How to process vermicelli

Vermicelli is a traditional Chinese ingredient. It is made from a mixture of potato starch, sweet potato starch and other starches. In order to enhance the chewiness of vermicelli, some edible gelatin is also added moderately. The process of making vermicelli has gradually transformed from manual work to industrial processing. However, there are still many things to pay attention to during the processing, and the speed of the mixer and the ratio of mixed water must be controlled to a certain extent. Let’s find out.

There are many ways to make vermicelli and rice paper, but they can be simply divided into two types: manual and mechanical. Manual process: select materials and extract powder → mix ingredients and make starch → add alum and knead flour → drain noodles in boiling water → dry noodles in cold bath → bundle and pack.

Mechanized processing method: sieve-type process flow: starch raw material → making starch paste → mixing flour and kneading → extracting bubbles → sieve-forming → boiling flour and gelatinizing → cooling and scooping out flour → cutting and hanging → condensing → freezing → thawing and drying → (pressing into blocks) packaging → finished vermicelli.

Tools/Raw Materials

Vermicelli

Manual processing

1. Prepare the paste: Take damp starch with a water content of about 45-50%, slowly add cold water about 2.5 times the amount of powder, and stir constantly with a wooden stick. At the same time, add 0.3% alum to the damp starch. Alum can increase the toughness and elasticity of the rice noodle skin, and also has antiseptic and hydrophobic effects, making the product less likely to absorb moisture.

2. Molding. Use a powder spoon to take a little of the prepared powder paste and put it into a rotating plate. The rotating plate is made of copper or tinplate, with a diameter of about 20 cm and a shallow plate with a slightly convex bottom. After the paste is added, the plate is floated on the boiling water in the pot and rotated by hand so that the paste is spread evenly from the center of the bottom of the plate to the surrounding areas due to the centrifugal force. At the same time, it is heated and gelatinized into the shape and size of the bottom of the rotating plate. When there are no white spots in the center, take the edge out and place it in clean water. After cooling for a while, take out the formed rice paper and place it in clean water to cool.

3. Spread out to dry. Soaking the gouache leather in the acid paste used to make starch for 3 to 5 minutes can remove some of the pigment and surface stickiness and increase the gloss. If conditions permit, you can also use sulfur to fumigate it, which will have better anti-mildew, bleaching and anti-moth effects. After being soaked in pulp or fumigated with sulfur, the gouache skin is spread on a bamboo curtain with clean straw to dry, and turned over once to ensure that both sides are dried evenly.

Mechanized processing

Required equipment: rice noodle skin machine (including batter mixing machine, main machine, cutting machine) Process flow: raw material selection - batter mixing - loading - rapid steaming - slow steaming - cooling - rice noodle skin separation - rice noodle skin cutting - rice noodle skin forming - packaging.

Preparation method:

1. Material selection: High-quality potato starch, sweet potato starch and other starches can be used to make rice noodle skin.

2. Mixing the starch: Weigh the selected high-quality starch, add water according to the proportion, and stir it into a paste in a mixer. When processing dry starch, pay attention to fully moistening the starch and do not rotate the speed too high when mixing the slurry. It is generally controlled at ×× rpm, when the effect is best.

3. Loading: Open the valve of the finished slurry chamber of the slurry mixing machine to allow the slurry to slowly flow into the upper hopper of the noodle skin machine. The flow rate should be such that the slurry in the hopper is uninterrupted. 4. Rapid steaming and slow steaming. The slurry enters the high-temperature rapid steaming section of the steamer under the operation of the conveyor belt, and enters the slow steaming section for forming after being quickly shaped.

5. Low-temperature cooling. The rice noodle skin that has been matured at high temperature is very soft, has high viscosity, and is not easy to remove from the packaging. It needs to be cooled at low temperature to enhance its toughness.

6. After separation, the low-temperature cooled rice noodles are conveyed to the cutting machine by a conveyor belt, automatically cut into sections, and transported to the next process

7. Dry. It can be dried naturally or in an oven. The taste of drying is generally not as good as that of natural drying, but it is more hygienic.