When you come to Lanzhou, the first meal must be the legendary ramen.

The city through which the Yellow River runs is filled with the aroma of beef noodles, which permeates every street from early in the morning.

Running all over the world, I summed up a rule: look at where there are many people, it must be delicious. But Johnson found that this sentence was not applicable in Lanzhou.

As soon as it's time for dinner, almost every beef noodle shop has to wait in line, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Order at the door, change the ticket, walk to the long line of noodles, choose the type of noodles you want to eat, after going through the process of ramen, boiling noodles, serving soup, and scooping spicy seeds, a bowl of hot noodles will appear in front of you, you need to hold this bowl of noodles, quickly occupy an empty seat, and then run to the meat cutting stall to get beef, tea eggs and side dishes.

The meat and eggs are all dashing into the soup, and the jargon is called the double flight of meat and eggs. It's not easy to occupy a seat, but you can only run outside the door and squat to eat, which feels very punk.

It's easy to find an old shop, and it is quiet when I enter the private room, and the characteristics are repeated, according to the words of the old guy: a bowl of genuine beef consommé can support a bowl of beef noodles. Noodles are the body, spicy are personality, beef, coriander, garlic, sprouts, and radish are clothes, and the person who makes noodles is the soul.

After boiling the soup, the soup color must be clear. Add butter or even chicken fat to create a light brown soup base, and the cauldron in the noodle stall continues to boil, waiting to be poured into the freshly cooked, drained noodles.

Only when it is fresh and you don't feel thirsty after eating, this is a blended soup like MSG and bone broth powder that cannot be replaced. In areas with high beef consumption, it is not difficult to make real beef soup, and what is more competitive is the secret recipe of tsundere soup that each store does not change.

Especially during the Chinese New Year, countless people get up early in the morning to eat the pot of ritualistic soup at 6 o'clock, which is similar to the people of Suzhou.

It has been advertised on the Internet that the best ivory radish harvested after frosting in autumn and winter is added to beef noodles, which is sweet, juicy and tender. In other seasons, it is the second, water radish in winter, cherry radish in summer, and green radish slices in autumn and winter.

In the eyes of connoisseurs, they are all pretending, nothing more than buying seasonal white radishes or green radishes when going to the market: after all, the function of radish is to remove the flesh and relieve greasy; as long as it is cut thinly and soaked in soup, it is transparent and soft.

Red spicy seeds are made by pouring hot rapeseed oil into spices such as chili peppers, focusing on fragrance rather than spiciness. The chili noodles used are often made locally, and the dry grain horn peppers and dried line peppers are good.

Pouring spicy seeds is the last step, and as soon as you hit the hot soup, the aroma spreads strongly. The exception is this shop, where a spoonful of soup is put into a noodle bowl, spicy is added, and a spoonful of soup is added. When it's time to eat noodles, you can add vinegar unscrupulously, and doubling the amount of food is just around the corner.

Fresh garlic sprouts and coriander, finely chopped, are placed in two large metal bowls next to the soup pot, and after the soup is served, a spoonful is scooped and floated on top of the soup, which is equal to the bright red spicy seeds, adding a touch of flavor to the heavy butter flavor.

As for noodles, the earliest Lanzhou beef noodle restaurant in the record is Yueyang Building, which was established in the early years of the Qing Dynasty. The work is the longest, with the fingertips to pinch into thin strips at will, long and continuous, but also stunts.

Nowadays, there is no longer any egg added to ramen, but there is one thing that must be added: fluffy ash. The active ingredient of the ash obtained by burning dry fluffy grass is potassium carbonate, which is similar to alkaline water, which increases the degree of gluten in high-gluten flour to achieve the taste of gluten, which can be stretched to a very fine level without breaking.

However, for those who have a good business, there must be a clear division of labor among the noodle, ramen and noodle cooks. The noodle master has three times of water, three times of ash, ninety-nine eighty-one times of kneading, and slipping strips to make noodles.

The ramen chef grabbed the dough, stretched, folded, and beaten, and the noodles did not take more than a minute. The noodle cooker is in charge of drawing circles to stir the boiling noodles, and as soon as they are cooked, they are put into the porcelain bowl.

The face is as transparent as jade, and it is full of elasticity when chewed, which is considered a good noodle.

All noodles are tabled, round body, as thin as a noodle thread, translucent, soft, and even without chewing, called a nest of silk. The capillary is thicker than a nest of silk, because it does not need to be chewed and is easy to taste.

The three fine is the most elegant way to eat, thin and elastic, and it is covered with chili oil, a perfect blend of fragrance and beef flavor. After eating the noodles, the spicy seeds were just sucked by the noodles.

Xia Long's mouth is good, and he eats two pillars, which are close to the thickness of a pencil, and he needs to cook for a long time. The body of the dough has a concave ridge, and when viewed from this side, it looks like two sticky noodles. The texture is meaty, very elastic and slightly hard, much like the al denta texture of pasta.

Xia Hu is more awesome, directly challenging the big wide surface, how wide is it?

Pick it up with chopsticks, and one bowl of noodles will be two noodles.

The dough is wider than the mouth, and you can nibble from left to right, like eating a tough dough. Very gentleman, worthy of wearing a big gold chain to eat.

It is said that there were hollow noodles and rootless noodles earlier, but now they are all lost.

Three large plates of beef are served, the beef soup is stewed, the beef is taken out and put to cool and sliced. Soaked directly into the soup, the thin slices of meat are scalded until the fat is half-melted, soft and crispy.

Especially the five-flower toes, basically all thin, some with tendons. It is dry and firm, and it tastes good. Three skins, with tendons, skin, and meat, are lubricated and rich in taste, soft and rotten.

Lucky to meet the chest fork, like the chest in the Chaoshan beef hot pot, chewing can be fragrant, and the thick butter flavor fills the mouth.

A new store pops every year. Amber? It only became popular when I went out to school.

Ma Anjun must go to the head office, not the branches. The grinding ditch is going to the house next to the provincial bo.

Bai Jianqiang is very good - ask the meat cutter to cross the chest fork, then it is enjoyable.

It must be the one at the terminal of No. 8 station, I can't name it, my dad has been eating it for more than ten years.

After inquiring about all the long-established restaurants, they gave the ramen their own taste and characteristics. Most of the ramen shops are named after the first owner, and they are so foreign that the people of the whole city have heard the name of the boss, and they are considered to be honoring their ancestors.

Many years ago, the five masters of Lanzhou beef noodles: Saddam Hussein in the East, Ma Anjun in the West, Bao in the Southern Empire, Goshawk in the North, and Ma Zilu in the Divine Sense, still maintain an excellent level.

Just grab a local and ask, call the so-called authentic Lanzhou ramen with clear soup and little water outside a fake. The so-called hometown stomach, people in every place have radical and paranoid feelings about certain local foods.

Therefore, there is also an almost metaphysical saying that even if the materials are transported to other places unchanged, even if the materials are transported to other places unchanged, they cannot reproduce the taste here.

In SC Johnson's view, in fact, it is more about people, changing places, making noodles, eating noodles, and having different moods.