A non-negotiable ingredient, sodium upgrade, and cozy winter dinners.
I have always loved instant ramen. It’s cheap. It’s fast. It’s salty in a way that feeds your soul. It’s the cure for a broken heart, a hangover, sleep deprivation, and every cold you’ve ever had. We eat it when we’re happy, when we’re sad, when we’re broke, and when we get that much-deserved promotion. Ramen is the perfect food. (Big statement coming from someone who holds cheese to a similar standard.)
Yet, it has always left me wanting more.
How many packages of instant ramen have you eaten in your lifetime? I do know it’s significantly fewer than my older brother. A simple man when it comes to food, he would regularly bust out a DOUBLE ramen dinner, so his number was always going to be higher than mine. (He gave a rough estimate of 1,000.)
As the years went on and my palate started craving more, I upgraded from the 99-cent packet to the more gourmet $1.99 plastic bowl setup. I was moving on from beef, creamy chicken, and pork to the tantalizing world of spicy beef, kimchi, and the coveted hot and spicy.
Then the add-ons began. Sliced green onions, ground pork, roast chicken, sautéed bok choy, a 6-minute egg, seaweed, furikake, bean sprouts. The toppings were endless, and I got a real kick out of taking a very inexpensive meal and making it something worth being excited about. (Mind you, this was all before I’d had a real bowl of ramen; I had nothing to reference besides my will to make it better.)
If I could tell my younger self something, I would say:
You’re doing amazing, sweetie, but it would be really helpful if you kept a food journal. Food is going to be what you live, breathe, dream, and drool about for the majority of your waking hours, and a record of all your experiments would be great. Okay, thanks, love you! (Also, dump him immediately if not sooner.)
-xoxo your future self
Those ramen packets saved me on more than one occasion. So today’s recipe starts with the very same instant noodles I grew up on and ends somewhere they never could have dreamed of. I bought the packets and tossed the little envelope of sodium. I did crunch on some dried noodles that fell off the brick. Old habits die hard.
The noodles are the easy part. The sauce is the pièce de résistance, aka the reason why we are here. Come for the ramen and stay for the sauce.
A moment for dark soy sauce.
Dark soy sauce is richer and more concentrated, BUT it is not saltier than regular soy sauce. The complexity happening in that bottle is something regular soy is nowhere near qualified to handle. There is no swap for dark soy sauce; make sure you seek it out. It’s also SO mind-blowingly delicious that you’ll have plenty of dishes to put it to work in. (I used to take little shots of soy sauce when I was a kid. Is that strange?)
This green onion sauce is adapted from the fussier version in Ottolenghi Comfort.
Green Onion Sauce with Ramen Noodles
6 green onions, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, peeled and minced
1/2 inch ginger, peeled and minced
1 tsp chili crunch oil
2 T avocado oil
2 T dark soy sauce
1 T honey
1 T fish sauce
1 T lime juice
Put the green onions, garlic, and ginger in a heat-proof bowl. Heat the avocado oil in a pot until hot, then pour it over them. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Stir in the chili crunch oil, dark soy sauce, honey, fish sauce, and lime juice.
For the noodles: Cook the instant noodles according to the package, drain, and toss with generous spoonfuls of sauce. You can eat this dish hot or chilled.
Garnish with sesame seeds, more thinly sliced green onions, and lime wedges.
This green onion sauce has it all: umami, spice, and a balanced sweetness. Ramen is where it starts, but the sky is the limit on its uses. Here’s my list of ideas beyond a pile of hot noodles to get you started.
Use the sauce to marinate chicken thighs. Grill up the thighs and serve over rice. Save some of the untainted sauce to drizzle over the finished dish.
Use as the dressing for the viral dumpling and tomato salad.
Drizzle this sauce over some roasted mushrooms; do not be shy about it.
A great dipping sauce for chicken lettuce wraps.
Think about all the cold, dark nights we have coming. This sauce is going to be there for every one of them.
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult🧈
Thirsty for more?
🥕Grab my free guide: The Butter Cult Guide to Life-Changing Cooking Hacks, 21 Kitchen Secrets That’ll Change Your Cooking Game Forever, Even If You’re Just Here for the Wine
🔪Invest in your culinary future with the Butter Cult online workshops!
Book a private cooking class! Offered in person locally OR anywhere in the world online.
Thanks for your support💛 I am here to help whip your confidence into shape, inside and outside the kitchen! We are going to tackle all things culinary together, you will be filleting a fish and hosting that dinner party of 10 in no time😏, or maybe you just learn how to cut an onion the right way. For more adventures in and out of the kitchen, follow @buttercultcooking on Instagram and Threads.
