For chewy Japanese noodles, borrow an Italian technique

3 comments

1. Enter the Italian technique of cooking the noodles only until al dente — still quite firm. To further firm up the texture, we chilled them by rinsing them with ice in the strainer under cold water. Even after reheating the noodles in the cooked sauce, they retained that pleasant toothsome quality that makes this vegetarian dish feel so hearty.

2. Not new. And a lot of udon recipes do this anyways. They also use alkaline or lye water to achieve chewiness. So no need to look to Italy. Italy took noodles from China anyways.

3. This recipe is not very Japanese.

   If someone genuinely cooked this and posted it here, I’d be happy to upvote it because I’m sure it tastes delicious and I don’t want to discourage experimentation. After all, fresh udon noodles are 20 yen and times are tight. Many people in Japan cook dishes made from mixed unusual ingredients like this.

   But this is a blog post without any effort beyond that, so I don’t think it is worth upvoting as Japanese cuisine.