Have you been following along as we cook our way through the alphabet? We’ve been cooking a recipe for each letter and are up to U for Udon noodles. “U” is a pretty difficult letter to cook around. Urchins, anyone? The cooking with kids team decided to give Udon noodles a try.
The kids and I headed off to the grocery store but weren’t able to find udon noodles. Now, I’m sure they were available somewhere in the city. But, I’m not about to drag four kids around on a Udon noodle search. We decided to make our own!
Homemade Udon Noodle Recipe
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I had to look up a recipe for udon noodles and based ours on this one. I changed the amounts around, and I’m not sure how authentic our recipe ended up being, but the noodles sure were good!
Ingredients needed to make udon noodles:
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup water
1.5 cups flour
First, stir the salt into the water until dissolved. Pour the salt water into the flour. Combine with your fingers until the flour pulls together. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth. This dough will be lumpy and tough to knead, but keep at it.
The recipe we referenced above used a foot method to knead the dough. We skipped that, and just kneaded with our hands on the floured surface like our Baking Mat
It took a lot of oomph, but we had a lot of little hands that wanted a turn kneading.
It took a lot of oomph, but we had a lot of little hands that wanted a turn kneading.
Use a Rolling Pin
to roll out a rectangle of dough. Roll or fold the dough over. Use a knife to cut narrow strips of dough from the roll. Unroll the noodles and separate them on a floured surface.
to roll out a rectangle of dough. Roll or fold the dough over. Use a knife to cut narrow strips of dough from the roll. Unroll the noodles and separate them on a floured surface.
Bring water to a boil in a large pan. Drop the noodles in one by one. Stir after a minute to keep the noodles from sticking together. Allow the water to return to a boil and cook the dough until the noodles float.
Once cooked, drain the water and rinse the noodles.
We used our udon noodles in a shrimp dinner.
Shrimp and Udon Dinner Recipe
To make dinner with our udon noodles, we made the following recipe:
1 cup carrots, chopped into ribbons
3-4 green onions, sliced
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 pound shrimp, cooked
Saute the garlic in olive oil. Add the ribboned carrots and sliced green onions, saving some green onions for garnish. Allow these to cook for 5 minutes until softened. Add the soy sauce, cooked udon noodles, and cooked shrimp. Stir and toss all ingredients for 2 minutes. Add green onion garnish and serve immediately.
This dinner was a hit with all four kids. While our noodles didn’t look perfect (in fact, they looked pretty bad!), the dish was delicious. Our udon noodles were thick and chewy. This is a dinner we’ll be making again.
Stop back to see what the other bloggers on the Cooking With Kids team have made using udon noodles:
You’ll love these other recipes from our cooking with kids series:
M is for Mushrooms: Veggie Quesadilla Recipe | N is for Nuts: Honey Roasted Nuts Popcorn | O is for Olives: Antipasto Skewer Kabobs | P is for Peppers: Asian Chicken
Want to cook healthy foods for your family? Grab Yum! Deliciously Healthy Meals for Kids, a cookbook for busy families that want healthy meal ideas.
