Mutton Pressed Noodles 羊肉饸饹

Mutton Pressed Noodles (羊肉饸饹) are pressed buckwheat noodles served with mutton soup, a pairing the Yan'an (延安) city government describes as a northern Shaanxi dish. It singles out Wuqi (吴旗) and Zhidan (志丹), two Yan'an counties that grow a great deal of buckwheat, as the places where the noodles taste best.

How it is made

Hele (饸饹) are pressed rather than cut or pulled. A soft dough of flour that lacks the stickiness of wheat, such as buckwheat, is forced through a wooden hele press (饸饹床子), a tool with many round holes, and comes out as small round strands; flour ground from elm bark is worked in as a binder. In Yan'an the noodles are made from refined buckwheat and served with mutton soup (羊腥汤, literally 'mutton-scented soup'). Yan'an Daily describes the traditional method in northern Shaanxi as stewing mutton until cooked and eating it together with the buckwheat, pairing mutton, regarded as 'hot', with buckwheat, regarded as 'cold'.

Where it comes from

A northern Shaanxi saying, quoted by the Yan'an government, joins the two for life: 'buckwheat hele and mutton soup, in life or death they go together' (荞面饸饹羊腥汤，死死活活相跟上). Yan'an Daily traces a version of the line to a xintianyou (信天游) folk song, where it stands for the singer's steadfast conviction, and lists buckwheat hele among the region's buckwheat snacks with chopped buckwheat noodles (剁荞面) and buckwheat geduo (荞面饹饦, dough rubbed by hand into rolls). The Yan'an government notes that the dish is eaten all year round.