Lagman Pulled Noodles

Lagman (lātiáozi in Xinjiang Mandarin, from the Uyghur laghman) is the foundational noodle dish of Central Asian foodways — shared across Uyghur, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik culinary traditions and present from Xinjiang to Afghanistan. In Xinjiang it is both an everyday meal and a marker of regional identity, served at Uyghur restaurants across China wherever the community has settled.

The noodles are made from a stiff wheat dough, rested until elastic, then hand-pulled to roughly pencil thickness by repeatedly stretching, folding and swinging the strand against the workboard. The pulling technique is related to Lanzhou-style hand-pulled noodles but produces a thicker, more toothsome result. The same noodle, pulled thinner, becomes a different product. The finished strands are boiled in salted water and laid in the bowl before the sauce is added.

The sauce — called waza in Uyghur — is a dry-fried stew of lamb (usually bone-in pieces or cubed shoulder), yellow and red bell peppers, tomatoes, celery, onion, garlic and whole cumin seeds. The vegetables are added in stages by doneness and simmered until the lamb is tender and the peppers have softened into the cooking liquid. The sauce is ladled over the noodles; a drier or wetter version can be requested, and the drier style is more common in Kashgar. Chilli oil or fresh chillies are served alongside.

In Xinjiang it is a Halal dish by default. Outside Xinjiang, Uyghur restaurants are identifiable by their green-and-white colour scheme and Arabic-script signage. Most major Chinese cities have a Uyghur food district or cluster where lagman is served.