Beef Rice Noodles 牛肉粉
Beef Rice Noodles is featured among the local specialties of Hubei.
Beef Rice Noodles (牛肉粉) in Wuhan (武汉) are a breakfast bowl of white rice noodles in a beef or beef-offal soup, served with braised beef. They sit alongside hot dry noodles (热干面) and bean-skin (豆皮) on the city's guozao (过早) breakfast streets.
How it is made
At Junjun (骏骏), a shop in Qiaokou (硚口) whose family began as a breakfast stall on Changdi Street (长堤街) in Hankou (汉口) in 1976, the cooks work two large pots. In one, wide white rice noodles are dipped in boiling water and lifted straight out into a waiting beef or beef-offal soup. The other holds pork bones simmered for at least five hours, and a final ladle of this stock is what brings the bowl together. The beef and offal are soaked, blanched and slowly braised, and the noodles arrive fresh each day from a local factory. The scene was filmed for the first season of A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国).
A shop in Wuchang (武昌) makes a different bowl: wide rolled rice noodles, which the Wuhan commerce bureau calls an old Wuhan taste that has almost disappeared, served in a stock of pork, chicken and beef bones with a spoonful of house-made red chilli oil.
How it is eaten
The beef hides under the noodles: stirring with chopsticks brings up a thick stack of slices rather than a few thin ones. The wide noodles are slippery, fresh-tasting and springy in the rich soup, and diners are asked whether they want it spicy. Many of the shop's longtime regulars pair a bowl with mianwo (面窝), Wuhan's fried ring-shaped rice cake, as a breakfast they have kept for decades. Even in the heat of a Wuhan summer, customers keep coming and eat the hot noodles in a sweat.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.