Japanese-style ramen noodles, sauté with veggies, with a tangy twist
A light main course, or a great side, packing ramen noodles and vegetables with soy, Worcestershire, and mirin sauces, for a delightful, light, tangy twist.
Serves: 2-3
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 10 minutes
This recipe combines a lot of veggies, and skips on ingredients high in proteins. This makes it very light-weight, which goes perfectly with its light, tangy flavor. Consider it as a hot side dish along with a separate dish of grilled tofu, or a seaweed salad (like my seaweed salad, with panko, and cherry blossom flavored rice vinegar dressing), or a generous potato salad like edamame to jagaimo no salada — a Japanese potato salad with edamame, umeboshi and shiso.
Mirin and vegan Worcestershire sauces bring a tangy, slightly sweet flavor. While the vegan Worcestershire sauce can replace the soy sauce entirely, for a distinctive taste, I invite you to be frugal when pouring the mirin one — it has a great taste, however it can fail a dish on its own if there’s too much of it.
About mirin
Mirin is a common ingredient in Japanese (and to some extent Korean) cuisine. It’s a rice wine which has less alcohol and more sugar than sake. The level of alcohol lowers when it is heated, and depending on which kind of mirin you find, it may be as low as 0.9% before cooking — as my bottle of mirin-fu mentions. Traditional mirin contains natural complex sugar created during the fermentation. This type of definition often means that lower-quality products don’t. The mirin-fu bottle I bought contains additional sugar and other sweeteners; it still has a good taste, though be cautious and read labels if you scrutiny your sugar intake.
Ingredients
200 g pre-cooked ramen noodles1
Cabbage ~ 130 g (I like flat cabbage for such recipe - Kabestu / キャベツ in Japanese)
1 carrot ~ 140 g
The white part of a leek ~ 90 g (see the tip at the bottom of this recipe for what to do with the greener, leafy part of a leek)
1 celery branch ~ 100 g2
Mung bean sprouts ~ 150 g
1 small yellow onion ~ 60 g
1 garlic clove
A thumb-sized piece of ginger root
2 spring onions
2 soup spoons of soy sauce3
4 (or more) soup spoons of vegan Worcestershire sauce4 (yes, vegan; comment if you’d like I recommend a brand)
Mirin sauce
4 soup spoons of oil (any non-flavored oil will do, like colza, sunflower or canola)
Preparation
Recipes recommending to cook with a wok most of the times means the dish will cook fast. Read: you’ll have no time in-between adding two sets of ingredients. Same goes if you rely on a deep pan, the pace is a property of the dish, not of the ustensil. You need to have completed all the preparation steps before even heating your wok or deep pan.
Peel the onion, cut it in two, then in slices
Peel the garlic, then slice it
Peel the ginger, cut it into small matchsticks
Finely slice the leek, wash them thoroughly to remove any dirt they could possibly contain, then push the inner rings out of the outer ones to obtain several rings of different circumferences
Peel the carrot, cut it in two, then in thin, long matchsticks
Cut the cabbage in slices, from the outside toward the inside
Wash the spring onions, cut the white parts in 3-4 cm sections, and finely slice the green parts
Wash the celery branch, remove both ends, then slice it to make moon quarters
Check if the noodles need to be prepared; some require to be washed, other re-heated so they separate nicely (which wasn't the case when I took the pictures)
Cooking
Remember this recipe cooks fast, adding one after the other ingredients you’ve prepared according to the instructions in section Preparation. The perfect ustensil to cook this recipe is a carbon-steel wok. My second choice is a stainless steel deep-sided pan. If you have no other option, you can use a non-stick wok or deep-sided pan, however you won’t reach as high temperatures, and will need to cook for a bit longer — add 1 or 2 minutes to all durations below.
Heat your wok on medium-high flame/power
Add oil from the edge, making a circle; doing so, the oil will cover all the surface of the wok
Add the soy sauce; mix with the oil (you won’t obtain an emulsion, however you’ll avoid having each occupy a side of the wok bottom)
Add the carrot; stir for 2 minutes
Add the onion, garlic and ginger; stir for 1 minute
Add the leek, cabbage, and white parts of the spring onions
Add 2 soup spoons (or more) of vegan Worcestershire sauce; stir for 1 minute
Add the pre-cooked ramen noodles, mix gently to avoid breaking them; stir for 1 minute
Add another 2 soup spoons of vegan Worcestershire sauce, and a dash of mirin (the more you add, the more tangy the dish will be; the more sweety, too, so refrain your enthusiasm, it’s not a dessert; start with half a soup spoon)
Heat the wok to the maximum (this is where the carbon steel wok will make the difference compared to other materials, especially versus a non-stick one)
Add the mung bean sprouts and the celery; stir vigorously for 1 minute, grating a bit the bottom of the wok if ever it sticks a bit
Serve, use the thin green slices of spring onions as topping
You can serve immediately (definitely the recommended approach); beware it's steaming hot! You can also let it cool, refrigerate and re-heat later in the micro-wave oven.
Enjoy!
If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it - please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.
Here’s a tip before you go
Grocery stores usually sell spring onions in packs of 5 or more. This means that even if your recipe needs 1 or 2, you’ll end up having more. It’s not a problem if you cook other recipes (why not check mine?) in a week time frame. If you don’t, or still have leftovers, and have such home applicance, I recommend you freeze them. The top tray in my freezer is regularly full of chopped roots (lemongrass, ginger, turmeric) and leaves (curry, coriander, kaffir lime, mint, basil).
Since frozen spring onions return to room temperature incredibly fast, and loose their firmness, you’ll have to toss them right away in your wok or on top of the dish when they’re needed — do not remove them from the freezer in advance.
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Be cautious: ramen noodles are made of wheat, which is a known allergen
Be cautious: celery is a known allergen
Be cautious: soy sauce is made from soy beans and wheat; both are known allergens
Be cautious: vegan Worcestershire sauce contains soy sauce, which (see above) contains allergens
Cabbage is an unsung hero! And what a unique use of Worcestershire sauce!