Japanese Curry Udon

I threw a poll onto The Consultant Who Cook’s Instagram page (which you should totally follow @theconsultantwhocooks) for what recipe I should cover next: Japanese or Italian. Japanese won, so I will spend the next couple posts illustrating handy Japanese noodle recipes to make in a pinch.

I personally enjoy Japanese udon noodles because of their thick, chewy texture. I first tried curry udon in a noodle shop in the Marunouchi building near Tokyo Station. That curry udon was delicious with the pint of Ebisu Gold beer that I drank with it.

Fortunately, I discovered that curry udon is very easy to make at home, and it’s handy if your time to cook is constrained by work demands. Because I am somebody with Indian-tuned taste buds, my version has a little more “Oomph!” to it with additional Indian spices.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 frozen serving of your favorite thick udon noodle (DO NOT THAW!)
1.5 cups dashi stock (Make by combining 1 tsp dashi stock powder like Hondashi with 1.5 cups boiling water)
Enough olive oil to thinly coat the bottom of your frying pan
2 strips sliced pork belly
1 small onion sliced
1 green onion sliced, keeping the tops and bottoms separate
1 block of your favorite Japanese curry (I prefer S&B’s Extra Hot Golden Curry)
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sake
1 tsp garam masala (optional)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

Method

Bring water in a sauce pan up to a rolling boil, drop the frozen udon into it, and set a timer for exactly 1 minute. Naturally, as you dropped a frozen mass into boiling water, the water will no longer boil. That’s fine. It may look like the udon isn’t cooking for most of the time, but at exactly one minute, the udon will be thawed and cooked. Agitate with chopsticks occasionally.

Drain the noodles in a colander and run them under cold water to stop the noodles from cooking any further and set the noodles aside.

Preheat olive oil in a frying pan and fry off the pork belly slices until they’re no longer pink.

Fry the onion and the bottom of your green onion in the same pan until they’re translucent.

Pour the dashi into the frying pan and allow it to come up to a boil. Then place the curry block in the pan and stir until it is completely dissolved. Undissolved curry will make this dish less pleasant.