Noodles are a kind of dough, or pasta. Noodles are one of the many forms by which we eat grains. Grains contain carbohydrate, which is a major source of energy and vitamins and minerals in a balanced diet. The grain is easy to grow and stores well. Wheat is also grown across much of the world. So noodles are similar to bread and pasta (pizza dough, lasagna sheets etc).
Noodles are made from unleavened (usually wheat) dough which is pulled and pushed into a huge variety of shapes, of which the most common is strings and strips.
The dough strings and strips are cooked in boiling water, with a little added cooking oil (to stop them sticking) and salt (to bring out the flavour). They can also be pan-fried or deep-fried.
Most noodles are put in a soup or a sauce is added to them. If you add vegetables and or meat, you have a nutritious, balanced meal.
We think of noodles as being Asian, and the first noodles so far found are 4000 years old and from China. But the name we use in English comes from the German meaning 'a knot'.
Don't just think rice, when you think of China. Large areas of China grow wheat, not rice, and it is in these areas that noodles were born.
Not every kind of dough can be used to make noodles, as they have to be able to stretch and also be elastic, or they will fall apart. Wheat flours mainly consist of carbohydrates (starch) and protein (gluten), with a little fibre. The stretchiness and elasticity in wheat noodles is due to the protein (gluten) in them. As there is no gluten in millet, for example, that can't be used. If you are allergic to gluten found in wheat, you may eat rice noodles, but those are made by mixing in other sources of proteins.
Instant noodles are made by flash frying fresh noodles. This dries them out and means they can be put in packages and kept for a long time.
Glutens are proteins that unravel and hook into each other to form a kind of net within the dough as soon as they are made wet. This makes strong bonds and holds the dough together. When you knead dough you push and pull at these glutens and that makes them all line up into long strings of protein and this in turn makes the dough more stretchy. Adding a pinch of salt to any dough helps by neutralising electrically charged parts of the gluten, making it easier to slide along one another. This is what allows the dough to be so thin you can almost see through it, and why pizza dough, for example, can be whirled over your head.
