Soy Sauce Pasta Dough (and other experiments?)

[Constantin Peters]

For the sheer amount of fresh pasta I make and eat I have been much too incurious about experimenting with the dough itself, I find.

So when tonight i made a batch of dough while out of cooking salt I thought of substituting water and salt with soy sauce.

A quick google search turned out a number of pasta recipes WITH soy sauce, but no soy sauce pasta. "Is it so terrible noone mentioned their horrible experiments?", I thought. So I tried it myself:

the pasta looks just like Soba, if I am any judge of it.

The consistency is the same as my usual dry pasta, so no changes there.

Now, the taste:

First of all, it does not taste bad, at least to me. Neither does it really taste of soy sauce. Nor, however does it taste like "normal" fresh pasta. I would say it has a more pronounced taste. Of what exactly so, is hard for me to put into words, however.

I tried some raw, boiled and then in a dish with unsmoked pancetta, brusselsprouts and aged pecorino.

In the dish, you CAN tell a difference, but again, not overtly.

So all in all I consider this "experiment" to be a success. I do not yet know if I will make them again, i will first need to try the rest of them in familiar recipes to tell the difference, but I do think it has encouraged me to branch out in my dough(s)

I hope this was interesting to a few of you.

Maybe you can share some ideas or past experiments with fresh pasta doughs here. I´d be very happy to get some feedback or inspiration for the future.

[TheCulinaryLibrary]

Now that was brave! Good idea though to flavor pasta with something other than vegetable. Just wondering (on your soy sauce theme) if the type of soy would influence flavor? We recommend megachef or redboat brands but wondering if the sweet indonesian soy would work? Looking forward to reading about some more experimental pasta from you. Chili or chipotle maybe? P.S. Congratulations on your first post!

Edited February 4, 2014 by TheCulinaryLibrary (log)

[Shalmanese]

You should try fish sauce next.

[Constantin Peters]

Now that was brave! Good idea though to flavor pasta with something other than vegetable. Just wondering (on your soy sauce theme) if the type of soy would influence flavor? We recommend megachef or redboat brands but wondering if the sweet indonesian soy would work? Looking forward to reading about some more experimental pasta from you. Chili or chipotle maybe? P.S. Congratulations on your first post!

Thank you.

I think the type of soy would certainly make A difference. Not sure if it would be a substantial one though. Like using champaigne or cremant in a pizza dough. I dont know if the result would warrant the extra effort there.

Of course, with different types of SS like sweet or bitter? or what have you the difference would probably be more noticable.

Another matter should also be the quantities used. I make my dough as dry as possible, as I have found that it produces a much more firm and elastic pasta. Maybe you can (could) make a wetter pasta that still retained a similar level of elasticity if you added additional gluten. Idk.

Or you leave out the eggs entirely and thereby increase the amount of flavouring liquid.

Has anyone tried milk or variations thereof yet? I am kind of curious about infusing milk with nuts, for example or using almond milk or the like. Since you can make ice cream flavoured with almost anything, why not pasta?

[liuzhou]

Why not?

It's not so different from using squid ink to make black pasta, is it?

[Chris Hennes]

Another option is to use different flours: if I recall there are a few recipes in Modernist Cuisine that use potato flour and coconut flour in their pasta.

[dcarch]

I am not sure what is the difference taste-wise.

Pasta dough mixed with soy sauce, vs. pasta in soy sauce.

dcarch

[jayt90]

Now that was brave! Good idea though to flavor pasta with something other than vegetable. Just wondering (on your soy sauce theme) if the type of soy would influence flavor? We recommend megachef or redboat brands but wondering if the sweet indonesian soy would work? Looking forward to reading about some more experimental pasta from you. Chili or chipotle maybe? P.S. Congratulations on your first post!

I am always interested in soy sauces other than my favored Kikkoman or Yamasa, but I can find no reference to Red Boat at all. Does it exist?

[Constantin Peters]

I am not sure what is the difference taste-wise.

Pasta dough mixed with soy sauce, vs. pasta in soy sauce.

dcarch

Well, think pasta cooked in unsalted water, salted later versus pasta cooked in salted water.

If you made regular pasta and then seasoned it with the same amount of soy sauce you would have used to make the pasta it would taste of soy sauce much stronger and direct.

[liuzhou]

Another option is to use different flours:

Buckwheat noodles are far from unusual round here. And rice noodles are the staple.

What is the difference between Chinese / SE Asian noodles and pasta?

Nothing that I can detect.

[Constantin Peters]

What is the difference between Chinese / SE Asian noodles and pasta?

Nothing that I can detect.

I have never heard of asian egg noodles. I was under the impression that the did not use eggs in their noodle / pasta dough.

I still would really appreciate a comment about my milk idea.

[liuzhou]

I have never heard of asian egg noodles.

Really? I'm astonished. They are very common.

Chinese Egg Noodles on Google Search

[huiray]

What is the difference between Chinese / SE Asian noodles and pasta?

Nothing that I can detect.

I have never heard of asian egg noodles. I was under the impression that the did not use eggs in their noodle / pasta dough.

I still would really appreciate a comment about my milk idea.

Regarding "asian egg noodles" - also, what do you mean by "asian"? (Liuzhou has specified Chinese / SE Asian egg noodles) Keep in mind that Asia is a large place. There are also egg noodles used in the varied Indian subcontinent cuisines; there are Turkish egg noodles (e.g. erişte) (see also: kesme); Japanese egg noodles; etc etc...and all these cuisines are in Asia. :-)

p.s. Perhaps you may have eaten a bowl of Wonton Noodle Soup (with the wontons plus the noodles plus fixings)? If you have you then would have eaten egg noodles. (Wonton noodles are a form of Chinese egg noodles)

Additional edit:

I forgot to mention that milk is used in making erişte. See this recipe, for example. Perhaps that would answer your 'milk question' at least in part.

In the Western/European tradition milk has been used in making noodles and pasta for a while, too. E.g. see: here, here, here, and here.

On eGullet have a look too at this topic/thread: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/39614-the-fresh-pasta-topic/ where several of the posts mention the common use of milk in making pasta. (Do a search for "milk" within the topic)

Edited February 7, 2014 by huiray (log)

[pangty]

I am not sure I will like the soy sauce pasta. But if I am going to try, maybe some fruits pasta will catch my interest. Maybe try adding orange juice, lemon, strawberry or red dragon fruits juice.

[slkinsey]

Unfortunately, as you seem to have discovered, this doesn't work particularly well. This is because flour has very poor flavor release. It's the same reason a sodium citrate emulsified cheese sauce tastes so much more cheesy than one made with bechamel. I have made spinach pasta containing so much spinach it could hardly hold together and it still didn't taste much like spinach. Meanwhile, by the time you get enough of a strong spice in there to really taste it, the effect is usually unbalanced and unpleasant (perhaps because certain chemicals are more easily released than others). Your best bet for flavored noodles, as others have suggested, it to use different flours.

[Constantin Peters]

So, after having finished my batch of SS pasta dough I thought it was time for another experiment:

roasted hazlenut custard pasta.

After being ispired by ice cream, I thought to give this procedure a try:

sauteé some ground hazlenuts in butter, add milk, season with salt and a bit of sugar, whisk in egg yolks. The custard is currently in the freezer to cool down a bit so I can handle making dough with it.

I think I will use not use any durum wheat this time to better judge the influence in taste the custard has.

<more information to follow>

[Constantin Peters]

I can´t find the edit post funtion, atm so feel free to merge this post with the previous one.

There were a lot of changed variables in this, so a comprehensive analysis will be difficult.

First of all, the taste: the custard was nice, if salty. The finished dough smelled great, but could have been MORE salty. It did taste good, and it did taste of hazlenut, if subtly so.

I did not use as good a quality of hazlenut as I might have, but seeing that this was an experiment I do not mind.

The texture, however was really bad. The pasta didn´t hold together as a long noodle, and wasn´t at all resistant to the tooth. I think it might have been partly the milks fault, and partly that there was no eggwhite in it. But maybe the butter also played a role, as I usually do not add any fats to my pasta dough.

Things to consider in the future...

Hazlenut pasta is definitely something I will try again, but differently in the future. Maybe just substitute some of the flour with the hazlenut.

----

On a different note, I think I am going to bake some thin bread out of the rest of the dough. What would you recommend?

[Constantin Peters]

So, I am back, lovely people

Lately I have been getting back into experimenting with fresh pasta. 

My latest experiments have been with using broth in the dough instead of water. I personally never liked using oil in my dough, but with the broths, the results have all been very positive. The dough has been a bit more smooth, though not to the point of breaking or loosing its elasticity. Have any of you ever tried this or heard of it? A quick google search only yielded pasta IN broth, not broth in pasta dough.

[Okanagancook]

I only use egg and a little oil when making pasta with 00 flour.

[FeChef]

I would definitely eat them noodles in some lo mein.

[chromedome]

I've used the "water" from tomatoes and from shredded cucumbers (the tomatoes worked better), so I can see no reason why broth wouldn't work as well. I don't use much liquid other than eggs in mine, so it was more a matter of using something up as opposed to looking for an identifiable flavor. 

[liuzhou]

Cucumber noodles, tomato noodles and other noodles are fairly easy to find here in China, too. I need to check what else.

 

On the alternative grain side, I had quinoa noodles for lunch.

[chileheadmike]

I was gifted a bag full of morels one year. I ate my fill and still had some leftover. Crazy, I know. I dried some and ground them into power and then worked that into some fresh pasta dough. Served with more morels and a mix of other mushrooms along with thyme, garlic, chives, some cream and parm.

Not bad. 

[nickrey]

18 hours ago, chileheadmike said:

I was gifted a bag full of morels one year. I ate my fill and still had some leftover. Crazy, I know. I dried some and ground them into power and then worked that into some fresh pasta dough. Served with more morels and a mix of other mushrooms along with thyme, garlic, chives, some cream and parm.

Not bad. 

Dried mushroom powder is a thing I use with sauces when I want to give them a umami hit. Like fairy dust for chefs.

[dcarch]

19 hours ago, chileheadmike said:

I was gifted a bag full of morels one year. I ate my fill and still had some leftover. Crazy, I know. I dried some and ground them into power and then worked that into some fresh pasta dough. Served with more morels and a mix of other mushrooms along with thyme, garlic, chives, some cream and parm.

Not bad. 

 

Just my opinion:

It seems to me that taste is experienced by contact with taste sensors on your tongue. If you mix expensive morel powder into the pasta dough, at least 50% of the morel powder buried inside the dough never touches you taste sensors. 

Would it be better to use the powder to make sauce?

Same thinking with soy sauce in pasta dough. Huge amount of salt eaten that has nothing to do with taste.

 

dcarch