How to make Home-made Udon from scratch 〜手打ちうどん〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make udon noodle from scratch. So I've already made two videos of udon noodles and in these videos I use just regular dry udon noodles but today I'm going to show you how you can make udon noodles from scratch from flour. You may think this is a complicated process but it's actually not. It does take a little more steps and of course time and does take a little bit of practice to get a nice shape but even if it doesn't come out as a good shape you'll still be able to enjoy the flavor. And For me, even for a Japanese, I was quite hesitant to do this, stepping on the food, but you use a layer of plastic bag and kneading with your hand is quite difficult so it's actually quite a practical method. So I hope this gives you a new idea for your repertoire. And with a handmade udon noodle I'm going to show you a variation of kamage udon where you soak the udon noodle on a big hot water and dip it in the mentsuyu sauce. This is also a quite common way to eat udon noodles in Japan. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for making udon from scratch and also for kamage udon and their condiments. So to make udon from scratch you actually just need all-purpose flour and just some salt but today I'm going to show you a variation where I use a little bit of starch in them because regular flour doesn't have that much starch in them and having a lower starch will make it chewier so I'm going to add extra starch. I personally like using tapioca starch where I got from the Asian store but any other corn starch or potato starch will just do fine. And today I'll be making my own authentic dashi using bonito flakes and kombu kelp but if you're lazy you can just also use regular dashi powder. And the kombu kelp I've been letting it soak in water for overnight. And for the sauce I have also soy sauce and also mirin but if you have mirin you can also substitute this with just a regular sugar. And for the condiments I have green onion or scallion, regular ginger, and also onsen tamago. If you don't know how to make this please watch my other video on that. What it is is half softly cooked egg but it's just a condiment so you don't have to have it. Now let's get into it. To make udon noodles I prefer using these pots so you can have a good grip. A bowl or whatever container you have is fine. Then here I'm going to measure in 160 gram of all-purpose flour. Okay perfect. Then here I'm going to put in some starch. Like I said I personally prefer using a little bit of starch because it'll make it a little chewier but if you don't have this or if you don't like it then you can just also make it with 100% flour. Then here I'm going to put in 60 gram of starch. Okay that's perfect. I'm just going to mix in a little bit like this. Then as the next thing we're going to mix the salt and water. Then here I'm going to measure 5 gram of salt which is about teaspoon. Then here I'm going to measure in 90 gram of 90 milliliter of warm water. Okay perfect. I'm going to mix it so that the salt dissolves. Now let's mix in the salt water to the flour. I'm just going to first mix in half of it and the rest. If you're used to making bread or things like that you might think this is a bit too hard but don't worry if you're making udon noodle it's quite okay that's a little bit harder. And when you have these little bits and pieces like this just put in the middle like this and then you knead it inside like this. And what you want to do is you want to bring the corner to the middle like this and then repeat the same thing. Turn around as you do this so you bring the corner to the middle and push turn I don't know 90 degrees or so and bring the corner to the middle like this and bring the corner push turn bring the corner in push turn just like this. This might take a little bit getting used to but after a couple times you get the hang of it. So once it got to a clump like this don't worry it doesn't have to be perfect. I'm going to put this in a plastic bag and let it rest because as it rests the flour and those water is going to combine a little bit better and a little bit softer and easier to work with. So we're going to do that. So I usually get a thicker plastic bag like this just make sure you get a little thicker one when it's too thin then it'll break when you step on them. So I'm going to put it inside like this I'm going to try to get as much air as possible and just like this and then we're just going to let it rest for at least half an hour to an hour or so and let the water and flour combine better. So it's been about an hour let's see inside of course it doesn't look anything different but if you feel it then it's much softer. I'm going to put in here the middle of the bag and I'm going to stomp this with my feet. So you just want to kind of stomp on like this. It's easier to do it with your heels. As this got really flat I'm going to take it out of the bag I'm going to fold it like this in third and also put it in third again like this and then put it in the back again make sure you put in the middle of the bag like this then we're going to stomp again. So this has gotten flat again I'm going to fold it up again like this in third and also a third in this direction as well. Again put in the middle of the bag and it got flat like this. The more you fold the harder it gets but also chewier it gets. So you want to do three to five times or so folding this and then I'm going to fold it up like this one last time. Then I'm not going to do any more but I'm going to make it a little flat like this first. I'm going to wrap it up and I'm going to let it rest like this for another half an hour to an hour so some people say that you should let it rest overnight which a lot of professional restaurants in Japan do but I'd say half an hour to an hour is enough so I'm going to let it rest. Now as we're waiting for the dough to rest let's make the sauce or the mince for the udon. Today I'm going to show not only very quickly how to make dashi but if you want to know more in detail please watch my other video on that. Then in a pot I'm going to put in one cup of kombu kelp water. Of course with the kombu inside. Then we're going to turn the heat to medium and bring this right before to boil. Now as we're waiting for this to boil I'm going to measure up the katsuobushi or the bonito flakes. So for one cup of water I'm going to need five to seven gram of bonito flakes. Okay that looks good. So as this is bubbling I'm going to take out the kombu kelp. I'm going to wait until it comes to boil then once this is boiling I'm going to turn the heat off then put in all the bonito flakes. I'm going to let it rest like this for five minutes or so. Now five minutes has passed. Using a paper towel like this I'm going to sieve through a colander. So for the mince I'm going to want a strong flavor so I'm going to squeeze this all the juice out. By the way for the leftover kombu kelp and the bonito flakes you can make tsukudani out of these. It's a shame to waste these so hope you try making that as well. Now let's make the mince using a dashi stock. So for that I'm going to mix in the dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin with a ratio of five to one to one. And if you don't have mirin you can substitute this with sugar. I'm going to put in five tablespoons of dashi stock. Then here one tablespoon of soy sauce. Then here also a tablespoon of mirin. If you don't have mirin then put in one teaspoon of sugar instead. I'm going to turn the heat to medium and bring this to a boil. So once it's come to a boil I'm going to turn the heat off and put it in a separate container. And this is finished for the mince. So an hour has passed. So this is the dough on a working surface. I'm going to put some flour and also over the dough just like this. Then we're going to be rolling this out. Now once you get to a certain point you actually want to roll it diagonally like this. This will actually maintain the square shape. And once it gets to a certain point I'm going to roll it on the rolling stick like this. And then roll it down to make it thinner. And roll it out and put on the stick on the other direction. Roll it out. So after several tries surprisingly rolling in a diagonal direction will make it more square like this. And then once it got to one millimeter thick or so I'm going to flat out like this. Put in a little bit of flour over it. Then this is ready to be cut. So I'm going to fold it up like this. Don't worry if you can't get to this shape. It took me also a while to get this to stage. No matter how the shape is they'll still taste pretty great anyway. So I'm going to cut this about two to three millimeters so it's also a preference thing how much thick you want it. And don't forget they will grow. So if you try a couple times you get the hang of it how thick you want it. And just try to get it evenly spaced. Get a little flour over it so they don't stick to each other. If there's some parts that's still connected a little bit make sure you take them apart otherwise they'll get cooked unevenly. Since this is two portions I'm going to separate into two parts. So just like that. One part I'm going to cook today to eat. The other I'm going to save it for later. If you're eating it the next day you can store it in the fridge. But if you want to eat it later than a day then I suggest store this in the freezer. If you store it in the freezer you'll maintain the chewiness of this udon noodle. So you just put it in a freezer pack like this and I'm going to store it like this. Now let's cook this. So in a big pot of two to three liter at least of water you want to bring it to boil and we're going to boil this. And you make sure you mix it like this so that they don't stick to each other. Then we're going to set a timer to 10 minutes. So once it's come to a boil again I'm going to turn the heat to low then boil it like this for 10 minutes. And then as we're waiting for the udon to be boiled I'm going to prepare the condiments. So with a green onion take the bottom off and slice this in small pieces. That's flat. And then ginger I'm going to peel off the skin and cut off kind of the dried part. And using a grater I'm going to grate this. And it's also finished. So this is finished. Turn heat off. We're going to take it out. Then we're going to wash this in cold water. Then we're going to rub this against each other like this. As you can kind of see by doing this it'll take out the gooeyness around the noodle make it more chewier. Then we're going to heat this up again. If you want to eat cold udon noodle then you can serve it just like this. Then we're going to put it back in here. So this is already being cooked so I just need it warming up. So letting it sit for 30 seconds or so is enough. So I'm going to take it out. Then this is finished. We're going to put it on a plate. Today we're going to put it in a container like this. This is called oke. It's another way to serve food in Japan. So put it in here. We're going to add in here boiling water so that it stays warm. And the rest of the condiments and also the onsen tamago. Then this is finished. Let's eat. Oh this looks so delicious. Let's eat. Itadakimasu. So in the mentsuyu I'm going to put in some condiments. Scallion a little bit of ginger as well. And then we're going to dip this in here. So I'm going to slurp now probably pretty loudly so if you don't like the sound of slurping please skip to the end. Itadakimasu. So good. I don't know if you can hear it but it's so very chewy. This chewiness you can't really get it from the dry noodle. Oh it's so good. And then midway through I'm going to put in the onsen tamago. This will kind of change up the flavor. I'm going to break up the onsen tamago. Oh this looks so good. Itadakimasu. Oh this half run yolk is just perfect to go with the udon noodle. Oh that was so totally delicious. So filling. Oh it just really warmed up from inside. So as you saw making udon noodle from scratch yourself is actually not that very difficult. It does take a little bit of time but as a process it's not that very difficult. Today I showed you this variation of kamage udon. If you have my other recipe of udon noodle you can use this as well. And also in the summer you can have exactly the same setting with a cold noodle. And also you can have a different kind of topping like tempura. So if you know how to make this you can be very creative with this. I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did please hit the like button for me. If you have any feedbacks or requests or questions please feel free to write anything in the comments below. Then I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye.