How to make homemade spicy noodles with flour

Spicy strips are a delicious food in our childhood memories. However, with the exposure of the production and processing of spicy strips, we see that there are many unqualified spicy strips circulating on the market. In fact, if we want to eat healthy and delicious spicy strips, we can make them ourselves. The raw material for making spicy strips is very common, and it is an ingredient that no one would expect - flour. So, how do you make your own spicy strips with flour?

There was a tutorial on how to make spicy noodles on the Internet before, and it was quite widely circulated. It is said that you can take a wok, fry the bean curd sheets, then mix them with seasonings and they will make spicy strips. This is complete bullshit, it's not a thing at all.

Real spicy strips are made from wheat flour. The principle of the process is "spiral extrusion and puffing", which is to use a spiral metal rod to rotate at high speed to squeeze the dough into a small space, generate heat through friction, and create a high temperature and high pressure environment. When the dough in this space is squeezed out from the extremely tiny gap and comes to a space with normal temperature and pressure, the water inside will instantly expand rapidly and become a spicy strip blank with a porous strip structure.

Because it has been through high temperature and high pressure, it is already cooked and does not need to be fried. Just cut it into pieces and mix it with chili oil and other seasonings to make spicy strips.

The above is still relatively abstract, so let’s get down to business.

Let's buy equipment, research technology, and adjust the formula step by step.

The equipment is a screw extrusion puffing machine. Most of these things use 380V three-phase electricity. My home uses 220V, so it is very difficult to find. I finally bought one, but I found out it didn't come with a motor. Then I bought another motor and some parts. It cost me more than 1,000 yuan in total. It was so expensive. It's the one below.

First, knead the flour into dough by adding 200 grams of water to 1 pound of flour. At the beginning, I didn't find the right proportion and just kneaded the dough randomly based on my feeling. One time I added too much water and the dough didn't puff up for half an hour. Another time I added too little water and the dough was too hard, which directly jammed the machine. It was very embarrassing.

After kneading the dough, I rolled it into small balls so that I could throw them into the feeding port.

At this time, you can turn on the machine and throw the dough into it from the feeding port. The high-speed rotation of the spiral rod can transport the dough to the discharge port below and increase the temperature through friction. High temperature will gelatinize the starch in the dough, creating a tough and chewy texture.