A Soba Cooking Guide for EVERYONE
One fine day in December last year I was strolling around Isetan Supermarket after work. And so, I bought soba (and soba sauce of course).
Now, for many people who simply can’t read Japanese out there, or at least not sufficiently to make out the gobbledegook on the rear side of the plastic packages containing dried soba, NO WORRIES. That’s why you are here, right? (if you’re bored that’s a separate question, but I’d highly encourage you to eat soba. It’s… just… good.)
Let’s start with BUYING the soba.
STEP ONE: BUYING SOBA
If you have a kilogram of dried soba on your hands right now and are eager to start, skip to step two. Make sure you’ve got your soba sauce ready.
All right, you’re at a supermarket. Even maybe a supermarket catered to the thousands of Japanese invading your home city. Or even a supermarket in Paradise itself!!! (call it Tokyo, even) So, you’re at this goods shelf looking at anywhere from three to thirty different types and brands of soba. Which should you pick?
I will first start off by stating something about those bento-type sobas that have already been cooked and come ready with cut spring onions and wasabi with the mandatory dip. THEY AREN’T WORTH YOUR MONEY. That’s true, particularly abroad, where Japanese food prices often have massive mismatches with local foods. To minimize the damage, buy DRIED sobas, which offer many advantages. However the big issues(s) I have with bento-types are as follows:
1. Cost (already mentioned)
2. Short viability period - prepared sobas typically last for one to two days. Quite irritating.
3. The noodles themselves - depending on the type of bento you get, you might be lucky to get those which actually come with a packet of water. Now the water can be used for 2 purposes - to mix with a concentrated dip to yield the standard dip, or simply water to pour over the noodles. The second situation is when you’re lucky. You NEED water to loosen up the soba, which by that time will no longer be soggy and smooth and WON’T slide over one another - just yank too hard at the noodles with your chopsticks and they simply break off. So you need water to smoothen and harden them up. With cooked sobas, you can generally avoid this problem more easily (not to mention that certain necessities are guaranteed by the fact you’re cooking the soba to start with).
4. Waste. Come on man. You’re just eating soba. Is it really worth all that plastic and stuff wasted just to package it? I don’t like waste, so I try to avoid it. In any case you really only need water and a fridge in real, hands-on soba preparation. Even soap’s optional, i swear. That’s how squeaky healthy soba is.
All right. What’s so good about dried soba? Firstly, it’s cheap. Secondly, it can be kept for weeks if not months in airtight containers (I just dump my uncooked noodles into the fridge - I eat up a packet of 4 servings in a week or so anyway). Thirdly, IT GIVES YOU THE FUN AND SATISFACTION OF COOKING YOUR OWN SOBA. Rest assured, cooking it is ALMOST as idiot-proof as buying ready-made soba.
Back to the main issue. Buying the soba. My guidelines are simply:
1. The cheapest
2. Don’t buy cha-soba (the green version)
3. MAKE SURE ITS FOR ZARU SOBA.
If I have tricked you into thinking that I might be teaching you how to cook HOT sobas, I’m sorry to tell you that to ME, ZARU SOBA = SOBA = ZARU SOBA. It’s not that I have something against them, but it’s like a case of Combinis in Japan:
Combini = 2 types.
Seven Eleven, and everything else.
So you’ll pardon me if I ignore hot soba for a moment. Thanks. ^^
Don’t forget to buy the bells and whistles! In case you don’t know the exact name for soba sauce, it’s “tsuyu” (つゆ), so do mention that to a helpful (usually attractive somewhat) supermarket assistant if you’re in Japan, or to a sour-faced 50-year old if you’re abroad. Just buy the cheapest and the most concentrated version you can find - and remember that concentrated versions usually last a little longer, if you’re a heavy soba consumer.
STEP TWO: COOKING THE SOBA
According to the instructions on my soba packet it went something like
1. Wash the soba.
2. Heat at least 1 litre of water (per serving cooked) to a vigorous boil
3. Add the soba in a manner that does not result in a stack of soba neatly arranged in the pot
4. Boil for 5 minutes when the water resumes a vigorous boil
At least, that’s what I can remember of it.
When I first cooked my soba, I followed this. It didn’t work. So what worked eventually?
It’s very simple.
1. DON’T WASH THE SOBA. If you do, all the noodles will end up sticking together and you’ll have a mess where much of the noodles end up uncooked. You MUST put the soba into boiling water when DRY (if the noodles are a little damp from condensation after removal from the fridge, however, it’s perfectly fine).
2. Heat some water to a vigorous boil in a pot that should ideally have a diameter almost as wide as the dry soba noodle is long. For me I use a pot that’s 21.5 cm wide and fill it with about 3cm of water. So that works out to about 11^2×3x3 = 121×9 = 1089cc which is about 1.1 litres. The bottom line line is using an amount of water at least 2.5-3 cm deep, so a very large pot will require a lot more water.
3. Add in the noodles without washing (as noted above.) Immediately use a pair of chopsticks to change the orientation of the soba with respect to each other (a complex way of saying “MESS IT UP!!!”). There is a reason for this. Immediately messing up the soba prevents any two pieces from sticking together, a disastrous phenomenon that WILL result in undercooked noodles. What I do is to stick the chopsticks into the midst of the originally-neat-stack-of-soba-noodles and move the chopsticks in a spiral around the pot without gripping anything. The things is that seconds after the soba enters boiling water it will soften sufficiently to make this maneuver completely harmless to the soba.
4. Boil the noodles at a moderate boil for 6-7 minutes, and then lift a noodle from the pot to test-taste. The noodle should be fully cooked, slightly springy, and DEFINITELY NOT SOFT. While cooking continually move the noodles around in spiral motions. Ignore the packet’s instructions on waiting for the water to reach a boil again. It’s rubbish. Simply time from the moment all the soba is added (I am assuming you take no more than 15-20 seconds to put in everything. You can’t be THAT slow, right?) Do not cook till noodles are soft as the time between you test-taste and remove the noodles from the pot will matter. Boil at a moderate boil to save energy. I see no point in boiling the soba vigorously - but the vigorously boiling water at the START of the cooking seems to serve some function. I will experiment to see if it is redundant. If so I will note it here.
5. Use the chopsticks to remove the soba from the pot onto a wide, shallow dish (IMPORTANT). Immediately add TAP WATER to cover the dish (and hopefully all the noodles). Next, drain the water and repeat the step once more. The purpose of this step is to cool the noodles quickly and somehow or other it also results in stronger noodles that don’t snap quite as easily. The use of tap water is simply to save the trouble of using cold water (which you will need for later) at this water consuming step. I don’t have a strainer, but if you have it, use it. What I do to drain the water is simply using my hands (which are of course clean) to hold on to the noodles while tipping the dish almost vertical to allow water to drain off. The reasons for using a wide shallow dish are hard to explain, but basically this saves water and prevents the problem of having very wet, soaked noodles at the bottom of a narrow dish and dry, sticky ones at the top. Using a wide dish just equalizes things.
6. Place the dish of noodles (after making sure it’s considerably dry) into the fridge for an hour or two before moving on to the next step.
Let me explain some of my philosophy in the steps above. Basically, what’s wrong with the normal instructions for soba preparation are the use of resources. Especially the cold water part. Also it doesn’t teach you how to avoid the biggest problem in soba cooking - the production of two extremes, either the wet, soggy noodles, or dry, soft, and easily breakable noodles. Hence, the noodles should be subjected to heat shock (the use of tap water many degrees lower than the temperature of the noodles at the time while not necessitating cold water), and drained (to prevent soggy noodles). Now for the next step.
STEP THREE: PREPARING THE SOBA
Note the slightly different terminology. Now that you’ve COOKED the soba, you need to prepare it for consumption. This isn’t quite as simple as it looks.
Negi (spring onions), wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and nori (seaweed) are your own affair and choice, so I have just a simple word of advice: keep them fresh. Prepare them shortly before you eat your soba (no more than a day in advance).
First I’ll talk about the soba dip, which you can prepare while waiting for the soba to cool in the fridge. Of course if you’re really impatient, simply pour cold water and ice cubes over the noodles in the shallow dish after part 5 of step 2 and serve.
The soba dip, as I said, should preferably come in a concentrated form. How much final dip do you need? I’d say enough to fill a 2/3 of a normal Japanese teacup (where I keep the dip in), which is around 180cc. You can manage with a little less, or more. It’s up to you. Adjust the amount of concentrate you need according to how concentrated it is, and add COLD WATER to make up the balance. Cold soba is served cold, so there’s no reason to add hot or even lukewarm water. And I hope you’ve chilled the concentrate beforehand…
The soba. Yes. The key part. Actually here it gets ridiculous easy. Following from part six from Step Two,
1. Remove the plate of soba.
2. Add 30ccs (HECK JUST A LITTLE WILL DO) of cold water and a few ice cubes.
3. Mix noodles around a little and make sure water gets to every one.
4. Test to see that the noodles don’t break. If they do, add more water and leave noodles to soak a few minutes.
STEP FOUR
1. Eat your soba.
2. Clean up/throw everything away.
3. Erm… Do whatever you want?
That’s it.
And when the whole mess is over and you finally wash up… HEY I DON’T NEED TO USE SOAP OR DETERGENT!!! Yes, there is no oil or fat traces. Yes. HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY MOST JAPANESE STILL REFUSE TO DIE AT EIGHTY? This is why.
Now I must be off… TO EAT SOBA OF COURSE. Test this guide out - and comment on your successes or failures! ^^