If you have ever cooked noodle soup at home, or the most ordinary noodle soup (yes with any pasta), then you probably know: you can cook it only once and immediately before lunch, otherwise homemade noodles on steeply mixed egg dough will "creep", and any purchased spider web vermicelli (both "letters", and "stars", and other forms of pasta) will turn into something more like a viscous jelly than for soup
However, here's what I noticed ...
If you order the same noodle soup in a public catering, then the vermicelli in it most often looks not swollen, that is, there is no impression that the soup was cooked a couple of hours ago. And it, whatever one may say, should be, because no kitchen will cook a portion of noodle soup for each new guest separately. And it’s not even a matter of time, but the fact that you’ll be tortured to wash the saucepan - this time, and the burner is busy - and with burners there is often a shortage of two.
No, maybe there will be gourmet restaurants, but cafes, canteens, restaurants with business lunches (which most often includes noodle soup or noodle soup) always prepare a certain number of servings in advance.
And the soup is standing, waiting for its eater.
So how does such a miracle happen?
The other day I had a chance to talk with a lady who cooked all her life in public catering, and she began in the epic Soviet times.
And so she shared a few secrets of noodle soup.
First, the broth: it must be prepared in advance. And not so that in an hour, and at least two, or even three or four. Better - in the evening, and leave to languish on minimal heat at midnight (but this is possible only on an electric stove with a timer, or in slow cookers now).
If you let the broth brew after boiling, it will always be tasty - even if you cooked it on the bones.
Secondly, baked vegetables must be thoroughly baked. Don't just bake the cuts in a frying pan, but bake for forty minutes until the vegetables are baked. And you need to add them not during cooking, but at the very end, so that you add vegetables, the broth boils again - and that's it, turn it off. Set aside, let it brew.
This is how a bright, rich taste is obtained (and vegetables also "pull back" the broth, making it lighter - but that's how a mystery to me).
Before cooking the soup, this broth is filtered, the vegetables, of course, are thrown away.
And now the most important thing in the noodle soup. Third life hack. Vermicelli is sent to a dry hot frying pan. It is dry, without oil. Fry on it for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally.
Thus, the vermicelli is either baked by itself, or fixed. And in the soup it can retain its shape, not swell and not turn into a slimy mass for much longer.
Shl. I remember fried pasta, only in oil, and then boiled: also an old Soviet life hack.