Gold Hairthin Noodle(金絲麵)/Super Chef Dexterity

A man adds plastic containers to a heap of discarded plastic in Shanghai. China generates more than 80 million tonnes of plastic waste a year, and has vowed to reduce the total next year. Cities have begun implementing curbs on plastic usage, such as a ban on plastic straws in Chengdu. Photo: AFP 88 5 This chef says gold thread noodles should be ‘thin as paper, delicate, and fine as hair’. Photo: Yong GuoThis chef says gold thread noodles should be ‘thin as paper, delicate, and fine as hair’. Photo: Yong Guo This chef says gold thread noodles should be ‘thin as paper, delicate, and fine as hair’. Photo: Yong Guo In China, there is a type of noodle so thin that it can pierce the eye of a needle. They’re called gold thread noodles, or jinsimian, and they’re a speciality of Sichuan province in southwestern China, where the dish is reserved for special occasions. Why are they called gold thread noodles? “Because after kneading the dough, the colour is gold and when you roll it out, it looks like gold foil,” explains Yang Yongfu, who has been making the noodles for over 24 years. Only a handful of chefs have mastered the art of making gold thread noodles. The challenge is cutting the dough into fine, delicate strands, a process that is extremely time-consuming and can take up to two hours for a batch. “The noodles should be thin as paper, delicate, and fine as hair,” Yang says. To achieve that effect, chefs carefully run a heavy knife back and forth across the dough, cutting thin strands along the way. The best chefs spend their entire careers perfecting this technique.