agar agar noodles
Chicken, garlic and basil noodles. Yum indeed.

Gluten free Agar agar noodles

“I love bread. I can’t eat bread. I cry myself to sleep…”

That is an extract from my new hit single “Gluten blues” and if anyone wants it, it will be available for download at some point in the future depending on demand.

I also really enjoy pasta in all its wonderful forms, regrettably however, most of it isn’t gluten free. So in true MacGyver style, I made my own. It was good. Darn good.

Making agar agar noodles
Food meets science meets my stomach.

You can make these noodles out of any liquid so long as it’s not too acidic or the Agar agar won’t set, you could try adding some Bicarbonate of Soda to make it more alkaline.

These are the tools I used:

1 x 2m long tubing (you can get it from any pet store and it’s pretty cheap)

1 x Syringe

2 teaspoons of Agar agar

2 cups of Chicken stock

I made my own stock from some chicken pieces that I browned in a pot with 1 teaspoon of garlic. Once browned, I added enough water to cover the pieces, the rest of the chicken carcass and a pack of basil. Let that simmer so that all the flavours can mingle.

After straining my stock I added 2 teaspoons of Agar agar and brought it to the boil, then let it simmer for 5 minutes while stirring so that all of the Agar can melt into your stock. It has a melting point of around 78 degrees Celsius but luckily your mouth will burn with food hotter than 65 degrees Celsius which works well for everyone that’s worried about their noodles melting. Don’t worry if the stock sets while you’re doing something else, just heat it up a bit and it will melt again.

Once all of the Agar agar has melted into the stock attach your tubing to the syringe and suck up your glossy, yum looking stock. Careful, the tubing is hot and will burn you- it didn’t burn me because I’m hardcore.

Agar agar noodle
Hint: Use water to push it out with your syringe.

Take your coiled tubing and put it in the freezer for a few minutes to set, it will set anyway but this speeds up the process.

Hint: an easy way of getting the noodle out of the tubing without too much fuss is to fill the syringe with cold water. Air compresses and takes ages to get your 2 meter long noodle out- water does the job much quicker. I caught my noodles in a strainer and dried them off before plating.

And that is how you can make gluten-free noodles easily.

agar agar noodles
Chicken, garlic and basil noodles, perfect with some sweet corn soup.-Yum indeed.