Yesterday I woke up pretty early for a Saturday morning. I was not planning to ride on Saturday this week, therefore I decided to drive out to go for a quick street shoot. Initially I wanted to go to Pasar Sentul, but I took the wrong turning, I ended up going to Pasar Chow Kit instead.
As I was walking along the inner alleys of the pasar, I bumped into a small noodle factory. It has this huge machine that rolls dough into yellow noodle. I believe the factory supplies the noodle for the whole pasar.
The photo below shows the uncle showcasing his rolled dough. I am not particularly sure what’s the mix of the dough, but I can guess it’s egg, flour, water, oil and some other chemicals!
There was a problem with the machine so the uncle pushed the rolled dough back into the roller. Just comparing this to my noodle maker, the process I guess is similar 🙂
Just another view of the rolled dough.
The machine – looks pretty old and all used up! Once the dough gets rolled, it’ll be shaped into noodle strands.
The uncle testing out the machine to see if it works!
I guess it’s working now. Time for a quick rest!
Noodles starting to move. The machine shapes the noodle into noodle shape and drops it into a boiling water.
The uncle makes sure that the noodle are all good and properly drops into the boiling water.
Uncle inspecting the dough – to make sure more dough will be rolled and shaped into noodle.
This is the first section of the machine, where the uncle is in charged. You can see that the boiling water is really hot. I must say – I was sweating!! Didn’t touch the noodle so I guess its ok!
Just another view of the machine. You can see from the dough from the start till it gets into the boiling water for pre cooking.
The next step is that the noodle gets into a long conveyor belt for cooling.
Once it’s cooled, it gets a final rinse. I can’t decide whether it’s water or it’s chemical. I remember my sister mentioned that there’s some sort of chemical that was used to lace the noodle. And if I can remember correctly, the noodle is slightly oily – as such this could be the process. Not sure!
The rinsed noodle is then dropped into what I call a distribution platform. This uncle is in charged of this section.
The uncle air out the noodle. This part confirms my suspicion that either oil is added during the final process as the noodle doesn’t stick to each other.
The noodle are pushed aside to make space for more noodle.
After a while, the uncle will then stuffed the noodle into bags, which I presume will then be distributed. I need to visit this uncle again to complete the story.
Note – I don’t usually eat this noodle as I don’t fancy chemicals in my noodle, exception would be Penang Mee Mamak!
Hello Fazli. I’m Paul. I read your article on the noodle maker. It is very cool actually. It will be a great help if you were to share the location of this place? Which part of Chow kit is it? Just wanted to know the landmark.
Hi Paul. Sorry for the late reply. Here is the google map location. https://goo.gl/maps/skPRfWrXoyL2
The building that house the noodle maker is towards the back of the market (older part).