Beef Udon (Niku Udon)
Niku Udon is one type of udon noodle with beef as toppings. We in Japan have different kinds of noodle meals, such as ramen, a Chinese type of soba, soba, and udon. In particular, when you visit a noodle restaurant, you see noodles with a lot of different types of toppings there as well. This meal is one of my favorite udon noodle toppings. My mom used to cook it, because it is easy to cook, delicious, and everyone in my family loves it.
We have an interesting culture because many people in the west side of Japan like udon noodles better, but on the other hand, people in the east region tend to like soba noodles better. Both are good, but which area you come from differs tendency. Also, there are slight differences in the udon noodle soups between the two areas. It is said, that what comes from the west side of Japan has clearer soup based on dashi broth, from the east side has brown soup based on soy sauce. I grew up in the middle of Japan, which has soy sauce-based soup but my mom is from the Kyusyu region which is the very west, so I am more familiar with west-side teste. Udon meal is a basic down-to-earth meal for the Japanese home cooking. And Niku Udon is one of the top popular udon menus.
This recipe came from my mom, and she was taught how to cook it by her grandma who ran her small store which sold side dishes in Kyusyu. My mom doesn’t usually scale condiments or ingredients but finds it the perfect taste of the meal after all. I kind of learned the way she cooks but since I started to become a food blogger, I try to scale everything now, in order to make things accurate for the audiences. I think udon is all about dashi and umami, as a Japanese citizen, the taste of dashi makes me feel at home. Beef gives udon a little bit of spice (it is not literally spicy) and makes you want more. I always drink the entire bowl of soup.
- ¼ Onion
- 100 g Beef
- ½ Thin Fried Tofu (Abura age(rectangle))
- ½ tsp Ginger
- 1 tbsp Soy sauce
- 1 tsp Cooking sake
- 1 tsp Mirin (Rice wine)
- 200 g Udon noodle (Frozen udon)
- As needed Spring onion
- 200 ml Water
- 1 tbsp Cooking sake
- ½ tsp Dashi stock
- ½ tsp Salt
- ½ tsp Soy sauce
- Preparation
Get all the ingredients and condiments.
- Boil water for noodles
The first thing you do is boil water for noodles because it usually takes time for a big amount of water to boil up. While boiling water, you move on to the next step.
-Follow the instructions on the package of the noodles about the way to boil them. - Prepare ingredients
While waiting for the noodle water to boil, boil another water for fried tofu in order to cut off the oil. Cut ingredients. Cut onion into slices, beef into bite-size roughly, and fried tofu into thin rectangles.
- Cook ingredients
Heat a pan over medium-high heat, and put cooking oil on the pan. First, sauté onion until it gets clear-ish, and add beef. When beef turns a nice color, add ginger and season with the other condiments. Once the water in the pan gets less add fried tofu at the very end. Cook it for a while until the water is almost gone.
- Boil noodles
When the water boils up, put the noodles into a pot, and boil for the appropriate time. After boiling the noodles, drain them well with a strainer.
-Follow the instructions on the package of noodles about the way to boil them. - Make soup
Boil water for soup, when the water for the soup boils up, add cooking sake, dashi stock, salt, and soy sauce. After it gets boiled again, it is ready to serve.
- Dish up
Put drained noodles into a bowl put sautéed ingredients in, and pour the soup onto it. Sprinkle spring onion on top.
-I usually keep frozen cut spring onions in my freezer. It is good to keep them fresh for a long time and add a little bit of color to your meal. Also, we don’t usually want a big amount of them. I started this because oftentimes it has gone bad before I use them all. So when I get spring onion, I cut the whole of them into pieces and put them into a container and put it in a freezer, easy and useful!!
