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.

Udon noodle soup

June 1, 2022 9:41 PM

Speaking of slowly cooking, I spent a couple of hours making udon noodle soup a few nights ago. I think it was 11pm by the time I actually produced this bowl of soup.

Worth it. So worth it.

I wanted to make some udon noodle soup because I had gone to an udon restaurant a couple of months ago, and at the time I didn't think I really wanted noodle soup so I got a rice bowl. But everyone else was ordering the udon noodles, and by the end of dinner, I really wanted those noodles.

It was also a little more appropriate a couple of months ago because it was colder. Now we're hitting 90° outside and it is definitely not soup weather anymore. But I don't care. I made the noodle soup and ate it three times and will eat it again twice more because I still have leftover noodles.

I don't know if this is normal or not, but whenever I eat noodle soup, I like to make a nice little spoonful for every single bite. A little bit of noodle, some soup, a couple of other garnishes on top, and a wonderfully flavorful experience for my mouth.

I actually don't think I've ever had udon noodles from a restaurant before so I have no idea how they're supposed to taste, and the Woks of Life recipe I used even explicitly stated that it's not really authentic. But it is delicious.

I do know that restaurants often put soft boiled eggs in their noodle soup, so I wanted to do the same thing. I've been using this ramen egg recipe from Just One Cookbook for a while and it's always been great. I figured it would be really easy to make a few eggs to throw in my bowls of soup.

But I figured wrong. Holy crap I have never struggled so much in my life to peel boiled eggs. The ramen egg recipe calls for putting the eggs directly in boiling water, but I thought it would work just fine if I put the eggs in cold water and brought it to a boil. When I stopped cooking them and tried to peel one, it all broke apart and every piece of shell I tried to remove just ended up removing more of the egg white. I don't think I initially cooked them for long enough so I boiled more water and tried to cook them longer, but that was still a fail.

I can't end on a fail though, so I did some googling and was determined to make better soft boiled eggs. I made a few adjustments for the second attempt:

• boil the water first, and salt it (no idea if the salting made a difference)
• put the eggs in the boiling water, then turn the heat down to about medium
• cook for 6 minutes
• be very very gentle when cracking the egg for peeling
• the eggs might have been older?

And it was a success! It peeled so easily! Incredible.

Meal Plan: 1/18 - 1/22

January 22, 2021 9:24 PM

It's my first week back in my apartment since before the holidays, and any time I come back from a long vacation my plan is to always make something simple. My go-to simple meal is always Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta because it's vegetarian, and I know I can make it in less than 30 minutes. The only downside is that I have to buy cream cheese, but whatever, I'll get bagels for next week.

I also decided to make noodle soup because it had been on my to-make list for a while. Since I had shoved a bunch of leftovers in the freezer before going to see my family, I figured I could eat those too. So, two dishes is plenty.

Pretty sure I spent less than $10 on all of this. I just got what I needed for the two dishes plus some fruit and yogurt for snacks. I'm really trying to make sure I have healthy snacks.

Also, it's a shortened week since I got back on Monday.

Yeah, the week started out kind of rough and I don't think I was eating enough, but I got back on track towards the end. And I'm gonna show you another portion of my noodle soup to show you that I also made ramen eggs!

I tried a different method of soft boiling the eggs, and it worked out really well. The recipe says to boil water, then add the egg, but I find that one of my eggs always cracks when I do this, so I just put the egg in the cold water and let it come to a boil, then turn the heat off, cover it, and let it sit for about 4 minutes. I was worried I might overcook it, but it came out perfectly.

Next week, I'll get back to my usual consulting of my whiteboard.

It's been a while

May 11, 2019 12:40 PM

Yup, life got busy. Too busy to be worrying about a blog that not very many people read. But the blog has always been in the back of my mind, and my brain is still constantly thinking about food. I'm going to be taking this blog in a different direction. Instead of having posts that feature recipes that I've tried out, I'm going to be doing weekly food recaps of my life.

Last year I had a goal to only spend $30 a week on food. I wanted to bring back this goal now that I'm cooking for just myself again, and week one was already a failure. I spent close to $40 on groceries AND I ate tacos at Taco Town!

So, what else did I actually cook this week?

• Caesar Salad w/ Chicken
• Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta - Budget Bytes
• Easy Oven Fajitas - Budget Bytes
• Instant Noodles (I use the stove. It still counts as cooking.)
• Ramen Eggs - Just One Cookbook

Spinach Tomato Pasta was the first meal I intended to make this week, but when I got home from the grocery store, I looked in my fridge and realized I was missing cream cheese. I don't know why I thought I already had cream cheese, and even if I did it definitely would have gone bad in the weeks I was away from my apartment.

Then later in the week, I wanted to make fajitas, but when I got home, I realized I didn't have any onions! And then later that day, I decided to make some Ramen Eggs, but as my water was boiling I realized I didn't have any Mirin! My meal planning was not off to a good start. But, I guess I could always make salads.

My mom eats salad all the time. And as silly as I think her salad habits are, I have to say she makes a really beautiful Caesar salad. So that inspired me to make my own Caesar salad! I don't know how she makes hers so aesthetic because mine did not turn out that nice.

Also, washing and drying lettuce leaves is such a pain. I really don't understand how I'm supposed to dry my leafy greens. I basically just wash them hours in advance and let them sit out, but they're still too wet, and then I use some paper towels to pat them dry, but that's not terribly effective either. I know I could invest in a salad spinner, but I think that seems like a waste of money to buy a tool just for drying lettuce.

Even though I delayed making my pasta and fajitas a day later, I still went ahead and made the ramen eggs since I figured I had to have something that would work. I replaced the mirin with some rice wine vinegar and sugar. I also used seasoning sauce instead of soy sauce, and the eggs still tasted great.

Finally, I ate instant noodles twice this week which is WAY more instant noodle than I should even be eating in a month. But that's what happens when you scramble and keep forgetting a single ingredient in your meals. At least I got to throw my ramen egg in it!

At this point, I've got a ton of veggies to use up, so hopefully that means I won't need to buy too much from the store for next week.