Handmade Steamed Rice Noodles

Shyne's thread made me wonder if anyone out in the LTH community has ever made hand-made steamed rice noodles (from rice flour)... I'm now located in a culinary and ethnic wasteland and fresh steamed rice noodles (ho fun) are a thing of the past. So.... what's a boy to do? Eat dried rice noodle reconstituted in water... maybe... Or perhaps it IS possible to buy some Jasmine rice (a la 25lb bag at Costco) and grind it up in a new burr grinder (to be purchased at Costco) and somehow make steamed rice noodle.

I'm not certain the "Italian-make-a-mound, then-a-well-on-a-cutting-board, mix-in-an-egg" technique will work...

Any insight?

Jay, I'm very curious about your attempts at this. So curious, in fact, that I did a bit of googling and found this tutorial (along with about a page on Chowhound on how difficult this is to master)

The reason I'm curious is that I want to try to make Banh Xeo into a food-desert recipe, but it means I'll have to grind my own rice flour, something which has failed miserably all the ways I've tried it (and I'm having real trouble making Banh Xeo the right way, anyway - my pancakes are always too thick.) All of this to say I hope to be able to learn from your trial and error.

I've made steamed rice noodles from rice flour, but the South Indian kind. These are rather thin compared to the ones you're looking for, but an interesting step to making these is that the rice flour is dry roasted in a pan first before using (not long enough to change color though). This step results in noodles that firm and individual when steamed rather than gummy or weirdly tough. The dough was just rice flour, water, and salt if I remember correctly. The dough is kneaded and squeezed through a noodle press.

All the best,
Jen

I don't actually have anything to add as far as how to do it, but reading your post sure did make me crave Bánh cuốn.

I remember having breakfast at a tiny shop in Than Uyên, Vietnam sitting on those ubiquitous little plastic stools, eating some variation of Pho and plates of fresh Bánh cuốn (the only two things the place served). There was a woman sitting by the entrance of the shop who made the fresh rice noodle sheets by ladling the batter on to what looked like a fabric sheet stretched across a large-diameter pot of boiling water. Once the noodle set, she'd pick it up with a long chopstick and fold it up with wood ear mushrooms inside and fried shallots on top. Dipped in a little chili/fish sauce mix and in to my mouth within a couple of minutes of being made. Yum.

Out of curiosity, I just looked online and found a YouTube video of someone making the fresh rice noodle sheets for Bánh cuốn.

-Dan

Hi,

There is a bakery-dim sum place in Chinatown, which offers a tapered noodle I have long called torpedos. Today, I finally found their name: Silver Pin Noodles and how to make them.


This is high on my list to do very soon.

Regards,
CAthy2