Give me not-too-complicated recipes for Asian noodle soup dishes
March 17, 2019 5:48 AM Subscribe
Looking for recipes for dishes with the same sort of format as pho and ramen (bowl, liquid, noodles, chopsticks, Chinese spoon).
Ideally not too complicated (I think making my own stock might be too complicated) and without too many hard-to-get ingredients (I have access to an Asian supermarket but live in a small UK city so not sure how good it is).
Thank you!
The following are on rotation in my kitchen!
Beef udon
Taiwanese beef noodle soup (if you have an IP/pressure cooker)
Korean noodles with kimchi (yes, you make stock but it's not a long boil; just while you prepare the other ingredients)
posted by yonglin at 7:35 AM on March 17, 2019
Beef udon
Taiwanese beef noodle soup (if you have an IP/pressure cooker)
Korean noodles with kimchi (yes, you make stock but it's not a long boil; just while you prepare the other ingredients)
posted by yonglin at 7:35 AM on March 17, 2019
Campbell's soup makes a prepared pho broth you might like to try.
posted by Enid Lareg at 7:54 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Enid Lareg at 7:54 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
A lot of Chinese food is mix-and-match. There are famous named dishes, but a lot of it is just this fried with that. Just about any combination of soup, noodles, and toppings makes a fine noodle soup dish.
The simplest soup is hot water, bouillon, finely ground pepper, herbs like scallion or cilantro, and fat, like sesame oil or chili-infused vegetable oil or bacon grease or rendered lard. Mix those ingredient together in the serving bowl while the noodles cook.
I'm surprised to hear you say that making your own stock might be too complicated. You can make stock very simply, by boiling bones and scraps for a long time. Or, if you have a pressure cooker, even an hour will do. The secret ingredient is the part of a chicken wing homologous to our hands, or pig feet, or pig tails: anything gristly to add gelatin.
Noodles are simple. Boil them. You can even boil them in the stock you will use to serve them, if you don't mind starch from the noodles making your stock cloudy. I don't mind.
Toppings can be anything you want. Google for "pho toppings," "ramen toppings," "udon toppings" and so on. There's even an app.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:06 AM on March 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
The simplest soup is hot water, bouillon, finely ground pepper, herbs like scallion or cilantro, and fat, like sesame oil or chili-infused vegetable oil or bacon grease or rendered lard. Mix those ingredient together in the serving bowl while the noodles cook.
I'm surprised to hear you say that making your own stock might be too complicated. You can make stock very simply, by boiling bones and scraps for a long time. Or, if you have a pressure cooker, even an hour will do. The secret ingredient is the part of a chicken wing homologous to our hands, or pig feet, or pig tails: anything gristly to add gelatin.
Noodles are simple. Boil them. You can even boil them in the stock you will use to serve them, if you don't mind starch from the noodles making your stock cloudy. I don't mind.
Toppings can be anything you want. Google for "pho toppings," "ramen toppings," "udon toppings" and so on. There's even an app.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:06 AM on March 17, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm gonna give a shout out to high-end good packets of instant noodle soups. You know, ramen packets. But good ones. They cost 2-3x more than the cheap stuff and are actually pretty good. There's a bunch of blogs devoted to reviewing them, see for instance Ramen Rater. I'm partial to Shin Black myself and buy it regularly mail order on Amazon.
I know, it seems so sad eating a packet of freeze dried food! That's why you fancy it up. A bit of fresh vegetable goes a long way to improving a bowl of instant ramen. So does some salty meat. I use a chopped up American hot dog because it's easy; any pre-cooked sausage will work. Some folks swear by a slice of cheese, but I don't much care for that myself. Boiled eggs for ramen are easy to make too and if you're really lazy you can skip the pickling step.
I've looked at making my own ramen at home. But there's two ingredients that are hard to find pre-prepared: the broth and the noodles. For proper ramen both of those need to be fresh, not dried. So I'd rather just go all-in on the processed food compromise for the base soup and spend my time adding stuff to improve it.
posted by Nelson at 8:39 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
I know, it seems so sad eating a packet of freeze dried food! That's why you fancy it up. A bit of fresh vegetable goes a long way to improving a bowl of instant ramen. So does some salty meat. I use a chopped up American hot dog because it's easy; any pre-cooked sausage will work. Some folks swear by a slice of cheese, but I don't much care for that myself. Boiled eggs for ramen are easy to make too and if you're really lazy you can skip the pickling step.
I've looked at making my own ramen at home. But there's two ingredients that are hard to find pre-prepared: the broth and the noodles. For proper ramen both of those need to be fresh, not dried. So I'd rather just go all-in on the processed food compromise for the base soup and spend my time adding stuff to improve it.
posted by Nelson at 8:39 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
If you happen to have a pressure cooker, this chicken pho hits the right note and will make your house smell like pho, in 30 minutes, even if it's not quite as satisfying as a nice bowl of beef pho from a shop.
posted by ftm at 9:00 AM on March 17, 2019
posted by ftm at 9:00 AM on March 17, 2019
The key is good stock, or failing that, a good bouillon cube / ramen packet.
I've gotten a lot of use of black vinegar, sesame paste, and the water from cooking the noodles. The starch from the water combines with the fat of the sesame paste into a sauce.
Also a lot of people just put 西红柿炒鸡蛋 on their noodles and call it a night!
posted by batter_my_heart at 9:47 AM on March 17, 2019
I've gotten a lot of use of black vinegar, sesame paste, and the water from cooking the noodles. The starch from the water combines with the fat of the sesame paste into a sauce.
Also a lot of people just put 西红柿炒鸡蛋 on their noodles and call it a night!
posted by batter_my_heart at 9:47 AM on March 17, 2019
without too many hard-to-get ingredients
I wouldn't get too hung up about the authenticity of the ingredients. People have always adapted their cuisines to the ingredients available to them. One can even argue that trying to make things as they would be made halfway around the world is less authentic: it's certainly not what many Chinese people would do in your circumstances. In the U.S., we've got a tradition 150 years old of cooking with Smithfield ham, because that was the closest you could get to regular ham back when people were coming over to work on the railroad.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 11:10 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't get too hung up about the authenticity of the ingredients. People have always adapted their cuisines to the ingredients available to them. One can even argue that trying to make things as they would be made halfway around the world is less authentic: it's certainly not what many Chinese people would do in your circumstances. In the U.S., we've got a tradition 150 years old of cooking with Smithfield ham, because that was the closest you could get to regular ham back when people were coming over to work on the railroad.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 11:10 AM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]
Serious Eats did a DIY instant ramen writeup which does include a few different recipes, but is more of a discussion of method. You could easily adapt this to ingredients that work for you.
posted by O9scar at 1:07 PM on March 17, 2019
posted by O9scar at 1:07 PM on March 17, 2019
If you can find a Thai red curry paste you like, this coconut curry soup is pretty tasty, though I can't swear to its authenticity. You can add things to this soup to bulk it up if you like -- baby corn, perhaps, or pea pods, peppers, mushrooms...whatever you like.
+1 to Nongshim Shin Ramyun. This sounds crazy, but it is even better if you chuck in some broccoli at the very end of cooking and top the whole thing with cheese.
posted by Janta at 4:12 PM on March 17, 2019
+1 to Nongshim Shin Ramyun. This sounds crazy, but it is even better if you chuck in some broccoli at the very end of cooking and top the whole thing with cheese.
posted by Janta at 4:12 PM on March 17, 2019
This thread is closed to new comments.
I mixed up the soup base as per the instructions, added soy sauce and sesame oil and frozen garlic for flavour, and simmered the soup with peas, soy beans and shelf-stable udon, then added frozen veggie dumplings (the Itsu brand ones, also available at Tesco, are pretty good) to simmer for the last few minutes. It was tasty, simple and involved zero dicking around with dried mushrooms or having to make my own broth. You can add onions at the beginning with the frozen garlic, or other veg like courgettes and pak choi at the simmering stage, we just used what we had to hand.
posted by terretu at 6:00 AM on March 17, 2019 [4 favorites]