Zaru Soba are cold Japanese buckwheat noodles with a spicy dipping sauce and are one of my favorite summer dishes. Because I always have the ingredients in the house, they are often my quick dinner on hot days.
Where do soba noodles come from?
Soba noodles come from Japan and are made from buckwheat flour. If I can, I like to bring soba with me from our trips to Japan, because there you can easily get soba made from 100% buckwheat flour*, while soba noodles from German supermarkets (Asian section) often only contain around 30-50% buckwheat and the rest is made from wheat flour. If you only get “mixed” soba, that’s no problem, the recipe still works. The more buckwheat flour, the earthier the flavor (and the darker brown the noodles).
Hot summers, cold noodles
Summers in Japan tend to be… well, getting used to, to the point of unbearable. The temperatures are usually consistently above 30 degrees. Even at night it doesn’t cool down much. In addition, the humidity is around 80%, which makes the whole experience even more unpleasant. So it’s no wonder that Japanese people resort to cold, easy-to-digest dishes in July and August. This also includes Zaru Soba.
Zaru Soba are cold buckwheat noodles served with a sauce made from soy sauce, mirin, dashi and sake. There are usually finely chopped spring onions, nori sheets and wasabi. “Zaru”* is a kind of slightly curved bamboo grid on which the noodles are served. This is of course very practical, because they can easily drip off and don’t stick. Unfortunately, I don’t have a zaru, so I just serve my soba on a plate. Maybe I should finally get two real Zaru on our next trip…
The cold sauce for Zaru Soba is called Mentsuyu. It is not poured over the pasta and mixed with it, as we know from pasta sauces à la Bolognese. Instead, mentsuyu acts more like a dip that you dip the noodles into before each bite and then slurp.
Fun fact: You can also drink pasta water
Because it is believed that the noodles release their nutrients into the water when cooked, the cooking water from soba noodles (Soba-yu) is not thrown away, but saved, mixed with the remains of the mentsuyu sauce at the end of the meal and drunk as a kind of tea.
In Japan you can get Zaru Soba on every corner in summer, even packaged as convenience food. After cooking, the noodles naturally stick to each other due to the starch they contain. That’s why the packaging comes with a small packet of a water-like liquid called “Hogushi-mizu”. You drizzle this over the soba noodles, which will become supple again in no time.
And if you have a taste for soba, be sure to try the soba noodle salad with mango and eggplant (according to Ottolenghi).
Zaru Soba
cold Japanese buckwheat noodles with dip
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for the toppings (optional)
- 1 Spring onion cut into thin letters
- 1 Sheet Nori cut into thin strips
for the Mentsuyu dipping sauce
- 50 ml cooking sake
- 125 ml Mirin
- 125 ml soy sauce
- 1 TL Sugar
- 5 G Dashi powder classic (or the vegan version from Kombu)
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It’s best to prepare the Mentsuyu dipping sauce the day before: To do this, briefly bring the sake to the boil in a small pot. Then stir in mirin, soy sauce, sugar and dashi, bring to the boil and simmer for about 5 minutes. Allow the sauce to cool completely, pour it into a sealable container and let it steep in the refrigerator.
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If you want to use toppings, cut the spring onion into fine strips and the nori sheet into thin, short strips.
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Bring plenty of water (without salt) to the boil. Cook the soba noodles according to the package instructions (usually 3-5 minutes).
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Drain the soba in a sieve and immediately rinse thoroughly under cold water. Gently rub them together with your hands to remove excess starch.
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Dilute Mentsuyu dipping sauce 1:3 or 1:4 with cold water and pour into a bowl. Place the soba on a plate (or a zaru if you have one), sprinkle with toppings.
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When eating, always pick up some of the pasta with the toppings, briefly dip it into the dipping sauce and enjoy it stick by stick.
The dipping sauce should be served cold. Since it is still diluted with water in a ratio of 1:3 or 1:4 anyway, you can use ice cubes or very cold tap water if you have cooked “too spontaneously”.
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