Asian Noodle Salad

Today, I am going to share a simple noodle salad, with a lot of flavor. I love how easy this is to make! I don’t know if it’s very traditional, but it does use traditional flavors of Asian cooking, such as, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil. There is peanut butter in the sauce as well that gives it a creamy base. Delish!

My encouragement to you is to taste as you make a recipe. I have been playing around with the sauce for this noodle dish, and we really like it this way. I had made it slightly differently before, and liked it a lot. But I then decided to adjust it slightly and now we really love it. If I hadn’t branched out a little, I wouldn’t have been able to create this dish that we love now! So when you are making any sauce, or dressing, never feel like you have to follow the recipe exactly. Taste it and adjust it to how you like it! I have found that people enjoy different levels of saltiness, and tang, so it is a skill well learned to be able to adjust recipes to your palate.

This recipe is so easy and fast to make, and so makes a great last minute meal. You can serve it cold, or room temperature. My husband especially likes it cold, so it is great to send to work with him. I have also used roasted almond butter in place of the peanut butter, and it worked wonderfully. You can use whatever veggies you want. I just used what I had on hand, which was cabbage, carrots, and zucchini, all very thinly sliced. Some veggies you may want to steam, or stir fry before adding (like snap peas, asparagus etc). Experiment with what you have on hand. I had garnished it with roasted peanuts, but we decided that toasted sesame seeds would be even better.

Asian Noodle Salad

About 8 ounces of thin noodles (I used buckwheat udon noodles, but you can really use whatever you want, though, I would definitely limit it to thin, long noodles. You can even use thin spaghetti noodles, if you wanted too!) Cooked according to package instructions, and rinsed with cool water.

3-4 cups of thinly shredded veggies such as carrots, zucchini, cabbage (like I did), or lightly steamed snap peas, asparagus, or veggie of choice.

For Sauce:
1/3 cup of roasted peanut butter (or roasted almond butter)
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup of rice vinegar
1/4 cup of oil
1/2 teaspoon of ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

1- While you are heating the water for cooking the pasta, prep veggies.

2-While pasta is cooking, make sauce. Steam or stir fry veggies, if needed

3-When pasta is done, and rinsed with cool water, combine with veggies and toss with sauce.

4-Serve room temperature or cold. Enjoy!