"Senior Brother Zhuang, go and ask Sister Li in the kitchen if there is a bed for making dumplings and borrow one."

"If not, you can go out and borrow it from the villagers!"

"Senior Sister Su, please go to the warehouse and bring another bag of sticky millet that has not been shelled."

"For the rest of you, use your phone to look up a kind of pasta called dumpling and learn how to make this pasta!"

"Next, let's use the method of making dumplings to try to reproduce this bowl of millet noodles from 4,000 years ago!"

As soon as he returned to the small experimental room vacated for them in the institute, Chen Han hurriedly instructed the members of the research group who were in a daze with the dough.

"Dumplings?!"

"Hele?"

"Hele?"

Su Sa, Zhuang Yunpeng and Zhang Jianbo were all a little confused, not knowing what Chen Han suddenly proposed to be a dumpling.

Only Wang Weida from Shandong had a refreshed expression on his face, and slapped his thigh: "That's right!" ”

"How did I forget the dumplings!"

Dumplings are not only popular in Qinghai and Shanxi, but also very famous in Shandong!

When he didn't mention it, Wang Weida couldn't remember it.

But as soon as Chen Han mentioned it, he immediately thought of the production method and raw materials of the dumplings, which are indeed unique in Chinese noodles!

With a bang, several people in the small room all scattered, and according to Chen Han's arrangement, they hurriedly moved.

Zhang Jianbo and Lin Ya also took out their mobile phones and checked the details of the dumplings on the Internet.

Ten minutes later, Su Sa and Zhuang Yunpeng returned to the temporary laboratory with a bag of shelled millet and a borrowed dumpling bed.

"Come on, come on, let's do it!"

Weighing 500 grams of in-shell millet, Chen Han picked up the mortar and began to pound it.

Hammering, grinding and shelling, it is still the same process as before.

Keep 20%~30% of the grains, and after being ground out, soak them in warm water to soften, and then hammer them into a ball of dough.

After spending half a day and finally making the dough, Chen Han excitedly picked up the dumpling bed and put it on the boiling cauldron.

"Senior Brother Zhuang, put the dough into the dumpling bed."

After Zhuang Yunpeng put the millet dough smashed out by the hammer into the dumpling bed, Chen Han held a piece of wooden tray in one hand and pressed it down using the principle of leverage.

With his afterburner, the noodles began to be squeezed out of the round hole under the dumpling bed.

However!

The noodles that were squeezed out broke and scattered in mid-air before they could fall into the pot.

When it fell into the pot and boiled, it had already become a piece of paste, and where there were still noodles, it was simply a bowl of gnocchi soup.

Everyone's faces immediately changed.

Failed again!

It shouldn't be!

Wang Weida squatted down with his head in his hands, very incomprehensible and unclear.

In fact, in the past half month, everyone has also privately pondered the production method of millet noodles.

Regardless of the limitations of the times, several methods have been proposed.

However, most of them need to add something to the millet flour that can increase the stickiness.

Even Zhuang Yunpeng thought of extracting gluten protein from wheat noodles and artificially adding it to millet flour, so as to improve the stickiness of millet flour.

Not to mention pressing, even ramen is not a problem!

It's just that the ancestors of the Lajia family 4,000 years ago couldn't have mastered the ability of chemical extraction.

Even if an alien had taught them how to do chemical extraction, they wouldn't have been able to use it to make noodles...

If you want to make millet noodles, you must only study the production process.

However, if you don't even make the dumplings, you can't reproduce the millet noodles.

How did the ancestors of the Lajia family 4,000 years ago make millet noodles?

Wang Weida couldn't figure it out.

The others, including Chen Han, all frowned and looked at the "millet pimple soup" floating in the still boiling iron pot.

"Why the hell...."

Suddenly, Wang Weida thought of what Zhuang Yunpeng said before about extracting gluten protein from millet noodles, and raised his head suddenly.

"Han, I see!"

"We should steam the dough first, and then press it!"

Wang Weida stood up suddenly, pacing back and forth in the laboratory, and everyone looked at him.

"The reason why wheat noodles are sticky is because wheat is rich in gluten protein, a sticky substance."

"When mixing noodles, the reason why we need to let the dough rest for a while before ramen noodles is also to let the gluten protein fully work."

"However, millet flour, as a starch, has no gluten protein, and the only thing that can produce stickiness in the starch is gel!"

"The gel will only be fully effective when the starch in the millet is heated and moderately gelatinized!"

"So if you want to shape millet flour into noodles, you should first heat and cook it, and while the dough is still hot, press the dough into noodles with a dumpling bed."

"And when it must be pressed out, it must be boiled in boiling water, so that the millet noodles are in a high temperature environment throughout the whole process, and the viscous substances can play a role!"

The more Wang Weida spoke, the more confident he became, and the more he spoke, the more excited he became.

His intuition told him that the idea was absolutely correct!

Chen Han's eyes also lit up, and he nodded quite approvingly: "It's a good direction!" ”

"Then let's give it a try!"

Just do it!

Chen Han grabbed another pound of millet that had not been shelled and began to grind it by hand.

Zhuang Yunpeng and Su Sa also went to prepare the steamer.

Once born, twice cooked, after grinding and shelling millet by hand several times in a row, Chen Han can be regarded as practice makes perfect.

After a while, a large bowl of shelled and crushed millet dregs was ready.

The same is to soak in water to soften it, and then hammer it into a dough.

The difference is that this time, after the hammer is smashed into dough, it is not directly put on the dough bed to press the dough, but first put it in the steamer to steam.

Since it was the first test, we didn't know how long it would take to steam it to make the gel in the millet dough viscous.

So you can only open the pot and poke the dough in a minute or two to try the softness and stickiness.

It wasn't until about ten minutes had passed that Chen Han felt that the dough had been continuously heated at a high temperature, and it had coalesced and stuck together.

He put on his gloves, grabbed the dough directly from the hot steamer, and threw it into the bed next to him.

Zhuang Yunpeng, who was in charge of the dumpling bed, did not dare to delay for a moment, and while the dough was still hot, he hurriedly squeezed it hard.

The millet noodles, which were pale yellow and smooth, were squeezed out of the dumpling bed and dropped into the iron pot boiling hot water below.

"Yay!!"

"It's not broken!!"

"Hahaha!!"

Seeing Zhuang Yunpeng squeeze out twenty or thirty centimeters in one breath, and the millet noodles without any break points were thrown into the pot, everyone cheered with smiles on their faces.

Chen Han looked intently at the boiling millet noodles in the iron pot, and begged silently in his heart, don't break it!

One minute.

Two minutes.

Just when Chen Han was excited and wanted to shout that the experiment was successful.

"Poof-" sound.

These more than 10 noodles, which are almost 30 centimeters long, are all broken into two knots of about 15 centimeters.

All of a sudden, the atmosphere in the laboratory became tense, and everyone looked nervously into the pot, for fear that hope would be shattered again.

However, this time everyone does seem to be on the right path.

After breaking once, none of the remaining noodles with a length of more than ten centimeters were broken.

After boiling water for five minutes, when Chen Han picked up the bowl and scooped up all the noodles.

The smooth, Q-elastic, and shiny bowl of noodles made the entire [Replica Millet Noodle Research Group] fall into madness!

And they succeeded!

........

References: Lv Houyuan, Li Yumei, Zhang Jianping, Yang Xiaoyan, Ye Maolin, Li Quan, Wang Can, Wu Naiqin. Component analysis and replication of the 4000-year-old front strip unearthed at Lajia site in Qinghai[J].Chinese Science Bulletin,2015,60(08):744-760.)