Why is rice noodle not made from rice? He spent 15 years making amazing pure rice noodles.
Just as Control Yuan President Chang Po-ya named rice noodles by their proper name, calling steamed rice noodles (chui fen) "rice noodles" a "reckless renaming"recently industry operators met with legislators to negotiate, demanding that products with no rice can also be called "rice noodles"researcher Yang Chia-ling spent fifteen years developing a new variety better suited to making rice noodles, making rice noodles look brighter white and taste better, and working with pure-rice rice noodle makers to develop pure-rice rice noodles with greater market value.
Place-of-origin traceability contract farming, launching locally produced rice noodles
What troubles pure-rice rice noodle makers is that the rice varieties supplied by rice merchants are usually blended and cannot be traced back to source. Tseng Yung-hsin, fourth generation of Yungsheng Rice Noodles, says that in his father's generation the demand for rice was high, and at that time Hsinchu still had 3 suppliers, but now only 1 remains, and the rice supplied is not a single variety but a blend dominated by Taichung Sen 17, making it even harder to determine which farmer it came from, which makes it all the harder for rice noodles to take the path of production and sales traceability.
"I have always hoped that in the future the rice noodle market can move toward a contract farming model, so that rice noodles can also be clearly traced to source." Tseng Yung-hsin says confidently, rice noodles could even develop regional product items, such as commissioning contract farming with farmers in Chishang, which could then be marketed as Chishang rice noodles, and the entire industry could become more refined. So if the rice noodles made from the new variety taste better and have a more substantial mouthfeel, operators will be happy to switch, and the remaining issue of loss rates in subsequent production can be improved through advances in technology.
The Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station team is currently still analyzing the results of this two-year trial and the rice noodle trial plan in cooperation with Yungsheng, but what can be confirmed is that Taichung Sen 197 has low white powder content and expands more evenly when heated. Through testing, whether rice noodles or bowl rice cakes (wan guo), the finished products are brighter white in color, quite in line with consumer market demand, so it was decided to officially name it last month and begin promotion.
Next, Yang Chia-ling will begin trying to formulate a "rice noodle raw material recipe". Just as rice that is well received in the market is usually paired with 2 or more rice varieties, using this as a reference, different inbred rice varieties have different characteristics and the market and operators have different needs. Taking all these factors into comprehensive consideration, one can try to find the perfect ratio for pure-rice rice noodles.