Brother Fen's In-Depth Exploration of the Art of Rice Noodles

Editor's note: Nine out of ten rice noodles sold on the market are loaded with cheap cornstarch. After the news broke, there was an uproar across the board, and both the industry and the government had their own explanations. Let's hear what Brother Fen has to say......

◎Netizens say that rice noodles without rice is no big deal, just like sun cakes without sun and giraffe English without giraffes

Come on, that kind of talk is just ridiculous. Of course I know that zhuangyuan cake has no zhuangyuan, wife cakes have no wife, and Sodagreen has no soda. But those are just "names," not main ingredients or recipes. Rice noodles are called "rice" noodles precisely because their main raw material is rice. That is why the Bureau of Standards, Ministry of Economic Affairs established the "National Standard of the Republic of China" (CNS), which stipulates that "pure rice noodles" must be made from 100% pure rice, while "blended rice noodles" must contain at least 50% rice.

◎Industry players say that mixing cornstarch into rice noodles has long been an established "unspoken rule" in the trade.

What that means is............because it's an "unspoken rule," there's no need to deal with it? In the past, foot binding and doctors taking red envelopes for surgery were also long-standing unspoken rules among the people, so I suppose those didn't need to be dealt with either?!

◎Industry players say that for the sake of texture, cornstarch has always been mixed into rice noodles during production.

Give me a break. Taiwan does not produce corn, and in the old days trade was underdeveloped, so it was absolutely impossible to import cornstarch. In those old days before cornstarch, Grandpa, Grandma and a whole bunch of ancestors made rice noodles from pure rice. Now you're shifting the blame onto your ancestors - that's really not decent of you!