Monday, January 30, 2012

One of my favorite cheap meals: Soba noodles

While this isn’t much of a food blog, I do post about it from time to time. One of my favorite cheap and healthy (and filling) meals is Soba Noodles in a peanut/sesame sauce. There are a few different ways to do this from boiling + sautéing, boiling only, making it into a soup, noodles and sauce alone or adding mixed veges. My favorite type is boiling + sautéing with mixed veges. Yeah it looks like a lot of ingredients, but you either have most of them already or they basically keep forever (especially the frozen stuff).

Ingredients needed:

Soba (Buckwheat) dried noodles (Usually in the Asian section, but can be with other pastas)

Sesame Oil

Chicken broth (or water)

Soy Sauce
Ginger powder
A little bit of Chopped Onion/Shallot/Scallion/chives (dried or fresh)
Chopped garlic

Optional:
Tahini (aware I’m mixing genres here, get over it)

Peanuts/peanut butter/cashews any mix of them
Frozen wontons/dumplings to add right at the end of boiling

Sesame Seeds
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Cooking instructions (Warning, I don’t really measure):
Boil a small amount of chicken broth (or water if you want to reduce sodium, sissy) maybe about 1/3 of a cup in a sauce pan and throw in 1 bunch (they come pre-wrapped usually, you’ll see what I mean when you open the package) of Soba noodles for every 2 people, or 1 if you’re me. Boil them for about 2 minutes, then throw in a large handful of whatever veges you’re putting in for about another 2-3 minutes, the veges can literally be anything, less cooking time if they’re not frozen though. Shut off heat and toss in any frozen dumplings/wontons if you are adding those too. Mix around a bit with a large spoon. Strain and move to a hot skillet that has already a bit of sesame oil (teaspoon?) and a little bit of butter or olive oil too, and anything from the onion family. Now add about a teaspoon of sesame seeds, about the same amount of tahini (if you’re using it, just use more sesame oil if not) and a handful of any nuts (‘buttered or otherwise) you’re adding too. Lower the heat to medium and mix around a lot, but not too hard that you pierce the wontons, etc. Lastly add Rooster sauce, Soy Sauce, ginger powder and Garlic to taste. (This part is entirely up to you, but maybe a half teaspoon of each? Totally guessing).

Total cook time including the boiling is about 10-12 minutes. Enjoy!

Soup version: just don't strain and eliminate the sauté part, adding stuff in the same order. You'd probably want to use more onion, soy and rooster sauce for the soup version. 

Pic is from a slightly different version, peapods and carrots instead of Edamame/mixed veges

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