Morioka reimen

The noodles used in Morioka Reimen are made with potato starch, wheat flour, and white buckwheat flour. They are semi-translucent in appearance and get their chewy texture by being formed by extrusion.^[2][3][4][5] The broth is made from a combination of chicken stock and beef stock.^[6][7] With soy sauce and dried shitake mushrooms added.^[8] It is topped with a hard boiled egg, beef shank or chashu pork, cucumber, kimchi, and seasonal fruit such as apple or watermelon.^[9][10]

The Morioka style of cold noodle was brought to Japan by ethnic Korean Yang Yong-cheol (Korean: 양용철; Hanja: 楊龍哲). He was born in 1914 in Hamhung, Kankyōnan Province, Korea, Empire of Japan; his birthplace is now in North Korea.^[11] In March 1938, he went to Japan. In 1940, under the sōshi-kaimei laws, he adopted the Japanese name Teruhito Aoki (青木輝人).^[12]

In 1954, Aoki opened a yakiniku restaurant called Shokudoen (食道園) and served cold noodles on the menu.^[13][14] Using his memory he recreated the taste of his hometown with Japanese ingredients. Slowly the noodles became popular in Morioka.^[15] Other restaurants started to open up and also served the cold noodles. By the mid-1980s a gourmet boom elevated the cold noodles to national fame. They started to be known as Morioka reimen, instead of just reimen.^[16]

Pyongyang raengmyon uses mainly buckwheat flour, but the noodles of Morioka reimen are mainly potato starch and have a transparent look. Pyongyang raengmyon noodles are also thinner and not as strong as Morioka reimen.^[17][18]

The raengmyon from Hamhung can be separated into two types: bibim-raengmyon, served without broth but mixed with chili paste, and mul-raengmyon, served in a clear broth that typically combines beef broth with dongchimi (radish water kimchi).^[19][20][21] While the broth is different, the strength of Morioka reimen is close to that of Hamhung raengmyon but with thicker noodles.