Hey everyone, welcome to another installment of the SAHD recipes. Today, I’ll share my yakisoba recipe. This is way better than the typical yakisoba at the zoo or a run of the mill teriyaki shop. However, a good Japanese restaurant can make it much better than this. You’ll have to pay a lot more, though.
This yakisoba is a bit more difficult to cook than my other recipes. There is a lot of prepping to do and you need a big cooking surface. If you can overcome these obstacles, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Ingredients
- Soba noodles – I used 1 pound for this post, half of the package. Check your grocery store for the fresh soba noodles. I don’t think you can make yakisoba with dry noodles.
- Chicken, tofu, or other protein
- Vegetables – you can put pretty much any vegetables in this dish
- broccoli – cut into small pieces
- some cabbage – sliced
- 1 carrot – grated
- half onion – sliced
- green onion – cut into 1-inch pieces
Yakisoba sauce
You can buy it or DIY. If you make it yourself, you’ll probably have to play with the mix to get the taste you like. My recipe below isn’t very salty because Mrs. RB40 likes it milder.
- 2 tsp sugar
- 4 tsp Worchester sauce – whatever brand you have in the pantry
- 2 tsp oyster sauce – I recommend the Mae Krua brand from Thailand. The first ingredient is oyster extract (very important) and it’s affordable. Cheap oyster sauce isn’t as flavorful. Their first ingredients are usually water, sugar, and salt.
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 4 tsp ketchup
Marinade the chicken for 5 to 15 minutes
- Michu or any rice wine or cooking sherry
- 1 tsp soy sauce
Optional toppings
- Aonori seaweed
- Bonito flakes
- Siracha sauce for people who like spicy.
I added links to Amazon so you can see what the ingredients look like. These items should be much cheaper at your local Asian grocery store than on Amazon.
Cooking
You’ll need a big cooking surface for this yakisoba. I used my trusty Lodge 12 inch carbon steel skillet and it barely fit. A big griddle or wok probably would work better.
First, heat up the pan on medium heat. Once it’s hot, add oil and onion. Cook the onion for a few minutes.
Once the onion soften a bit, shove it to one side and add the chicken. Cook the chicken until it’s mostly done. I used chicken breast here and it got dried out a bit. Dark meat (leg quarters) would have been better.
Add the rest of the vegetables. The pan is starting to pile up at this point. I use 2 spatulas and shove the food together to the middle of the pan. It worked pretty well. Cook until the vegetables soften.
Next, put the soba noodles in a colander and pour hot water over it. Loosen the noodles so they’re not stuck together in a clump.
Next, add the soba noodles to the pan. Okay, this is the toughest part. Cook and try not to make a big mess. I only lost a few noodles so it can be done.
We’re almost done. Add about half the sauce and mix it thoroughly. Taste and see how you like it. Add more sauce if it needs it. I used all the sauce I made.
Alright, we’re done!
Serve it up and add some topping if you’d like. The aonori and bonito flakes add a little umami to the dish. I also used some siracha sauce to add a little heat to the dish. Enjoy!
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Do you ever cook Pad Thai? One of my friends who is Thai taught us Pad See Ew but said Pad Thai the real thing is hard? She said in Thailand people use banana flowers? Just wondering. We spend so much of Thai take out.
I make Pad Thai occasionally, but it usually isn’t as good as the restaurant. I’m not sure why.
Banana flowers is just for the side. You don’t really need it.
Pad See Ew is super easy and I cook that all the time. 🙂
Nice job! That’s surprisingly close to how we make it Joe! There are subtle differences of course, but you make it pretty similar to our home recipe.
It’s interesting that you make your own yakisoba sauce, we always just buy it. Maybe I should try making it sometime!
Yum. We do something similar but use udon noodles instead for a yakiudon. We kind of like the thicker chewier udon noodles a little bit more than the soba ones.
I tried to make yakiudon a long time ago (10+ years) and it wasn’t as good. Maybe I need to try again. Thanks.
Hi Joe! This is great! My high school is starting to want to cook. I’ll definitely show him this post. Looks delicious and I like it that you are able to control the salt more and sub in plant protein instead of meat. Thanks! Love the cooking posts. Maybe you should put a price comparison of cost at home versus restaurant?
That’s great. I’m trying to encourage my son to help me cook, but I’m not having much success yet.
I’ll consider putting the price comparison. The restaurant price varies so much, though.
Hi Joe,
Looks delicious. The ingredient looks healthy as per my perspective. I think that homecooked food is one of the healthiest meal as one can control the amount of the ingredients to be included in the cooking.
Nice try!
WTK
Exactly. You could put a lot more vegetables in this dish and remove the chicken. It’d still be delicious.
You were not kidding about becoming a food blogger haha.
This looks delicious but beyond my amateur skill level. One suggestion I had would be to add the prep time and the cooking time somewhere at the start of each recipe so folks know what to expect.