Udon noodles with mushroom and egg
January 14, 2025 1:10 PM
Ever since I got back to Pittsburgh after the holidays, I've been wanting to make udon noodle soup, because noodle soup is really good when you're sick. But because I was feeling sick and because it's been so cold outside, I haven't been able to actually make it out to the Asian store. I have four grocery stores that are a 10 minute walk or less from my apartment, but none of them are Asian stores.
Well this past Sunday, it finally went up to a balmy 33°F, and I seemed to be feeling a little better. Plus I ran out of rice, so I really needed to restock that too.
When I've made this soup in the past, I've always included chicken, but the chicken is always my least favorite part of this, so I decided to replace the chicken with a soft boiled egg and also double the mushrooms. I wanted to marinate the eggs so I needed to start that the night before. And since I was boiling eggs, I kept some of them boiling for a couple minutes longer so I could put them in a salad!
I mostly followed this recipe for poppyseed salad dressing, but I cut the sugar a little, and I used white vinegar because that's what I had. It was delicious. I was able to use up leftover mushrooms from a meal that a friend made, and that fit perfectly in the salad. The egg yolks also added some nice extra creaminess.
So the next morning, I had some marinated eggs, and I just needed to prepare the veggies and the broth. I actually ended up buying ginger and shiitake mushrooms from Giant Eagle because the Asian store sells them in much larger quantities than I ever need. In fact, I grabbed such a small piece of ginger that it registered as .01 lb on the scale and I wasn't able to actually check it out! The machine kept saying "We are unable to process your item. Please keep scanning. Help is on the way". Except help was NOT on the way. I stood there at the self check-out wondering what to do, but the store was way too busy. I tried to scan the ginger again, but it just gave me the same error. I really didn't want to steal it, but I didn't know what to do!
Well, after I stood there for a minute, I just decided to pay for my mushrooms and I walked away with the tiny piece of ginger in my bag. At least now I know what's considered too small.
Preparing this dish was way easier without having to make the chicken, so I think I'm going to keep making it like this from now on. I didn't adjust the amount of soy sauce or mirin, but I think the mushrooms could have used a tad more. It was still very tasty like this though!
Most ramen places will only give you half an egg in your single bowl of soup, which is ridiculous. Eggs should always be given in whole quantities. Of course when I put both egg halves in my bowl, it starts to get way too filled up, so I should really get larger soup bowls. But it's okay, I just filled it up with more soup after I ate half of it.