▲ One clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow, all in a bowl of noodles. Photography/Seriousness
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Auspicious gourd beef noodles
A bowl of beef noodles allows lanzhou people who are drunk at night to run away freely from the early morning.
▲ Get up early and tie a bowl of cattle to start a good day. Photography/Seriousness
When the sky is dark, more than a thousand beef noodle restaurants in Lanzhou city will open for business, and by seven or eight o'clock in the morning, there are more and more people in each noodle restaurant, and beef noodles are the alarm clock of Lanzhou people.
How much do Lanzhou people love beef noodles? Even in the narrow terrain of their own city with two mountains and one river, they feel like a "big wide" (the widest beef noodle type).
▲ Just ask whether the Yellow River that runs through Lanzhou City is wide. Photography / Yang Wenjie
In Lanzhou, ordering a bowl of noodles can also see human nature, saying that people are too preoccupied:
Customer: "Boss, the next small bowl is two thinner, more spicy and more meat, more garlic seedlings and more noodles." ”
Boss: "Brother, won't you ask for a big bowl?" ”
A passage, quite seen in the northwest of the people of the joy and straightness, but Lanzhou people also have a calculation, they often say a sentence when they go out, that is:
"We don't have authentic Lanzhou ramen in Lanzhou, only beef noodles."
▲ Meat, eggs and dishes are complete, and a bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles is luxuriously configured. Photography/Seriousness
Young people love beef noodles and can make online comedies for it. For old Lanzhou, beef noodles are a watch. The price of a bowl of beef noodles is geometric, and old Lanzhou can cross it with a pinch of his fingers.
A bowl of beef noodles costs 6 cents, and it takes forty years to go back in time. If you want to ask which year because the price of a bowl of beef noodles rose by fifty cents, the price bureau's phone was broken, and the government introduced a limit standard for beef noodles, which made a lot of noise, that is, of course, 2007. To this day, a bowl of beef noodles is only more than seven or eight yuan, which is quite cost-effective compared to the house price in Lanzhou.
▲ In Lanzhou, a bowl of beef noodles with two slices of meat is only ten pieces. Photo/Visual China
In Lanzhou, beef noodles are a measure of living standards, as important as water, electricity and gas. Lanzhou people who go out, the first thing they do when they go home is to "tie a bowl of cattle"!
How is a bowl of beef noodles made?
A simple bowl of "niu da", but it hides the essence of the entire Great Northwest.
The high-quality wheat from the Longdong and Hexi corridors is combined with the ash made of Shangpeng grass in the wasteland around Lanzhou (now mostly ramen agents) to form noodles, and then paired with peppers from Tianshui Gangu, high-quality beef from The Gannan Plateau and Qinghai... A bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles is an organic fusion of noodles, soup, beef and spicy seeds (chili oil).
This family's gluten is the freshest soup, his beef tastes the best, and each noodle restaurant has its own fans. Lanzhou people call their favorite beef noodles, often calling the name of the store directly to show their love.
▲ For Lanzhou people, the timing of eating noodles is more important than the environment, and they must not wait until the noodles are soaked before chopsticks. Most Lanzhou people will eat bowl noodles and wipe their mouths and leave, Ma Li crisply, to make room for others. Photo/Serious
In Lanzhou, beef noodles are updated and iterated very quickly, and in the 1980s and 1990s, there were still beef noodles "five absolutes" to unify the rivers and lakes, namely the Eastern Evil Saddam, the Western Poison Ma Anjun, the Southern Imperial Bao, the Northern Goshawk, and the Zhongshentong Ma Zilu. Decades have passed, and the rivers and lakes have come out together:
Mogou is famous for its delicious soup, Wu Muller's beef is well-known, and Bai Jianqiang's door in Yantan recreates the scene of squatting on the road in the 1990s. For Gansu people outside Lanzhou, they are more familiar with chain brands such as Chen Ji, Si Po Lake, Xiang Ma Xiang, and Oriental Palace.
▲ Beef noodles in clear soup produced by Ma Zilu. Photo/Visual China
However, to say that the authentic time-honored brand, can not get around is Ma Zilu and Jinding, which are the two most famous long-established noodle restaurants in Lanzhou, but also a must-go punch card for tourists. These two noodle restaurants, both highlight a soup with a clear and fresh taste, have a special position in the hearts of the old Lanzhou people.
Noodles 丨 Beef noodles body bones
The early Lanzhou beef noodles were not pulled freshly, but the noodles were pulled in advance and cooked and cooled, and it was good to blanch them in the pot when eating. Now Lanzhou beef noodles are all fresh ramen, but some fatty sausage noodle restaurants have retained this traditional practice.
Generally speaking, a small piece of dough can be pulled out of the hands of the beef noodle master in nine types of noodles, from fine to thick, from narrow to wide, respectively, fine, three fine, two fine, two pillars, buckwheat prisms, leek leaves, thin and wide, wide and wide. In the past, there was also a face type, the cross-section was the shape of a train track, which has been basically lost.
▲ In the hands of a skilled ramen master, a bowl of noodles is pulled into only ten seconds. Photo/Visual China
Lanzhou people who love noodles even summarized the corresponding personality for the noodle type. Those who like to do personality tests, when they arrive in Lanzhou, they will do a "noodle type test": the capillary that is known as "a nest of silk", the most test of the speed and patience of noodle eaters, generally eat less than two or three bites, the noodles are lumpy; the leek leaf noodles are soft and gentle; the widest and widest, similar to Shaanxi's trouser belt noodles, eat the most heroic, and even eat the meat.
▲ Guess what kind of face shapes they are? Photography / small tour ah, photo / market map network
However, to say that the highest click rate in the noodle shop is still three fine, two fine and fine: three fine entangled, two fine and tough, I really don't know what to point, to bowl thin noodles, it will not be wrong!
The soul of the soup 丨 beef noodles
For beef noodles, the most important thing is not beef, not noodles, but soup.
As early as the era of beef noodles or "hot pot noodles", diners entered the noodle restaurant, the store will put a small bowl of soup for diners to try the soup, think the soup is good, sit down to eat noodles, think that the soup is not fresh and can leave immediately.
▲ Soup is the soul of beef noodles, and the spoon soup chef is the hub of the beef noodle restaurant, they collect more than a dozen meal tickets at a time, and the needs of each diner must remember to be exactly the same. Photography/Seriousness
Generally speaking, when Lanzhou beef noodle soup is boiled, tender yak beef or fine yellow beef is selected, beef spinal cord and beef leg bone are added, etc., and spices such as grass fruits, peppercorns, dried ginger, cinnamon, fennel are added in proportion, and then mixed with a certain proportion of water. In addition, each family boiling soup has its own ability, from the earliest beef and sheep liver, to the local chicken and butter, and even the addition of chicken soup, coupled with more than a dozen spices, the whole boiling process takes four or five hours.
▲ After eating the noodles, the soup should also be swept away. Photography/Seriousness
Today's Lanzhou people, eat beef noodles still pay attention to drink head soup, after several hours of boiling, the soup at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning reached the best taste, to the afternoon, the soup cooking time is too long, it is not fresh, so the past Lanzhou beef noodle restaurant, after two o'clock in the afternoon closed the door.
However, there are also some 24-hour beef noodles that are quite popular, after all, for many Lanzhou people who love beef noodles to the bone, they are eager to eat noodles for three meals a day.
What other soul supporting roles does beef noodles have?
If soup is the soul of beef noodles, then a bright red "spicy" is the eye wave of beef noodles. Lanzhou people also eat as many as 30 tons of spicy seeds with beef noodles every day.
The spicy seeds of Lanzhou beef noodles, based on the peppers of Tianshui Gangu, are long, thick in skin, good in color, fragrant but not spicy. Rapeseed oil as a base, green onion, ginger, garlic, onion and other spices, and then put in more than 10 kinds of spices, the doorway of which is no simpler than boiling soup.
▲ Next to the soup pot, there is a large pot full of spicy seeds, and after adjusting the spicy seeds, the noodles can shine on the scene. Photography/Wood Chopper
There are also spicy "noisy" and become the protagonists of beef noodles, such as Ma Anjun at the bridge of the QiliHe River, who takes the sword to the side, and each bowl of noodles is "up to ten spoons of spicy seeds, plus one spoon and one dollar". The peppers in this shop are extremely fierce, and the texture of the soup and noodles is no longer important when a bowl of red noodles goes down.
A bowl of noodles is scooped with clear soup and mixed with spicy seeds, garlic sprouts, and coriander, which is the standard beef noodles. This bowl of noodles is not expensive, there are only some small diced meat in the noodles, for meat lovers, it is obvious that additional meat is needed. Meat, with tendon meat and sandwich meat as the best, generally beef slices, one or two added together.
▲ Beef noodles are best eaten with soup. Photography/Seriousness
Sandwich flower meat, lean meat with chewy, fat and milky mouth, most suitable for soaking in beef soup, rigid and soft. What does good beef tendon meat look like? It is said that the muscle fibers are arranged in a regular microstructure on the tangent surface, resulting in the diffraction of light.
With the addition of meat, you can also have a variety of small cold dishes, and finally a brine egg, which is the popular "meat and egg double fly". If you want to see which "Lanzhou ramen" restaurant sells omelette, but also a large plate of chicken and rice bowling, needless to say, this is into the Qinghai ramen restaurant.
▲ Beef noodle set family portrait with milk and egg mash, one of the representative dishes of Lanzhou. Photo/Visual China
A bowl of beef noodles, how to wrap the world?
In the eyes of Lanzhou people, beef noodles are the well-deserved "first noodles in the world".
Every day, more than 370 tons of flour enter lanzhou's local beef noodle restaurants and turn into 2 million bowls of beef noodles. Across the country, there are more than 60,000 beef noodle restaurants, and there have been Japanese people who have traveled thousands of miles to Lanzhou to open the Ma Zilu brand to the streets of Tokyo, which is just a microcosm of Lanzhou beef noodles going to the world.
▲ Lanzhou beef noodle restaurants are generally semi-open layout. Photo/Visual China
How does a bowl of beef noodles beat the world? Although there are generations of individual struggles of cooks, more importantly, only a city with exquisite bones like Lanzhou can shape this "first side of the world".
In detail, this bowl of noodles also carries the taste of Henan: during the Qing Jiaqing period, Ma Liuqi, a member of the Dongxiang ethnic group in Gansu Province, was brought to Lanzhou from Chen Weijing, a student of GuoziJiantai in Suzhai Village in Huaiqing Province, Henan (in present-day Jiaozuo Boai County, Henan), to learn the process of making beef noodles in trolleys.
▲ The noodle technique from Henan was later loved by generations of Lanzhou people. Photography/Seriousness
When you arrive in Lanzhou, this bowl of noodles is not ordinary, here is the intersection of nomadic and farming, high-quality wheat and beef are two business cards. Lanzhou has always been an important commercial and trade town in the northwest, and the flow of people is prosperous, which is suitable for fast food such as beef noodles; Lanzhou, as a multi-ethnic area, can also use a bowl of beef noodles to "duanping" with the characteristics of han, Hui, Dongxiang, Tibetan and other ethnic characteristics.
In the early spring of 1915, the Hui people Ma Baozi was forced by his livelihood to carry a flat burden to Lanzhou Nanguan Shizi to sell "hot pot noodles", the legendary historical process of this bowl of noodles began, four years later, he opened the first beef noodle restaurant in Lanzhou, in 1932, beef noodles in the heart of the gourmet Tang Lusun, has become a "clean fat lotus, self-made Xinyi, Tang Shen Ruojin, a clear to the end" of the world's wonders.
Such a flowing description, at first glance, thought it was praising a flower.
▲ To eat Lanzhou beef noodles, you have to fish it up with chopsticks and eat it in a big mouthful. Photo/Visual China
Today's popular fast food standardization, beef noodles as early as a hundred years ago touched a thorough, one clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow (soup clear color, turnip white, pepper oil bright red, coriander garlic seedling emerald green, noodle silky yellow), may be the earliest fast food noodle standard. The deliciousness of the broth and the strength of handmade ramen are the greatest common denominators of noodle lovers around the country, and the heavy and not spicy spicy seeds make beef noodles a market even in the light-tasting parcel area.
▲ Today's Lanzhou beef noodles are also advancing with the times, such as the "Mandarin Duck Beef Noodles" in the picture, which can be double-spelled with sauerkraut and clear soup. Photo/Visual China
In 1999, Lanzhou beef noodles were identified by the state as the three major Chinese fast food pilot promotion varieties, and now, Lanzhou beef noodles have finally been named "Lanzhou beef noodles". With Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong, Zhang Lala, Sigh Ma Xiang, Chen Ji five Lanzhou beef noodle head brands and waist brands leading the team, beef noodles new entrepreneurial outlet is sweeping the magic capital, the future will be at least 50 new stores open every month, the market size is close to 10 billion ...
▲ Above: Lanzhou Beef Noodle Restaurant entering the Shanghai market; Bottom: The fast-food version of Lanzhou beef noodles on display at the Shanghai International Food Exhibition. Photo/Visual China
In recent years, with the rise of online e-commerce and fast food packaging, the fast food version of Lanzhou beef noodles has also quietly been listed, such as Long cuitang's self-boiled beef noodles and brewed beef noodles, as well as The original Lanzhou beef noodles blessed with large pieces of beef by Gadi Ge, which are welcomed by lanzhou beef noodle loyal fans. Authentic fast food is also a vast market worth tens of billions.
Lanzhou beef noodles are becoming the "most expensive" bowl of noodles in China.
▲ Old Lanzhou stewed beef noodles, in addition to beef noodles, there are balls and vegetables. Photography/Wood Chopper
In Lanzhou, this bowl of noodles is also innovative under the premise of adhering to tradition. Sauerkraut beef noodles were once popular, and can also be combined with clear soup beef noodles to form a "Mandarin duck bowl"; anning Xiangyuan beef noodles, with garlic juice, the taste is more mellow; the old Lanzhou braised beef noodles represented by Gadig beef noodles, with balls and vegetables, are more satisfied.
But whether it is splicing various northwest delicacies, the price of the baoyou district beef noodle restaurant doubled several times; or the convenient fast-food beef noodle "meal replacement", it is nothing more than to talk about homesickness, Lanzhou people are still more willing to return to their hometown, get up early, in the noodle restaurant in front of the door, tie a bowl of steaming beef, praise a "full blessing"! (Satisfied)
▲ The noodles are very long, and the years are also very long. Photography/Seriousness
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Zhu Qianyu