Why This Recipe Works
Parboiling fresh ramen noodles for a minute less than the package instructions ensures they stay nice and chewy. Using a large heavy bottomed pan ensures you have enough thermal mass to caramelize this ramen stir-fry. My homemade yakisoba sauce has just four basic ingredients, but it creates a marvelous umami-rich sauce with the right balance of salt, sweet, and sour tastes.
Japanese Street Food
These days, health regulations have all but obliterated outdoor food stalls, but yakisoba can still be found sizzling away in stalls everywhere from baseball stadiums to traditional matsuri (festivals) alongside other popular favorites like Okonomiyaki and Yakiudon. If you’ve ever been to one of these festivals in Japan, you probably remember the smell of the fruity, spicy sauce caramelizing on those giant steel griddles accompanied by the trademark clatter of the stubby metal spatulas used to stir-fry the popular noodle dish.
Ingredients for Yakisoba
While most street food versions of yakisoba are mostly noodles with a few scraps of cabbage here and there, I like loading my yakisoba up with veggies (and sometimes seafood or meat), turning it into a complete meal.
Yakisoba Noodles
Most people outside of Japan associate soba with buckwheat noodles, because soba literally means “buckwheat” in Japanese, but the word was historically used to refer to any long, thin noodle. In fact, ramen was originally known as chūkasoba (Chinese noodles). In the case of Yakisoba, the noodles are Chinese-style ramen noodles made with wheat flour and alkali, or kansui(かん水). In Japan, these noodles are available in pre-boiled packs specifically for this dish. Although they’re convenient, I’m not a fan of them because they’re a pain to untangle, and they tend to get overcooked and soft when you stir-fry them. Instead, I like to use fresh wheat noodles like ramen noodles or chow mein, and I boil them myself. It’s an extra step, but it’s not that much more work, and the results are better. Yakisoba is so good you’ll likely end up eating the whole batch, so if you’re concerned with such things as carbs and calories, there’s a good alternative: Shirataki Noodles. These noodles made from the corm of a Voodoo Lily are very low in carbs and have virtually no calories. Go check out my Shirataki Yakisoba Recipe for all the details.
Yakisoba Sauce
In Japan, there are a wide variety of fruit and vegetable-based sauces such as usuta sōsu, chūno sōsu, and tonkatsu sauce, which are often abbreviated down to sōsu. They’re sweet, savory, and spicy condiments poured on everything from Tonkatsu to cabbage salad, and they’re used as a seasoning in dishes ranging from Hamburg Steak to Japanese Curry. Yakisoba sauce is another condiment in the same category, and while you can buy it bottled, I prefer mixing my ownblend and using condiments available almost anywhere. Ketchup forms the fruity foundation while also adding a mild vinegary tang. Oyster sauce and soy sauce provide the salt and loads of umami, while Worcestershire sauce brings a complex variety of spices that gives the Yakisoba sauce its trademark flavor. If you want your yakisoba spicy, try addingyour favorite chili oil or chili sauce, like gochujang or doubanjiang.
Meat
The most common type of meat used for yakisoba is thinly sliced pork belly. Not only does it add a ton of flavor to the noodles, but it also contributes some fat that helps keep the noodles from sticking together. If you have trouble finding thinly sliced pork belly in your area, American-style bacon is a good substitute; however, you’ll need to reduce the amount of sauce you add a little as the bacon can be quite salty.If you’re not into pork, chicken or shrimp are both excellent options, and it’s also okay to just leave out the meat altogether to make vegetarian yakisoba (make sure you use a vegetarian Worcestershire sauce).
Vegetables
The vegetables for Yakisoba are cabbage and onions, but you can honestly use any combination of veggies you like. In our home, this is one way we use up odds and ends from the veggie drawer, and I’ve made this with everything from carrots to bell peppers to snap peas and asparagus. Benishoga and aonori are the standard garnishes, but regular nori, toasted sesame seeds, and green onions will all work.
The Right Yakisoba Pan
Yakisoba tastes best when made on a teppan, but most of us don’t have a large high-output griddle in our homes, so here’s the secret to getting that great grilled flavor at home.The traditional teppan gives a large heated surface to work with, so cooks can constantly move the ingredients around to keep them on a hot part of the pan. This cooks the ingredients through quickly, retaining their vibrant color, and allows the ingredients to take on just a bit of char, which is where that wonderful flavor comes from.To approximate this at home, I use my largest pan with a heavy bottom (cast iron or stainless steel both work well). The large pan gives you extra surface area to work with while using a heavy pan provides a high thermal mass which means the temperature of the pan won’t drop as quickly when you add in additional ingredients.
How to Make the Best Yakisoba
First I like to fry up the pork belly, this gives the pork a chance to brown, developing a ton of flavor, and it also allows some of the fat to render out. If you don’t use pork belly, you’ll want to increase the amount of oil you use in the pan to 2 tablespoons. Then I give the vegetables a quick stir-fry to give them a bit of color. You don’t need to cook them through all the way here, as they’ll continue to cook after the noodles get added. Finally, the noodles are added in and tossed with the yakisoba sauce until it’s caramelized around the noodles and the noodles start to brown. The classic toppings for yakisoba are aonori(green nori flakes) and beni shōga (red pickled ginger), but I also like to top it with some scallions sometimes, and I’ve even heard there are people who put mayonnaise on it 😱.
Other Festival Foods
I have a whole category of Japanese Street Foods you can check out, but here are a few of my favorites that would work beautifully with Yakisoba to create a summer festival environment at home! If you’re craving more savory options, try your hand at Yaki Onigiri, crispy grilled rice balls with a delightfully crispy exterior glazed with caramelized soy sauce. For a hearty meal, whip up some Osaka-style Okonomiyaki, a customizable savory pancake that’s a crowd-pleaser at festivals. On the sweeter side, Mitarashi Dango offers chewy rice dumplings glazed with a sticky-sweet soy sauce, while Daigaku Imo satisfies with its candied sweet potato goodness. And for dessert, don’t miss out on Taiyaki, those adorable fish-shaped cakes filled with sweet red bean paste.
📖 Recipe
