A bamboo tray holds neat bundles of dried starch noodles, a hand lifts a soaked translucent skein out of a bowl of water, and a clay pot beside it simmers the noodles with pork and cabbage.
Starch into strands
Introduction
Strand-shaped foods made from bean or tuber starch, mostly dried before sale and soaked before eating.
Starch noodles are strand-shaped foods made from mung bean starch, or from the starch of maize, potato or sweet potato. They are mostly dried before sale and soaked in water before eating, and noodles made from sweet potato starch are highly translucent. Fentiao is one of the other names for fensi. The national standard GB/T 23587-2024 (General rules for starch products) covers starch products. The class is set by material: the main ingredient is starch, not wheat flour or rice, so they are kept apart from wheat noodles and rice noodles; instant vermicelli belongs to instant noodles.