Slurping is no gaffe but encouraged when eating udon soup
If I tell your there's a dish out there that's tasty, comforting, nourishing, satisfying, ridiculously easy to make and fun to slurp, what do you say?
You're all in, right?
Well, how come you haven't made udon noodle soup at home? That's what I was asking myself when I received a meal kit with the recipe and ingredients for fresh udon noodle soup. If you haven't tried a meal kit service yet (Blue Apron or Green Chef, for instance), they are a great way to get you out of a culinary rut. For a fee, you receive a box of ingredients with recipe cards to make your weekly meals.
A few weeks ago, the ingredients for udon noodle soup were waiting for me on my doorstep. Udon noodles are a type of thick, wheat flour noodles used in Japanese cuisine. In their simplest form, they are served in a light broth with a few vegetables.
The whole cooking process took less than 15 minutes. In between slurping down all that noodle-y goodness, I kept thinking, “Why in the world has it never occurred to me to make this on my own?”
The hardest part would be shopping for some of the ingredients. The version I made included shiitake mushrooms, Japanese curry powder, tatsoi (a Chinese flat cabbage) and Ponzu, a citrus-based sauce.
Those ingredients, admittedly, might not be on the shelf of your local grocery store. However, there are as many versions of this recipe as there are home cooks and it's perfect for experimentation.
The recipe I have included with this column is by Cat Cora, who you might recognize from “Iron Chef America” on the Food Network. I selected it because it has more mainstream ingredients and is just as delicious. The only thing a little hard to locate is the white miso, which you will find in a store like Whole Foods or an Asian market in the refrigerated section.
Best of all, you can store fresh udon noodles in the refrigerator or in the freezer. That's good to know because once you've made them, you are going to want to repeat the experience over and over again.
• M. Eileen Brown is the Daily Herald's director of strategic marketing and innovation and an incurable soup-a-holic. She specializes in vegetarian soups and blogs at soupalooza.com.