Hot Tips in the Asian Grocery: Frozen Udon Noodles

Hot Tips in the Asian Grocery: Frozen Udon Noodles

There are many tasty delights hiding in the freezers at your local Asian supermarket, but frozen udon noodles are definitely one to keep an eye out for.

Before I visited Japan I didn’t think much of the udon noodle. Most I had eaten came pre-cooked sealed inside little vacuum packs. The noodle equivalent of the instant miso soup— okay, but not great. That’s not the udon experience.

My eyes were opened in 2014 where I spotted a tiny little shack/restaurant under a bridge in the Gotanda neighbourhood of Tokyo. I was catching the train early in the morning and an old man and his apprentice were hand pulling and cutting these long white square ropes of gorgeous looking noodle. It looked like something plucked out of a rural village and incongruously dropped into the middle of highly urbanised Tokyo. The vending machine at the door you used to order may have shattered that illusion slightly.

Inside there was space for 6 customers total to stand around a cooking space I’m not sure I could turn around in without knocking everything to the floor! On one side the old man was cranking out the noodles, on the other his apprentice was frying delicate and lacy tempura. The two combined made for one of the finest noodle soups of my life. A rich dashi broth, unctuous noodles with a crisp snap, and tempura prawns. Perfection, even if I did have to eat standing up.

The ones you find frozen in the store don’t approach the sublime, but they’re not too far off. They have that wonderful give and snap of a good udon, they’re relatively inexpensive at between $5-8 a kilo, and all you need to do is boil them from seconds to minutes (depends on the brand) or slip them into your broth on the stove. Tasty and ready in minutes straight from frozen is a heady combo on a time starved night as we plummet headlong into winter.