Knives and Boiled Noodles from Shanxi
Knife-cut noodles and the boiled dough shapes that go with them: a Jin cuisine tradition of central and northern Shanxi, made from hard high-gluten dough and shaped by hand at the pot.
Noodles of Taiyuan
The noodles associated with Taiyuan belong to a Shanxi tradition rather than to one city. Knife-cut noodles belong to Jin cuisine and to the Jin-speaking area of central and northern Shanxi, where they are a household staple, and the style from Datong became the most famous of them. The flour is high-gluten and the dough is kneaded hard, so that it can be cut into boiling water without breaking. The province's table is not short of boiled shapes: the local habit in central Shanxi is to boil in plain water, then top with fried vegetables, meat or gravy.