Udon noodle soup.

Up until today, I had never made udon noodle soup. Never. Go figure. It just happened to be this way, right until 5 to 12 this noon when I urgently needed to start prepping lunch. My husband suggested we’d have some soup, and this triggered my mind to start wandering back to the package of brown rice udon noodles I earlier this week had considered using in a stir-fry, only to eventually toss away the idea.

So now I again grabbed that very same package from the drawer and thought I actually might use those in a soup, rather than in a stir-fry. To give the soup a Japanese touch, I started out with a base of roasted sesame oil, ginger, tamari and rice wine vinegar, and I used a variety of veggies which I had around (being some leftover broccoli and zucchini, celery, spinach, red bell pepper and baby corn). Today is the 1st of May aka Labour Day, so shops are closed and I had to make do with what I had in my fridge. A fridge which, quite frankly, is pretty full, since we went grocery shopping only two days ago. But no bok choy or shiitake mushrooms. Not that that was any problem, however, because the soup turned out marvellously well without too.

I dare say I was pretty pleased with the result, the more so because the children seemed to enjoy their portions and my husband exclaimed several times how delicious this was. He has even already secured the single leftover soup bowl for this evening (we’re having scrap dinner, featuring three types of leftovers), so that definitely means something!

I cannot but wonder what took me so long to use udon noodles in soup. They always rather left me kind of disappointed in stir-fries, so I guess from now on, I’ll just stick to the ultimately safe noodle & soup combo.

• Servings: 4
• Time: 15 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients

• 2TB roasted sesame oil
• 1 onion
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 knob ginger (sliced/grated/chopped – as you prefer)
• A variety of veggies (such as e.g. paksoi, shiitake mushrooms, celery stalks, red bell pepper, celery stalks, broccoli, baby corn,…)
• 3 TB tamari
• 1 TB rice wine vinegar
• 1 TB vegan mushroom and “oyster” sauce
• 1/2-1 tsp red chili flakes
• Cracked black pepper
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• 5-6 cups vegetable broth
• 250 g brown rice udon noodles
• 2 thinly sliced spring onions, more chili flakes and sesame seeds for garnish

Directions

• Sauté the onion in a decent splash of sesame oil, together with the ginger and garlic.
• Add the veggies, and after some minutes also the broth, soy sauce, vegan mushroom and “oyster” sauce, rice vinegar, seasonings and broth.
• Bring to a boil, then add the noodles.
• After approximately 5-6 minutes, the noodles should be done and the soup ready to be served. Add a splash of lime juice and garnish with sesame seeds, spring onion and dried red pepper flakes.
• Enjoy!