I had no intention of making buckwheat noodles at all, until early this year when I first learned that Taiwan has sweet buckwheat, and the discovery that "Taiwan also has buckwheat flour" genuinely made me leap with joy, but what followed close on its heels was a major blow.

The Japanese gentleman who runs a buckwheat noodle shop in Taipei wrote this online (excerpt):"Buckwheat is also cultivated in Taiwan, and its flour is also easily available, but unfortunately there is hardly any 'aroma or flavor' to speak of.," The translation should be:"Buckwheat is also cultivated in Taiwan, and although the flour made from it is also easy to obtain, what is regrettable is that the aroma, flavor can only be said to be not very good." Faced with such a challenge, the author is neither a Boxer nor a villager, and previously in Japan also faced the predicament of wanting to eat beef noodles but being unable to find suitable ingredients, so to some extent I can empathize with this gentleman's feelings.

It is just that the buckwheat grown on our land, and the flour produced from it through post-processing cannot be recognized by people outside Taiwan, which is truly a heartbreaking matter. Therefore, when there is a challenge, there must be a response, and the proposition of proving that Taiwan's buckwheat flour can also be used as a premium product suddenly became one of my tasks. And the first step in starting the work is to first return to the original nature of things, and the first thing to look at is where buckwheat's high added value comes from, namely its aroma and nutritional value.

Starting from the basic characteristics of buckwheat is the only way to know how to work with it

Anyone who has bought buckwheat groats to cook with rice should know that buckwheat has a unique aroma similar to mung bean, and how to preserve it to the greatest extent during the post-processing milling stage is the first topic. In addition, among buckwheat's many nutritional components, the most special one, rutin (Rutin), which is effective against cardiovascular disease, and how it can be retained during post-processing is another topic. Besides the above, which are considerations at the consumer level, for the post-processing end there are additionally issues such as milling, noodle-making operability, time, and labor costs.

(1) The aroma components of buckwheat

At present there is not much research on buckwheat's aroma, but according to research in "Aroma of Buckwheat and Stability of Aroma in Flour" published by Professor Hidefumi Yoshii of the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Engineering, Tottori University,the GC-MS chromatography results of buckwheat's aroma components are shown in Figure 1:

The aroma and flavor are weak, and the nutritional value is limited to starch, because the flour is extremely fine, and the noodle-making process feels very much like playing with clay. The resulting noodles are on the white side, composed almost entirely of starch, which also makes them one of the more chewy varieties among buckwheat noodles, with a texture somewhat similar to coarse rice noodles. The milling cost, on the other hand, is extremely high.

Taiwan's buckwheat is not inferior to Japan's buckwheat; the key lies in the post-processing end

I previously purchased roll mill-produced buckwheat flour from Hokkaido in Japan, and compared with Taiwan's buckwheat flour produced in-house, the Taiwan buckwheat flour that has undergone proper storage, processing, and fresh production is a complete winner. This also leads to a conclusion: perhaps the milling methods that emphasize yield and efficiency, and the dried noodle culture that emphasizes preservation, are not wrong, but the charm of Taiwan's buckwheat is not limited to this, and it needs more refined post-processing to fully bring it out.

For Taiwan's crops, besides the added value of loving the land, breeding and the post-processing end should also provide more comprehensive solutions that better fit the terminal needs of the product, while enhancing the added value of the actual product, which is the correct approach.

Postscript: In the production of "Sarashina buckwheat" and "Yabu-style buckwheat," hulled buckwheat flour is used as the dusting flour, so the surface of the noodles in the photos also has a slight attachment of some black buckwheat hull fragments, but this has no effect on the tasting results.