Yakisoba
Japanese fried noodles with pork and cabbage in a sweet-savoury Worcestershire-based sauce. Fifteen minutes in one pan.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 700
- Calories
- 28g
- Protein
- 32g
- Fat
- 74g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 400 g fresh yakisoba or ramen noodles
- 200 g pork belly or shoulder
- 200 g white cabbage
- 1 carrot
- 1 onion
- 2 spring onions
- 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp ketchup
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp neutral oil
- Aonori, beni shoga and Japanese mayonnaise, to serve
Instructions
- 1Loosen the noodles. If they are a compressed block, rinse them briefly under warm water and separate the strands with your fingers. Cold clumped noodles will break rather than bend in the pan.
- 2Slice the pork thinly. Shred the cabbage, cut the carrot into thin matchsticks and slice the onion.
- 3Mix the Worcestershire sauce, oyster sauce, ketchup, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl. This is yakisoba sauce, and the bottled version is essentially the same five things.
- 4Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a wide pan over high heat. Add the pork, spread it flat, and cook for 3 minutes until browned and some fat has rendered.
- 5Add the onion and carrot and stir-fry for 2 minutes, then the cabbage for 2 minutes more. It should stay crunchy — cabbage cooked to softness makes the dish watery.
- 6Push everything to one side, add the remaining 1 tbsp oil to the empty half, and add the noodles. Spread them flat and leave them undisturbed for 60 seconds to catch some colour.
- 7Pour the sauce around the edge of the pan so it hits hot metal and caramelises rather than just wetting the noodles.
- 8Toss everything together for 60 seconds, until the noodles are evenly coated and glossy.
- 9Serve topped with spring onion, a dusting of aonori, a pile of beni shoga and a zigzag of Japanese mayonnaise.
Yakisoba is a festival food and a fridge-clearing dinner, and despite the name it contains no soba at all — the noodles are wheat, the same kind used for ramen.
The sauce is five things you have
Bottled yakisoba sauce is convenient and unnecessary. It is essentially a fruit-and-vegetable brown sauce with sweetness and umami added, and Worcestershire sauce plus ketchup plus oyster sauce plus soy and sugar gets you there.
Worcestershire is the backbone: tamarind, anchovy, vinegar and spice. In Japan the equivalent is tonkatsu or chuno sauce, which is a thicker relative of the same idea.
Mix it before you start. Once the pan is going you have about four minutes total and no time to measure.
Loosen the noodles first
Fresh yakisoba noodles are sold as a tight vacuum-packed block. Dropped in like that they break into fragments as you try to separate them in a hot pan.
Thirty seconds under warm water and a bit of patience with your fingers, and they come apart in strands. This is the same rule as pad see ew and it applies to every fresh noodle.
Let the noodles sit still
Sixty seconds of undisturbed contact with a hot pan gives the noodles a few blistered, slightly chewy spots. That contrast is most of what makes a fried noodle dish taste fried rather than boiled and sauced.
Constant stirring keeps the temperature even and prevents any of it.
Sauce down the side
Pouring sauce into the middle of the pan drops the temperature and the liquid pools. Pouring it around the hot edge lets it hit bare metal, sizzle, and caramelise on the way in.
It is a small habit that improves every stir-fry.
Keep the cabbage crunchy
Cabbage is mostly water and will release all of it if you cook it long enough. Two minutes at high heat softens it just enough while keeping structure. Any longer and the noodles end up sitting in cabbage liquid.
The toppings are not optional
Aonori is dried green seaweed powder and gives a distinctly marine note. Beni shoga is red pickled ginger, sharp and acidic, and it cuts through the sweetness of the sauce. Japanese mayonnaise is richer and more acidic than the Western kind because it uses only yolks and rice vinegar.
Together they turn a good plate of noodles into recognisable yakisoba. If you can only get one, make it the pickled ginger.
Nutrition
Around 700 calories a serving. Swapping pork belly for shoulder or chicken thigh cuts the fat by roughly a third, and the dish takes vegetables generously — bean sprouts, peppers and mushrooms all belong.
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