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I decided to make pad thai noodles from scratch. The recipe I found for rice noodles said to let the rice soak overnight then grind the resulting mixture in a blender. After that it called for steaming the batter in small batches then slicing into noodles. The problem that I had is that these noodles did not cook up in my wok correctly. They got extremely gummy and were grainy.

I have experience with pasta, but I have no idea where I went wrong with such a simple recipe. Anybody have any ideas on how I can fix this?

EDIT: the recipe was this 1 1/4 cup rice 1 1/4 cup water oil to coat steamer tray

Place rice in water overnight, blend until smooth (smoother better than not), ladle into oiled steamer pan one ladle full every five minutes, remove noodle sheets and slice noodles.

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  • FWIW, I'd just buy rice noodles - you've got your work cut out for you just with the other ingredients.
    – MGOwen
    Oct 14, 2010 at 6:04
  • sarge_smith is hardcore!!
    – Doug
    Mar 27, 2012 at 4:14

2 Answers 2

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+50

A difference I see between your recipe and other alternatives is that you don't have any other starch besides your rice. Other recipes include a good amount of tapioca or potato starch. The other difference was that other recipes used rice flour instead of rice.

You might also want to consider a change in technique. You can make rice noodles like a crepe rather than in an oiled steamer pan. Simply use a non-stick or oiled crepe pan, put in batter to crepe thickness, and let it cook until it begins to pull away from the edge of the pan. Invert and release in one motion onto a cutting board and slice.

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  • so could I add rice flour to the mix to increase the starch content? And this recipe produced a layered block that you then sliced, do same as they come out of the pan or indiviually slice the "crepes"?
    – sarge_smith
    Oct 13, 2010 at 15:42
  • @sarge_smith - what I saw was rice flour plus a good mixture of tapioca starch as opposed to all rice (for example). Individually slice the 'crepes' as they come out.
    – justkt
    Oct 13, 2010 at 15:46
  • ahh... so I am basically working from a bunk recipe. Thanks
    – sarge_smith
    Oct 13, 2010 at 15:58
  • @sarge_smith - let me know how an alternative recipe goes.
    – justkt
    Oct 13, 2010 at 16:00
  • you were correct, I added tapioca flour to the mix and they came out great. I still need to tweak for texture but they are handling like rice noodles now. Thanks for your help.
    – sarge_smith
    Oct 15, 2010 at 21:59
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I watched Chef of Red Lantern, Luke Nguyen visit a noodle making family in China near the Mekong river - he noticed they used glutinous rice flour (sweet rice flour) to make their flat rice noodles.

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