Cold Soba Noodle Dipping Sauce Recipe Zaru Soba

Why This Recipe Works?

The key to a delicious dipping sauce is to start with high-quality dashi stock. To achieve a great texture for the cold soba noodles, they are chilled using a two-step process. First, the starch is rinsed off, and they are brought to room temperature. Then they are chilled in ice water to make the soba cold. Saving the boiling liquid from the soba allows you to turn the remaining dipping sauce into a comforting soup to finish your meal.

Ingredients for Zaru Soba Dipping Sauce (soba tsuyu)

Soba Noodles

The word Soba (蕎麦) literally means “buckwheat” in Japanese, and it’s also the name by which noodles made from buckwheat are known. It’s a little confusing, though, because historically, any thin noodle was known as “soba.” This is why you hear names such as yakisoba, chuuka soba, and sōki soba, even though these are made with wheat-based noodles.

Buckwheat / Wheat Flour Ratio

Buckwheat does not contain gluten, so turning it into a dough that you can roll out and cut into noodles is challenging. This is why most modern soba is made with a mixture of wheat flour and buckwheat flour, which is a style known as Nihachi Soba (二八蕎麦). The name literally means “two-eight soba” because it was originally made with a ratio of two parts wheat flour to eight parts buckwheat flour. If you want a noodle that is made from 100% buckwheat, look for Jūwari Soba (十割蕎麦), which literally means “100% soba”.

Flavored Soba

Soba can also come in flavored varieties with ingredients such as green tea, mugwort, or seaweed added to the dough, infusing the noodles with both color and flavor.

Fresh vs. Dry Soba

Soba comes either fresh or dried. Like pasta, the fresh variety is usually better, but dried soba is still delicious if you cannot find it fresh. The boiling times for soba depend on its composition and thickness, so be sure to read the instructions on the packaging to determine the boiling time. If the instructions aren’t translated, look for the character “分”; this means “minute,” and it’s usually preceded by a number which is the boiling time. Some packages will have two sets of boiling instructions, one for making cold soba and one for making hot soba. The times will differ slightly because you want to slightly under boil the soba for hot preparations, so they don’t get soggy in the soup, while they need to be fully cooked when they’re being served chilled.

Condiments for Zaru Soba

The condiments you serve with Zaru Soba are where you can get creative, and there are many options here.

Nori - Good quality nori has a green briny flavor and loads of umami. It’s typically cut into thin strips with scissors for serving with soba, but you can also tear it into small pieces with your hands. Scallions - In Japan, we have several varieties of scallions, and a very thin cultivar known as bannou negi is the one most commonly used as a condiment for soba. If you can’t find thin scallions near you, you could substitute chives. Another option is to mince up a larger scallion. Wasabi - Wasabi adds a nice kick to the dipping sauce if you like a little heat. Wasabi is best freshly grated, but if you can’t find it, the type out of a tube is fine as well (many of these are made from the stems and leaves of wasabi, but check the ingredient label). I don’t recommend using the powdered variety, usually made from horseradish and mustard, with coloring agents to make it look like real wasabi. Daikon Oroshi - Grated daikon is a common condiment to add to the dipping sauce as the particles of daikon absorb the sauce and cling to the noodles. When grating daikon, I like to use the top half (leaf-end) because it tends to be sweeter and less spicy. The bottom half (root-end) works better for cooked dishes. Others - Aromatic ingredients, such as ginger, myoga, yuzu zest, shiso, and sesame seeds are all possibilities. You can also add ingredients to change the texture, like raw quail egg, chopped okra, or grated yamaimo. These days, soba noodles are often turned into a soba salad tossing it with vegetables and protein, along with a sauce.

How to Make Cold Soba

The first thing you want to do is to make the tsuyu by adding the dashi, soy sauce, sake, and sugar to a saucepan and bringing it to a boil. You want to boil this for about a minute or until it no longer smells like alcohol. Set the dipping sauce aside to cool. You can also put the saucepan in a bowl of ice water to chill it rapidly. While you wait for the broth to cool, prepare all of the condiments you plan to serve with your Zaru Soba. Bring a large pot of water to a full boil. Soba noodles already contain salt, so you do not need to salt the water. Add the noodles and stir them for a minute so that they don’t stick together. Boil the noodles for the time specified on the packaging. When the noodles are done, use tongs or chopsticks to transfer them to a strainer. Keep the boiling water for later. Rinse the noodles under cold running water to bring them down to room temperature, and once they’ve cooled a bit, use your hand to agitate the noodles to remove any excess starch on the surface of the soba. Prepare a bowl of ice water and add the noodles to chill them. Plate the noodles directly from the water bath by scooping small handfuls of soba and placing them in mounds on a zaru. If you don’t have a zaru, you can use a shallow basket or anything that will allow the excess water to drain off. The noodles will start to stick together after a few minutes, so serve them immediately with the dipping sauce and condiments. When you’re done eating the cold soba, you can reheat the boiling liquid and add it to any remaining dipping sauce you have to make a soothing soup to finish off the meal.