Cold Sesame Noodles With Crunchy Vegetables Recipe (2024)

A good summer dish, but it needs some oomph, unless you prefer somewhat bland food. The hot sauce helps. I added a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce, a clove of fresh garlic, and a little more vinegar to the sauce. More ginger would help, too. I used only one teaspoon of sugar. I added cold chicken, and, like others suggested, I blanched the snow peas. Cold shrimp or drained tofu would work, too. An easy, tasty meal for hot days.

If you are taken by a cold noodle craze, it is worth investing in a Japanese mandolin, brand name Benriner. Any Asian shop will have several sizes behind the counter. It creates match stick slices of cukes, radishes, apples, pears, melons and carrots used as garnish on noodles. It is indispensable and inexpensive.

This was too salty, but otherwise the flavor was good. Less soy sauce next time. Also, I used about 2:1 sesame paste:peanut butter but the pb still dominated too much. I'll just use the tahini next time. And the fresh ginger added a lot.

Easy and delicious. I've made sesame noodles before, but this was the best recipe yet. Pretty rich and strong tasting. I used regular spaghetti and combined tahini and peanut butter. I topped it with chopped roasted peanuts.

An easy way to blanch the peapods without dirtying another pot is to cook them in the boiling water that will be used for the pasta. Remove with a skimmer or a slotted spoon, then proceed to cooking the pasta.

Please note, tahini, which made from raw sesame seeds, tastes very different from Chinese sesame paste. If you are trying to replace Chinese sesame paste, you can try mixing one part tahini with one part natural peanut butter, with a few drops of toasted sesame oil.

I added garlic to the dressing and used fish sauce instead of soy, I also used a shallot instead of scallions--this worked although it occasionally was a little dominant. I had more than the 4 cups of vegetables and still had enough dressing. I included diakon radish (worked well) and broccoli (doesn't work so well) and corn. The recipe requires a lot more than 20 minutes, given the chopping and management of the noodles. Whole thing took me about 45.

As most Bittman recipes, this is very good as written & great to use as inspiration to modify as you choose. Comments:1) Blending tahini with peanut butter (@ 6T tahini + 2T pb) will get flavor more like Chinese sesame paste.2) Prefer eensie less sesame oil & a lot more fresh ginger..3) Prefer a little less soy then add (Diamond Crystal) kosher salt as needed to taste.5) Rancho Gordo's pineapple vinegar (low acid) is great here but so is rice vinegar.6) Like to finish w/cilantro.

Made this with carrots, snow peas, red bell pepper, and cucumber - so good! Followed the recommendation to parboil the snow peas, made a huge difference. Also added some minced garlic to the sauce. A great weeks worth of lunches.

I made this with soba noodles, bok choy, broccoli, yellow pepper and carrots. I tossed everything together and it still turned out yummy!

I've created a collection called "Weeknight Noodles" and this has become part of my regular summer rotation. Simple, satisfying, flexible and delicious!

Perfect by itself or as a side. I made only a few tweaks, as I read in the comments. I zazzed up the sauce with a clove of garlic, a little fish sauce, & chili-garlic sauce. For the veggies: I used blanched snap peas, red bell pepper & a bag of broccoli slaw (match stick broccoli, carrots and red cabbage), which I highly recommend. Super easy. I tossed it all together and it was great, next day even better. Drizzle a bit extra sesame oil before serving.

* I concur with others: blanch the the snow peas and spice up the sauce with vinegar, garlic, more ginger, soy sauce, salt, whatever floats your boat.
* Easy to get right the first time because you can easily adjust the flavor of the noodles and sauce.
* Easy to store the noodles, veggies, and sauce separately for multiple meals without losing the freshness and flavor.
* Definitely took me more than 30 minutes.

Next time, and I think there will be a next time, I'll make a few changes. The veggies have to be cut into thin strips. Cucumbers would be good, as well as red peppers. Raw snow peas were a major disappointment to my family. The sauce was very good, made with natural peanut butter. It's important that the Chinese egg noodles are thin: I used thick ones. I cut the sugar in half; next time I think I'll omit it.

Would prefer to use one tsp of sesame oil as opposed to two tbsp. In the bowl meant for mixing sauce, add minced garlic and ginger and half of the chopped scallions. Add the vinegar, soy sauce and set aside. Then fry some thinly sliced shallot in a two tbsp of neutral oil until just crisp, and pour the hot oil into the bowl for sauce, over the scallions, ginger and garlic. Mix well and add the nut butter, sugar (1 tsp) and some salt to taste if too bland.

It was a delicious late-summer dish, though I made some changes. I didn't add any sugar (why in the NYT recipes there's always so much sugar?), but to have some sweetness, I added very ripe mango pieces, which I highly recommend. I cut on tahini (only added a tablespoon) and added red pepper flakes instead of hot oil/Tabasco.

Not sure why but the dressing needed a lot of help: it was too thick and didn’t mix as written. Added some wine with the rice vinegar and that helped a lot (out of wine vinegar). Maybe like adding a bit of mustard to a vinaigrette to emulsify it? Any food chemists out there? It may just be that the tahini was very thick. It did taste great in the end even tho as usual I went off recipe. Added some dressing and let it sit so the noodles would be yummy after soaking it up.

On day three, I decided to mix it up and added apple, celery, nuts, and cheddar cheese to the dressed noodle base. It was terrific!

Used rice noodles. Veggies include carrott, celery, daikon, red & yellow pepper. Made a dressing with 5:1 tahini to smooth peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil (used too much), a little soy. Whisked in a good amount of cold water to make it smooth. Delicious.

Don't forget the tahini like I did. haha. It's not so good without one of the most important ingredients.

Prepared as written and everyone loved it. My serving suggestion, though, is to have the veggies mixed on the side and add a big serve over the pasta. It is really hard to keep them mixed in well, and they don't look as good when they get the sauce on them. Grate fresh but frozen ginger over the whole thing for a spicy kick.

A perfect template. My childhood best friend has a stomach condition that prevents her from eating certain foods in combination, and even the textures of some can trigger it. She always wishes she was "easy to cook for" and can no longer order takeout noodles without risking tummy trouble. I took this recipe and surprised her, adding a little extra ginger and changing veggies (mostly into peas). No lie: she wept into the bowl, mumbling "New food. I'm trying new food." ...anyway, very good dish

Loved this recipes

Sautéed carrots and snow pease in sesame oil, added thai stir fry noodles according to cooking instructions. Added the dressing with some extra garlic and fish sauce and served it warm with extra sriracha sauce. Yumm!

Added parboiled shrimp. Sauce: 2/3 tahini, 1/3 PB, 2T soy sauce, 1T fish sauce, 3 T rice vinegar, 1T sugar, lg. garlic clove, 1T ginger, pepper, 3/4 T hot chili sauce, 2T hot water added 1 at a time because too thick, a few dashes of sesame oil. Used 1 carrot, 1 red pepper, cabbage, 4-5 scallions, 1 cucumber. Delicious.

Perfect proportions of noodles to veg and sauce. I used vegetables that I had and sauteed some bell peppers, radishes, edamame, and scallions, adding fresh cucumber as the noodles were mixed in. I opted to saute some since I had frozen peppers and edamame and prefer scallions cooked. Crushed peanuts as a topping and generous black pepper made this a recipe to use repeatedly.

Just OK. I did half tahini half PB. The kids weren’t crazy about it. Made for a good cold packed lunch the next day.

I liked adding a little chopped red cabbage and sauteed tofu! Cabbage adds some popping color and flavor, tofu to bulk up the protein

I liked adding a little chopped red cabbage! Adds some popping color and extra flavor