Store-bought noodles are nonnegotiable in our pantries, but homemade noodles? They are something else—earthy, chewy, and ridiculously fun. So grab an apron and let us show you how to Make Your Own Noodles. We’ve got glorious recipes, expert tips, handy guides, and so much more.
Watch udon makers delicately step on pillowy balls of dough, and all those open tabs in your brain will shut for a bit. It’s a special kind of ASMR that makes you wish you were the dough, being gently massaged into oblivion. The centuries-old technique is also essential for making chewy, restaurant-quality udon noodles at home.
Known in Japanese as ashibumi (足踏み), foot-stepping methods vary but follow a similar flow. Rested dough is usually sealed in a resealable plastic bag and placed on the floor, sometimes between kitchen towels or on a layer of cardboard. Wearing clean socks, the cook takes rhythmic, circular steps to spread the dough into a flat disk. It’s folded over twice, like a piece of paper, and the process is repeated a few more times before it’s rested and cut into plump ribbons that are boiled, rinsed, and submerged in savory-sweet dashi.
There’s no precise timeline for how long foot-stepping has been used to make udon, but the technique is likely as old as the noodles themselves, says Nancy Singleton Hachisu, an American cookbook author who has lived in Japan for more than three decades. Some teachers believe it may have originated in China during the 700s and landed in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture during the 1600s, says Tomohiro Shinoda, the chef at Cambridge, Massachusetts’s udon hot spot, Yume Ga Arukara, which was named one of Bon Appétit’s best new restaurants in 2018. And until recently, “stepping on the udon dough to knead it was just the normal course,” says Hachisu.
As access to electricity increased across Japan in the years after World War II, foot-stepping was outpaced by machines. But dedicated udon makers still agree: “It is the technique for kneading,” says Hachisu. Across Japan, udon shops advertise their foot-stepped noodles as a way to differentiate from more mass-market competitors, explains Namiko Hirasawa Chen, who runs the popular Japanese food blog, Just One Cookbook. It implies “extra care and effort.” Shinoda agrees: Fresh foot-stepped noodles are “drastically superior” to the dry or frozen ones you’d buy at the store.
Kneading dough by foot makes plenty of sense. Wheat flour contains two proteins that combine to form gluten: As your feet push and smush the dough, those proteins line up and form a matrix of strong amino acid chains, which are responsible for udon’s signature elasticity. For most recipes, including Chen’s Kake Udon, you’ll start out kneading by hand. Most recipes instruct you to start by hand and then, when the stiff dough comes together, switch to your feet. “It requires your entire body weight,” Shinoda, who studied traditional noodle making in Kagawa, tells me.
Stepping on udon dough is also better for your appliances. Sonoko Sakai, a cookbook author and teacher who leads classes on homemade noodles, says using something like a KitchenAid to regularly knead big blobs of dough is not only inferior but could easily break the machine. It will just “heat up and complain,” she warns. Foot-stepping is “organic, doesn’t require electricity, and is more sustainable.”
Once he got the hang of it, Shinoda says foot-stepping became a “meditative and very efficient way to make consistently bouncy noodles.” With each slow and intentional step, your feet sink into the springy dough and your worries float away like steam. Sakai has another argument for giving foot-kneaded noodles a go at home: “They taste better.” It’s a can’t-skip step in this homemade udon recipe.
