Lai fun is a Chinese noodle made with tapioca and rice flour, resembling Italian spaghetti. It is commonly eaten in Hong Kong and the US, served in soups or stir-fries. The dough is made by adding boiling water to salt and flour, and the noodles are shaped using a pasta press. Lai fun is gluten-free and can be served with various meats and vegetables.
Lai amusing are Chinese noodles made with tapioca and rice flour that look a lot like short cuts of Italian spaghetti. Also called rice noodle noodles, these noodles are similar to silver needle noodles, except that the ends of the lai fun are cut flat rather than narrowed to a tapered end. This food is mostly eaten in Hong Kong or areas of the United States with dense Chinese populations. Lai fun is generally served with vegetables, often in broth-based soups and some salad dishes. The noodles can also be served in a stir-fry dish.
To make the dough used for this dish, boiling water is added to a bowl of salt and tapioca and rice flours. The mixture is stirred until the dough takes on the thick consistency needed to make a noodle. The prepared pasta is then fed through a pasta press, sometimes called a noodle maker, to make the noodles the desired shape. A noodles pattern turns noodles into a specific size based on the holes in the pattern. Cooks have a different noodle pattern for each size of pasta they wish to make.
Some fun lai recipes call for adding shredded coconut to the flour before moistening and mixing it. A similar dough is used to make different sizes and shapes of pasta, each with a different name. Some, like lai fun and the thinner noodle putu mayam, are also molded through a noodle pattern and others, like loh see fun, are molded by hand. This noodle can be served with many types of meat, including beef and pork, and poultry such as chicken and duck.
Though it looks like spaghetti, the types of flour used to make this noodle make for a softer and more pliable noodle. It is usually used in soups, most commonly chicken soup with vegetables, although it can be served with many types of broth. A popular way to serve lai fun is in broth with fresh vegetables or slices of meat on top. It can also be used in cold pasta salads.
Tapioca is a flour made from processed cassava root. Along with rice flour, tapioca flour is safe for people with gluten intolerance. Gluten is an ingredient in grains related to wheat, and lai fun dough doesn’t contain wheat, making it a viable gluten-free noodle option for people who can’t eat wheat.
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