Ginger-miso noodles with crispy mushrooms
Tangy, nutty, and full of different textures!
Ginger-miso noodles with crispy mushrooms and cabbage
Time: 45 mins | Difficulty: 2/5 | Recommendation: Weeknight dinner
These noodles are so delicious! They’re coated in a gingery, miso sauce, and topped with some sesame cabbage and scallions, and some suuuuuper crispy mushrooms. The mushrooms are key here! You achieve it by really pressing down on them in the pan until they SCREAM! Make sure you let the noodles cool down well before plating everything together, too—the texture differences are really well complemented by the temperature differences, and it all creates a big symphony in your mouth!
Ingredients:
Noodles (one handful—I’d use Soba noodles, lo-mein, or egg noodles here)
1/4 of a head of cabbage, thinly chopped
2 scallions, whites chopped on a diagonal
Maitake mushrooms (you can add some others for good measure, but maitakes are really the best here for their frizzled edges).
Sesame oil
Ginger powder
Butter
Olive oil
For the sauce:
1 tbsp miso paste
1 tbsp hot water
A chunk of ginger, peeled and grated
Soy sauce (just a touch)
Lime juice
Brown sugar or honey
Chili flakes
Method:
Set a pot of water to boil and cook the noodles. Set them aside when they’re done to cool, but don’t rinse them—you want to keep their starchiness to hold the sauce.
Make the sauce: In a little bowl, add the water to the miso paste and whisk it all together. Then grate in the ginger, add a touch of soy sauce, the lime juice, the chili flakes, and the sugar, and whisk well. Taste to see if you need to add more of anything!
Heat olive oil in a pan and add the scallion whites and cabbage. Cook them together. When they’re just starting to brown, add some sesame oil and ginger powder and salt, and continue to cook until the cabbage is starting to soften but still has a bit of a crunch. Set aside.
Wipe out the pan, and add a big pat of butter and some olive oil. Heat on medium. Add in the maitakes. With a rubber spatula, press down on the mushrooms until they are screaming like a tiny kettle, and releasing all their moisture. Then, with tongs, flip each one individually (the bottoms should be golden-brown) and do the same on the other side. Add salt and pepper and turn the heat off, letting them sit in the hot pan for a couple minutes while you put the other stuff together.
Add the noodles to the little sauce bowl, making sure they’re all really well coated. Then put the noodles in a big bowl. (You can pour in some of the extra sauce if it didn’t all stick to the noodles.)
Add the cabbage and scallion whites.
Add the mushrooms on top (the cabbage is there to shield the crispy mushrooms from the moisture of the noodles!)
On top of all that, sprinkle over the greens of the scallions. And enjoy!