(light music) - Hi, I'm Rie.
These are some of my favorite Japanese noodles.
Yakisoba, it's kind of mac and cheese for me.
It's easy to make, you can make a lot of it,
and my mom used to make yakisoba all the time for my lunch.
So the first recipe is classic yakisoba.
Tasty Japan is making four different versions here.
Basic yakisoba is usually noodle, cabbage,
carrot, bean sprout, thinly sliced pork
tossed with yakisoba sauce which is sweet,
savory and tangy all at the same time.
It's very similar to okonomiyaki sauce,
but slightly thinner.
It's kind of like Japanese chow mein.
You might only be familiar with the basic style,
but there are bunch of different way of making it.
The second, it's salt and lemon.
I've started seeing a lot of trend
where salt lemon combination
is getting very popular in Japan.
This is lighter than the sauce one.
Also, yakisoba, you often would find on the street.
It's very much a Japanese street food.
You can also find it in Japan in instant versions,
so you can just pour hot water,
drain the water, and add sauce.
It's kind of like Maruchan Ramen,
but we have this yakisoba version of that.
The options are unlimited.
The third one buta kimchi.
Buta, it's pork and kimchi.
Pork and kimchi flavor combination
is very popular as well.
If you go to an okonomiyaki place,
you will see this flavor combination very often.
It's a Japanese take on more of Korean style dish.
I feel like it's more Japanese people
have started using kimchi in our daily food,
so I think it's kind of a fusion.
You can order your favorite vegetables and protein
and make it a little healthier, and make it fancy.
The first one is a little bit fancy with more seafood.
We have shrimp and squid, it also has a little quail egg.
Quail egg is super easy to find.
Every grocery store has it pretty much.
You might only be familiar with the basic style,
but there are a bunch of different ways
to make yakisoba that you should try.
It's easy and simple with proteins and vegetables,
nutritious and delicious dish.
There are a lot of different way of making it.
If you have any other creative ideas, let me know.
Go make it, and go make it fancy (laughs).
(upbeat music)
This is a recipe for cold udon.
It uses eggplant and tomatoes,
so it's more for, like, summer.
I love eggplant, and it's so good.
So in the summertime in Japan,
it's very humid, and it's super hot.
So this is the perfect dish for the kind of summer.
The broth it uses is mentsuyu.
Mentsuyu, it's soy sauce based
with dashi, and it's a kind of dipping sauce.
You can use it for a lot of dishes like somen,
and a dipping sauce for tempura.
Men means noodle, and tsuyu is dipping sauce.
This concentrated pre-made sauce is used mainly
for, like, various different kind of noodle dishes.
You can make it from scratch,
but it's very easy to find in a grocery store,
and I think you can find it
in an Asian grocery store in the U.S.
If you want to make it from scratch,
you can make it with dashi and soy sauce and mirin,
but if you use mentsuyu, you can make udon on a whim.
The last time I made udon for a video,
it was beef udon and kitsune udon.
But this one is different because it is for summer udon.
So this one's different because it's not served hot,
and it uses different ingredients like summer vegetable.
Like yakisoba, you can experiment with it.
Maybe you can make Italian udon.
I've seen carbonara udon before.
Udon is like a blank canvas, so experiment with it,
and experiment with your favorite flavors
and ingredients, and make your own udon.
(light music)
Ramen is very popular fast food in Japan,
and I think it's getting more popular in the States as well.
Everyone loves Ramen, right?
I feel like in here the popular broth
is usually tonkotsu ramen, and tonkotsu,
it's make with pork, so it's a little heavy to me.
So whenever I go back to Japan,
I always eat my favorite style which is shoyu,
which is soy sauce based, or salt,
which is chicken broth based,
because it's a little lighter than tonkotsu.
I also love soft boiled egg in ramen,
and it's very easy to make.
You just boil water and put the egg in it,
and wait for six to seven minutes.
This ramen recipe is developed by Daiki in Tasty Japan,
and I'm so glad that he made this video
so I can make at home.
And another popular flavor is miso ramen.
Miso ramen is miso based broth.
It's very good, sometimes it come with
miso butter, and sometimes it's a little spicy.
My favorite toppings for ramen is menma
which is bamboo shoot.
Kind of has a little crunchy texture to it,
so it gives a nice texture into ramen
because ramen is usually soft.
It's costed like slow fast food
because it takes a long time to make it,
but it's very fast to serve.
You can find a ramen shop easily in L.A.,
but if you want to make it at home,
there is ramen noodles you can find
in Asian grocery stores.
It usually comes with broth too.
So this recipe is very easy to make at home,
so please give it a try.