it harder to fully cook though!

Note: You’ll need a saucepan or wok with a lid for steaming the noodles, as well as two cake tins or similar which will fit inside.

Method - Liangpi noodles

Use a metal spoon/ladle/whisk to mix the starch, scraping it from the bottom of the bowl. The stuff at the bottom is non-newtonian so it’s quite hard to mix in!
Ladle out the desired amount of starchy water into a separate mixing bowl or jug.
Add the salt and fresh water.
Mix until well combined. This is your batter.
Bring an inch or two of water to a boil in a saucepan or wok (with lid).
Brush vegetable oil onto a cake tin which fits into the pan.
Pour a thin layer of batter into the oiled tin, so it just covers the entire bottom of the tin.
Put into your saucepan, cover with the lid, and steam for 1.5-2 minutes.
You can tell it’s done when bubbles form in the centre and it lifts up.
Meanwhile, prepare a large bowl of cold water - with a few ice cubes if desired.
Carefully remove the tin from the steamer and set it on top of the cold water to cool.
Put the next tin of noodles in the steamer. Make sure you stir the batter to get any starch that settled!
When the cooling noodle is cool to the touch (about a minute), brush the surface with a thin layer of oil and carefully peel it off the oiled pan.
Repeat this process, creating a stack of noodles.
Slice the noodles into ~1cm wide strips and separate them.

Use the noodles how you like! Traditionally they’re served cold with a spicy dressing and vegetables, but they worked well hot!

Sources

Verdict

This recipe is quite a process but I find it so satisfying that you make the seitan and then use the byproduct starch to make noodles. The seitan and noodles are really good too of course.
I used 1/3 of the quantities for the seitan and it made enough for 3 servings in a stir fry, plus a LOT of starchy water for the noodles.
The seitan from my first attempt was quite chewy but in a stir fry with lots of flavour I couldn’t easily tell it apart from shredded chicken!
I’m not convinced cooking it in stock was worth it as it still didn’t really taste of anything! Maybe if it was really strong stock.
The noodles were quite jiggly - thought they’d be gross but in a hot stir fry they were great! Need to attempt using more starch per amount of water to get less jiggly noodles