- Salads are an easy way to eat healthy
but sometimes I feel like they're not satisfying
or filling enough as a proper meal.
So today we're amping them up with some whole grain noodles
so you can feel satiated with your lunch or dinner.
We're making three simple noodle salads
that are packed with veggies, different proteins
and loads of unique flavor.
- Mmm, that's really good.
- Cooking really isn't that hard.
It just takes a little creativity to keep everyone happy.
This is Sisi, Rowie,
Nate's behind the camera, and I'm Dzung.
We live in L.A. and I love sharing
my approachable family meal ideas with you.
We're all busy people, so if I can whip it up
for my picky family quickly, so can you.
Whatever you make, though, just be sure to mix, mix, mix!
If you're familiar with the popular
Korean rice dish bibimbap,
this is the noodle version, bibim guksu.
It's the best dish to make on a lazy or hot day
'cause there's practically no cooking involved.
It's topped with an array of colorful veggies
and the spicy sauce will keep you craving more.
So first we're gonna start by cooking off our noodles.
I'm choosing to use this organic cha soba,
which is a Japanese wheat noodle with green tea,
instead of the chewy buckwheat noodles that they use
for bibim guksu at the Korean restaurants.
So I'm just gonna cook this according
to the package's direction which is six minutes,
but I'm gonna undercook it a little bit at five.
Then we're gonna drain it, rinse and set it aside.
Our noodles are hanging out over there,
so now I'm gonna work on our sauce
or the dressing for our salad.
It's really easy, it's a gochujang.
Kinda spicy, sweet, savory sauce
that goes so well with the salad.
First, in a bowl, I'm gonna add our gochujang,
which is Korean pepper paste.
Now, if you don't want it super spicy,
go ahead and reduce the amount.
And again, all the full written recipes will be on my blog.
I'll add it to a bowl.
Then I'll add some soy sauce,
rice wine vinegar to give it a little tang,
honey to sweeten things up,
sesame oil to give it that toastiness
and finally some garlic.
Then we'll just mix, mix, mix!
I'm making more than enough for the salad here
so if you wanna use it for a beef marinade
or other salads you can go ahead and do that.
So I'm making this dressing pretty thin,
not thick like you would find on a bibimbap,
because I want the sauce to really coat each noodle.
That's pretty much it for the cooking.
Now we assemble.
So I have all of the toppings beautifully laid out.
In a bowl I'm gonna first add a little bit
of shredded green lettuce.
You gotta have the lettuce in a salad, right?
Then I'll add a generous helping of our green tea noodles.
And at this point we're gonna add
the spicy gochujang dressing
just so I give the noodles a little bit more time
to marinate, pack in those flavors.
And now comes the fun and colorful part.
I love packing my salads with so many different vegetables,
and these are my favorite ones to use
but you can totally customize to whatever
you have in the fridge.
I'm gonna first add some shredded purple cabbage.
Then some carrots, cucumbers,
'cause that's essential to a bibim bowl.
Some Kimchi, of course.
Some watermelon radish.
This is my favorite vegetable right now.
It's got such a beautiful, vibrant pink hue
that adds just the prettiest pop of color to any dish.
And then, for our protein, I'll top it off
with a hard-boiled egg.
And finally, as an accented topping,
some black sesame seeds.
So like bibimbap, we're gonna mix
everything up before we eat it.
I'll move the eggs aside.
The noodles have that hint of green tea in there
and you can really taste that
along with the crunch from the vegetables.
And the dressing has that slight acidic taste
from the rice wine vinegar that kind of
balances out all the spiciness.
This really is the perfect dish when you wanna
use up all the vegetables in your fridge
and make something kinda interesting.
(upbeat music)
A refreshing bowl of poke is typically prepared
with rice or salad, at least the ones that I've seen.
But I thought, why not pair it with some soba noodles?
Here we combine some explosive flavors
together in one to make a splash in a bowl
with this spicy tuna soba noodle salad.
To prepare our poke I'm using the freshest fish available.
I got sashimi-grade tuna here,
and you almost wanna get it the same day.
Actually, you should get it the same day
so it's as fresh as possible.
Whole Foods is where I got mine, and I recommend
getting it from a very reliable source.
So with our fish, I'm just gonna cut it
into small chunks, about one-inch pieces.
And it cuts through like butter.
Your fish should never have that fishy smell to it
and it should smell like...
Actually, there shouldn't be a smell.
There's no smell to this, which is really, really fresh.
I'm gonna transfer my fish to a bowl
and then put it in the fridge while I work on the sauce.
You always wanna keep the fish very cold.
So while our fish is chilling
I'm gonna work on our marinade.
Here I'm just gonna add a little bit of soy sauce,
sesame oil, Hawaiian alaea sea salt,
and this gives it that very authentic flavor.
It has kind of a smoky saltiness to it.
A little bit of honey for sweetness.
Orange juice, just to give it that citrusy tang.
Some onions, we'll give it a quick mix.
And then I'm gonna add our tuna back into the bowl,
give it one more mix,
and if you want a hint of spiciness to it,
I like to add a dash of togarashi,
which is Japanese chili pepper.
All right, this looks great.
Now I'm just gonna pop it into the fridge
one more time until I'm ready to use it.
And now we're gonna work on our soba noodles.
So for our soba salad I'm just gonna cook
the soba according to the package's direction.
I have two bundles here,
and my favorite soba noodles to cook up
is this one by Hakubaku.
They sell them pretty much everywhere these days,
and there's wheat and buckwheat in here
so it doesn't break apart as easily.
So I'm gonna cook the soba noodles for about three minutes,
slightly undercooked, and then we're gonna drain them.
I rinsed and drained our soba noodles
and now we're gonna work on the sauce.
This recipe has a lot of mixing of sauces
but it's all gonna come together.
This is gonna be a really light ponzu dressing
so that the marinade for our poke can shine through.
I'm gonna start with a quarter-cup of ponzu,
and ponzu is a seasoned Japanese soy sauce
that's accented with citrus.
So if you can't find this bottle right here
you can always substitute a quarter-cup of soy sauce
with some lime juice or orange juice.
Then I'll add some sesame oil,
a little bit of honey,
mirin, which is a Japanese cooking wine,
some water, and I'll mix it up.
If you guys want the full written recipes
to these noodle salads, it's listed on my blog.
Now I'll add the noodles and give it another mix.
Ah, it smells so good, it's light and citrusy.
All right, let's work on the last component
and then we're gonna build our poke bowl.
So for one of our toppings
what I love to put is a seaweed salad.
And you can totally choose to make this or not
but I typically love having it in a poke bowl.
For the seaweed, I just got one
from this packet right here.
And don't let this picture fool you
because it doesn't come already prepared.
It's just salted seaweed,
and what I did was I soaked it in water a couple times,
just rinsed it out, and then I did a cold water soak
for 30 minutes, which is right here.
And as you can see, the seaweed comes pretty long
and not very bite-sized, so with my scissors
I'm just gonna cut them into smaller pieces.
I'll drain it, give it one final rinse
and then we're gonna make our marinade for it.
It's really simple, just four ingredients.
I have some rice vinegar, a little bit of sugar,
soy sauce and garlic, oh!
I also forgot the sesame oil.
Give it a good mix and then we'll just
toss our seaweed directly into that sauce.
Mix it all up.
Now let's plate everything up.
I have my favorite poke toppings already set out.
So first, into my bowl, I'm gonna add my soba noodles.
Make a nice bed for the poke.
Then we're gonna add the poke, or poke, (laughs)
along with my favorite toppings.
Some cucumbers for a nice crunch.
I have these watermelon radishes
which are so beautiful, they just add
this vibrant pink hue which I love.
They're very Instagramable. (laughs)
Pickled ginger and pea tendrils.
Some avocados, and of course our seasoned seaweed.
This bowl is so colorful and beautiful.
I think I wanna share it with my friend.
Let me go get her.
- This looks so good!
(upbeat music)
Mmm.
That's really good.
Super light.
Really tasty.
- Next up is a beef ramen noodle salad.
I use your favorite noodles in a different way
and toss it in a light sesame soy dressing.
Top it off with some meat and veggies
for a substantial meal, and it's a quick and easy salad
that you'll be making over and over again.
I'm gonna start by making the marinade for our meat.
First I'm gonna add in some soy sauce into a container.
A little bit of sugar, Worcestershire sauce,
Dijon mustard and a little bit of garlic.
It's just a really simple soy garlic marinade.
Mix it all up and then we're gonna add in our meat.
Lately I have been really into top sirloin.
It's a tender cut that's perfect for a weeknight meal.
Glide it in, flip it on each side
to get it fully coated in the marinade.
And now I'm gonna let it marinate in the fridge
for four hours, flipping it over halfway through.
Now, moving on to our noodles,
I'm using these millet and brown rice ramen.
Found these at Costco in a jumbo pack
and we love them, we use them all the time.
So I thought it would be fun to share this one with you.
But I'm just gonna boil two squares
according to the package's direction,
and this one cooks really fast.
And then well just drain, rinse and set it aside.
When cooking these noodles,
be sure to keep a close eye on them
because just slightly overcooking them
can cause a lot of mushiness.
Okay, so now let's cook off our steak.
It's been marinating for four hours and it's ready.
So in a hot cast iron I'm just gonna sear each side
for four minutes for a perfect medium rare.
I'll transfer it to a cutting board
and let it hang out for about five minutes
while we make our dressing.
(mellow music)
It's a citrus sesame dressing that is
pretty similar to the ones that you've had
at your favorite Japanese restaurant.
Hopefully this comes close.
I'm gonna start off by adding our sesame base.
I'm using tahini here, which is a sesame paste
similar to peanut butter.
And then for our citrus zing a little bit of orange juice.
Soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar and garlic.
And now we're just gonna mix it up until it becomes
a nice and cohesive sauce.
(upbeat music)
Delicious!
All right, now I'm just gonna slice up our meat
real quick and then we will assemble the bowl.
Perfect medium rare.
Now to assemble everything, I'm gonna start
with a bed of mixed greens at the bottom.
Then I'll layer our ramen on top.
Then I'm gonna dress our ramen with
our sesame soy vinaigrette.
And then our toppings, I used pretty much
all the colors of the rainbow, almost.
We're gonna start with some red bell peppers.
Some mangoes 'cause it adds a nice, sweet, tart flavor.
And I got kind of unripened mangoes.
Cucumbers, carrots, layer our meat.
And finally, some cilantro for garnish.
If you don't like cilantro,
scallions work really well, too.
If you want you can also add some
toasted sesame seeds for a little color.
As with any salad, we'll just give it a quick mix.
The beef is tender and flavorful, and then the noodles,
coated in that sesame soy dressing, it has a little bit
of that citrus kick from the orange juice
and the nuttiness really comes through from the sesame.
If salads are part of your normal routine
I hope you guys give these noodle salads a try.
And let me know in the comment section below
which one you would try first.
If you do recreate the dishes I would love to see them,
so be sure to tag me on Instagram at @honeysuckle
so I can reshare, like your photos.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you guys next time, bye!
- Okay, hold on, okay, sorry.
What was I doing?
Okay.
- Instead of the traditional soba buckwheat nooden.
Instead of the tradition chewy so, blugh.
Mmm.
- I think I'll just cancel our plans
and just stay here and eat.
- How'd you like it?
- Super good. - Yeah?