Mondo Knows Facts
Ramen noodles are made with alkaline salts
Kansui raises the pH of the dough, giving the noodles their springy bite
Traditional ramen dough includes kansui, a mixture of potassium and sodium carbonates that makes the dough alkaline. The higher pH changes how the flour proteins behave, producing a firm, springy noodle that holds up in hot broth and turns yellow as it cooks. Without kansui the same recipe gives a soft, bland noodle.
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Tags: noodles, ramen, japan
Ramen noodles are made with alkaline salts: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Kansui raises the pH of the dough, giving the noodles their springy bite. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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