Soba noodles recipe

With intentions to bring soba noodles for lunch, I cooked and cooled a bunch of my favourite buckwheat noodles only to realise that I had ran out of store bought dipping sauce! Sigh. What should I do with my noodles...

A quick search on google and I landed on this promising recipe by Nigella Lawson. It did not disappoint!

(for single serving)

Ingredients
1 bunch of dried soba/buckwheat noodles (I bought a pack of 250g from the supermarkets and they were already separated into 4 smaller bunches, I would presume about 60g worth of dried noodles)

Unflavoured toasted seaweed (Store-bought, comes in big square sheets, I used half a sheet, cutting into even thin strips with a scissors)

1 tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds (I did not toast mine)

2.5 teaspoons of soy sauce (I used small satchets of Kikoman soy sauce you can get from sushi counters. Since 1 pack is about 3ml, I used about 4 packs)

1 tsp of honey

1 tsp of white rice vinegar

1 tsp of sesame oil

Method

1. Bring to boil a saucepan of water and boil soba noodles. Cook as per instructions on noodle pack. Mine took about 3 minutes.

2. Once noodles are soft, immediately rinse them in cold running water. This will help the noodles to stay springy and chewy. I usually prepare a ice water bath; cold water with a few ice cubes and dunk the cooked noodles in. Cool for about 40 seconds and pour away the water and leave aside with the remaining ice cubes.

3. Prepare the sauce by mixing together soy sauce, honey, vinegar. Add in sesame oil after.

4. Remove ice cubes from noodles and store in fridge until needed. Drizzle in sauce and top noodles with seaweed and sesame seeds. Mix well before serving.

Tips:

Soba noodles can be cooked and stored overnight in the fridge. To prevent the noodles from drying out, keep the noodles in a sealed container or cover bowl with cling wrap. As I am bringing the noodles out, a simple and convenient way is to keep the noodles in a clear plastic/zip-lock bag.

If you are planning to bring the noodles as a lunch bento, you can refer to how I store my food. As aforementioned, keep the noodles in a plastic bag as this will help to keep the noodles moist. I usually have a side dish to accompany my noodles which I keep in a plastic container. 

If you look closely, there is a small silver package inside the box. I use aluminium foil to create a small pouch to keep my seaweed and sesame seeds. Seaweed absorbs moisture easily so to prevent them from becoming soggy when left overnight, I wrap them in aluminium foil. Combine them with noodles just before serving.

I also have a small plastic container in which I store my sauces. Do note that when this picture was taken, the sauce in the container was normal store bought soba dipping sauce, mixed with water. The sauce recipe mentioned above will not yield you this much sauce and you will not need such a large volume of sauce for 1 serving of noodles.