Winter is a great season for noodles especially hot and warm noodle soup. Lanzhou beef noodle soup, one of the national soup star in China looks plain and common. But it successfully obtains the love of all the foodies who have token the first bite. Comparing with the newly rising stars (like Chongqing noodles), it has been a traditional national Chinese noodles for quite a long history.

A typical Lanzhou beef noodles soup is described to be “1 clear, 2 white, 3 red, 4 green, 5 yellow” (一清、二白、三红、四绿、五黄) to signify respectively clear soup, white radish, red chili oil, green coriander and garlic leek and yellow noodles. Alkali ash, a traditional important ingredient in real Lanzhou style hand pulled noodles, brings a faint yellowish to the noodles.

In this recipe, we will try our best to reproduce the soup and taste at home. However Lanzhou style hand-pulled noodle is unprocurable to me, so I bought packaged lamian noodles from the market. If you ever visit China especially the northern provinces, I highly recommend trying at least one bowl of authentic Lanzhou beef noodle soup. You can be served with extremely wide noodles, thick noodles, thin noodles, and extremely thin noodles and may have the chance to watch the hand-pulled process. It is quite magic when I see the performances.

Part I: Beef stock

I use beef oxtail and back bones for the basic ingredients for beef stock. You can use leg bones. Besides, by adding chicken bones, beef shank (or beef flank), ginger, green onion and spices, the taste of the soup is well improved.

Ingredients

1 beef oxtail (around 1000g)+ 250g back bones + 250g chicken bones+ ⅓ of one beef shank (around 500g).

Removing the blood waters: add all the bones and meat in a large pot, pour in enough water to cover, add green onion and 4 slices of ginger and then bring to a boiling. Transfer out and clean.

Soak all the spices with around ½ cup boiling hot water for 10 minutes and then wrap all of them with a glaze bag and seal with cotton lines.

Spice list:

2 star anises
1 small piece of Chinese cinnamon
2 bay leaves
¼ teaspoon Sichuan peppercorn (must)
4 cloves
¼ teaspoon whole cumin seeds
⅛ teaspoon fennel seeds
1 cardamom
3 Amomum Cardamomum pods
1 dried chili
1 Amomum tsaoko

Add all the bones and beef shank, scallion whites and spiced wrapped in the glaze bag. Pour around 2.5L to 3L water (separately for high pressure cooker and cast iron soup pot). Bring to boil and simmer for around 1.5 to 2 hours.

Add salt to taste.

Then take out the beef shank and cut thinly.

Part II: Chive oil and garnish

Chop garlic leek (蒜苗) and coriander. Pre-make the chili oil and let it set side for at least 4 hours (the oil turns red after soaking)

Peel and daikon into thin slices and then cook in the soup base for 2 minutes. Transfer out.

Cook noodles as directed. Scoop only soup to cover the noodles.

Assemble with slices of beef shank, cooked daikon slices and garnish garlic leek and coriander.

Drizzle chili oil before serving!