“Shanghainese adore their noodles, and at one of my favorite hole-in-the wall noodle shops, I loved getting sesame noodles. During Covid, when we were all stuck at home, I was rummaging in the fridge and had an epiphany for a hack to make my favorite noodles: I used sesame hummus! It brought back many happy memories.”
Read morePan-fried Tofu with Umi Yakisoba Sauce aka "teriyaki" tofu
This recipe is inspired by the wonderful Japanese classic agedashi tofu, but takes it in the direction of a teriyaki dish, coating the lightly fried tofu pieces in our Umi Organic yakisoba sauce. The tofu is not at all greasy—one of the miracles of this cooking technique. This is very easy to make and a textural treat. I like keeping the tofu pieces large so you get to enjoy their contrasting textures after frying. I typically eat this over rice but it would be great over Umi noodles in a miso sesame sauce.
Read moreLola's Gilgeori Toast (a wild version)
The year I lived in Kyoto, Japan, I traveled to Korea over winter break. On Christmas morning, in the freezing cold, I was walking to catch a bus and came upon a street food vendor making breakfast sandwiches. The snow had begun to fall and he let me shelter under his tarp while he made me a very simple cabbage-egg omelet that he served between big fluffy slices of white bread with a delicious sauce that reminded me of Japanese okonomiyaki sauce. I loved the sandwich so much! It felt vaguely healthy but also rich and satisfying. When we made our own yakisoba sauce, with some of those same flavor notes, I knew I wanted to try to recreate this breakfast sandwich.
Read moreVery Juicy "Teriyaki" Chicken
Pan-frying whole chicken thighs briefly, then steaming them with a little sake, and finishing with our Umi yakisoba sauce makes the most succulent and delicious teriyaki-style chicken. It’s also incredibly easy to make and goes with any side dishes you’d like! It’s not a typical teriyaki because our sauce has a more complex, umami-rich sweet-and-sour flavor thanks to Worcestershire, tamarind, and apple puree, but it’s definitely in the same family and scratches the same itch!
Read moreYakisoba with Lots of Mushrooms
I find mushrooms spectacularly delicious and satisfying. This dish highlights shiitake mushrooms—every single bite of noodles is tangled with a few mushrooms, which means every bite is a winner. While this recipe calls for shiitake, any number of mushrooms would work well in their place: oysters, criminis, lobsters, chanterelles—any mushrooms that tastes good sautéed in oil. This is now my favorite way to eat yakisoba noodles!
Read moreYuri's Creamy Miso Pasta
The combo of cream and chickpea or white miso is a little known secret. Just those two ingredients are unbelievably delicious together—salty, rich, deep, clean, lip-smacking. I can go on! Here, these two join a little sautéed garlic and some vegetables for a perfect, satisfying vegetarian Japanese pasta. It really does feel like Italian pasta reborn in Japan—the best of both worlds!
Read moreUmi Lo Mein
Of course, lo mein using our yakisoba noodles! Lo mein—soy-forward stir-fried noodles—descends from Chinese cuisine but has become a distinctly Chinese-American dish. This is such a quick and delicious meal, very kid friendly, and a great template for all kinds of greens! it wouldn’t be unheard of to eat this with a side of wontons!
Read moreUmi Noodles in Miso Pesto
Our Umi miso pesto is smooth and creamy and works beautifully as a dressing for boiled noodles. The word pesto is a little misleading but the cornerstones are there: umami in the form of miso instead of parmesan; herbs, in this case cilantro instead of basil; nutty richness through sesame oil instead of pine nuts or walnuts; and richness through sunflower oil instead of olive oil. I like just Umi noodles tossed in pesto as a whole meal, but it’s great with some sliced ripe tomato in season, wedges of roasted winter squash, or something more substantial like panfried chicken or tofu.
Read moreChilly Dandan Noodle Bowl
Even during this unfathomably hot summer, I can’t go more than a few weeks without my favorite noodle dish tugging at my appetite: dandan noodles. I love dandan more than anything: chewy noodles tossed with ground pork and richly flavored with sesame paste and Sichuan peppercorn. To satisfy my year-round comfort food cravings, I’ve created a variation designed for the heat. This cold dandan noodle bowl features chilled Umi Organic ramen noodles and swaps the traditional preserved greens for a light, raw pea shoot salad.
Read moreUmi Chop Salad V1
This one is super summery, light but satisfying! It features lettuce, crunchy vegetables, and my favorite trick, quick pickled radishes, which become a beautiful shade of Barbie pink. This takes almost no time to make, but the radishes are most beautiful if you let them sit at least an hour after making them. I make too many at once and eat them over a few days.
Read moreUmi Noodle Salad with Chicken, Tomato and Cucumber
This is a very literal, pared down riff on hiyashi chuka, the Japanese summertime classic of cold ramen noodles in a sesame dressing. We’ve made the dressing for you! All you need is a bit of leftover chicken (or panfried tofu or mushrooms!), a cucumber, a handful of tomatoes, green onion, and if you’re anything like me, chili oil. I dare you to take more then 3 minutes to boil and assemble this whole thing! It’s instantaneous and wonderful. A mid-summer classic.
Read moreUmi Noodle Salad with Kimchi and Sardines
Cooking has been brutal with the temperature inside my home at 95 degrees. One thing that is helping me enormously is the ease of our Noodles with Miso Sesame Sauce, and cold noodle salads generally. I put water on to boil, rinse and prep a few veggies (or in this case, just open a jar of Choi’s kimchi!), walk away, sit in front of our box fan, come back once the water is sputtering, boil the noodles for 2 minutes, toss with sauce, top with toppings, and that’s it! It’s as low maintenance as a sandwich and infinitely more texturally interesting and fun to eat.
Read moreMinty Noodle Salad with Peas, Peanuts and Lime Fish Sauce Dressing
Katherine Deumling of Cook with What You Have shares her recipe for an Umi noodle salad with peas, peanuts, cilantro and mint. It’s really perfect. It takes almost no time to cook (a gift on very hot days) and tastes refreshing and flavorful. This is your new go-to for noodle salad daze and days.
Read moreBetty's Seasonal Yakisoba
“I love the versatility of yakisoba. When I was growing up, my mom prepared yakisoba using pork, carrots, cabbage, onions, and bean sprouts. Since I live in Portland where we have access to a wide variety of vegetables on a year-round basis, I use whatever seasonal vegetables I have on hand for my yakisoba. I always aim for at least 5 colors in all of my meals and yakisoba makes it easy to achieve my goal.”
Read moreJammy Ramen Eggs, 2 Ways
Creating our perfect ramen egg has been something we’ve slowly worked on as we prep for one farmers market after another. What are we looking for in a great ramen egg? The white should be cooked, though tender. The yolk should start runny, but time spent in a salt-brine should cure the yolk, deepening the color to a vivid orange and transforming the texture into something jammy, gooey, akin in texture to dulce de leche. The egg should taste savory but not aggressive. Here are our rules of the road and recipes for steaming and boiling our perfect ramen egg.
Read moreKatherine's Simple Ramen with Baked Salmon and Ginger
This recipe shared enthusiastically with us by Katherine Deumling of Cook with What You Have is incredibly simple, and that’s the beauty. You’ll have to start with a store-bought or homemade broth, but once that’s in the bag, the rest comes together easily. The salmon recipe, on its own, is a keeper! Katherine is right: The fresh ginger is the key here!
Read moreJane's Yakisoba Pan
Yakisoba-pan was born in the 1950s, at the equivalent of a Japanese diner where bread had become a common yakisoba side dish to sop up the rich, glistening sauce. It takes the chewy savory noodles and tucks them into a milk bun known as koppe-pan that looks deceptively like a hotdog bun. Jane Hashimawari of Ippaipdx shared her recipes for one of the greatest after-school snacks of all time!
Read moreNaomi's Richmond Yakisoba
Naomi Molstrom, our go-to favorite noodle lover and adviser (who claims her body is 90% comprised of noodles!), shared one of her recipes for yakisoba at home. This takes minutes and is hand’s down delicious! She makes this for lunch for herself and her two sons on the regular.
Read moreAyla's Noodle Night for the Family
We are a working family that loves a quick, delicious meal that incorporates some healthy vegetables with little effort. So happy to have Umi noodles and sauce to make dinner so easy. This was just cut vegetables - some raw some sauteed - added to the delicious sauce at the maker’s choosing!
Read moreNoodles with Miso Sesame Sauce, Meatballs, Broccoli Raab and Pickled Radishes
This recipe is inspired by the farmer market in spring, when the first radishes and raabs hit. It’s always amazing to see raabs—bouquets of greens that have overwintered and are sending up flowers to become seeds for the next season. Broccoli raab is the most famous of the raab, but we are also crazy for arugula, cabbage, collard, and kale raabs. And the best way we’ve found to cook them is to blanch them in boiling water, which happens to be exactly how you cook noodles! So we cook them together for a really easy dinner hack.
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