Instead of plainly adding soy sauce, mirin, and sugar to your cooked udon noodles, give your recipe a little twist by preparing this easy-to-make udon noodle sauce. Scroll down.
Udon Noodle Sauce
What Are Udon Noodles?
Udon noodles are Japanese noodles commonly made from wheat flour, salt, and water. These chewy noodles are usually served in a dashi-broth base.
Udon noodles are served in various ways depending on its type. But basically, they are boiled in a pot of hot water.
Udon are served hot in winter and chilled during summer.
Though udon are commonly known as Japanese chewy noodles, it is believed that it came from China.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF UDON NOODLES
These are the following:
Dry Udon Noodles
These udon noodles are usually stored in a bag or box and sold at any Asian grocery stores. Before you stir fry this type of udon, you’ll need to cook them first in boiling water. Then add more cold water, bring to boil again, and stir gradually until the noodles are tender.
Pre-cooked Udon Noodles
These udon are partly cooked and are most common in larger grocery stores. They are stored in a vacuum sealed package and are sold in the groceries’ refrigerator section.
Frozen Udon Noodles
Similar to pre-cooked udon noodles, frozen udon noodles are also precooked. What makes frozen noodles different from the former is that they are sold in the freezer section of the grocery stores.
Fresh Udon Noodles
These noodles are commonly sold in most Asian stores. They can be found in the refrigerated section. As the name suggests, this type of udon is fresh and uncooked. Before stir-frying the noodles, it is recommended to cook it in boiling water until tender.
Fresh udon noodles have a bouncy quality, a doughy texture and mild flavor. While dry udon noodles are flatter than the fresh ones. Both dry noodles and fresh udon can be cooked in various ways.
Traditionally, udon is served as hot noodle soup garnished with fried tofu, ground pork, tempura or scallions. But there are some who love stir-fried udon with shrimp, cabbage, chicken, and mushrooms.
And of course, the most important component that makes the fried udon more delectable is the udon sauce.
What is Udon Sauce?
Udon sauce is a sumptuously flavored Asian sauce, also called Yaki Udon sauce. It is made from dark soy sauce, mirin, sugar, sesame oil, oyster sauce, sugar, and rice wine vinegar.
This slightly sweet sauce is not only limited for stir fried udon noodles, but also with other Asian noodles such as ramen noodles, lo mein noodles. rice noodles. and others.
Adding chopped vegetables like shiitake mushrooms, green onions, bok choy to the regular ingredients of the udon cuisine Asian love, will absolutely boost the rich umami flavor of the dish.
So here’s our simple and easy to make udon sauce perfect for any stir fry noodle dish.
HOW TO MAKE UDON SAUCE?
Before we move on with the step-by-step process in making this stir fry sauce, let us first enumerate its common ingredients.
RICE WINE VINEGAR
Rice vinegar is made by fermented sugar from rice. It is less acidic compared to white distilled vinegar. Its mild, tangy, and delicate flavor is perfect for this stir fry recipe.
SESAME OIL
This edible oil which is made from sesame seeds has a delicate and neutral flavor. This ingredient adds to the tastiness of the sauce.
MIRIN
Mirin has more sugar content and is lower in alcohol. This staple ingredient adds up sweet balance to the sauce.
BROWN SUGAR
This partially refined sugar product with a distinctive brown color and is among the major ingredients. It mainly acts as a sweetening agent of the sauce.
OYSTER SAUCE
This modern condiment made from oyster extracts, salt, sugar, water and cornstarch, is also an essential ingredient in making udon sauce. It tastes a little bit sweet and salty with a darkened caramel texture.
DARK SOY SAUCE ( MUSHROOM FLAVOR)
Unlike the regular dark soy sauce, mushroom flavored dark soy sauce adds a higher level of umami to your sauce.
And here’s the complete recipe in making our udon sauce. Gather all the ingredients needed. Check out the complete instructions below.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 5 MINUTES
Equiment: SMALL SAUCEPAN
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 tbsps mirin
- 2 tsps sesame oil
- 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
- 1/3 cup dark soy sauce (mushroom flavor)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup oyster sauce
DIRECTIONS:
- In a small saucepan, add soy sauce, sesame oil, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar, and mirin. Then bring to a boil over medium heat or medium high heat, stirring frequently to ensure that the brown sugar is properly dissolved.
- When done, remove the saucepan from heat and mix with stir-fried udon noodles (or any udon recipe), chopped scallions. crushed red pepper, and other vegetables.
If used at a later time, let the udon sauce cool down and store in an airtight container or a freezer-safe container.
You can store the store in a fridge for up to 5 days and up to 2 months if frozen.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS.
When you are about to use a frozen udon sauce, remove the container from the freezer and thaw in the refrigerator overnight. Then warm the sauce over medium high heat. Once done, use immediately.
Definitely, yes. You can use dry sherry, dry marsala or sake if the Japanese cooking wine (mirin) is not available.For the mushroom flavored dark soy sauce, you can replace it with regular soy sauce, while oyster sauce can be replaced with Hoisin sauce.
Yaki udon is actually a stir-fried dish made of udon noodles mixed with different types of meat and vegetables in a soy-sauce base, while udon are chewy noodles (Japanese noodles) made of wheat, water, and salt.