A few weeks ago I made the Yakisoba (Japanese Fried Noodles) recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

I managed to get all of the unusual-to-me ingredients at our Super H Mart: the Bulldog-brand Worcestershire sauce, yakisoba noodles, and Kewpie mayonnaise. I’m not confident I got what Kenji calls “ao-nori.” I got some seasoned seaweed flakes. Same with the beni-shoga. My understanding is that beni-shoga is ginger pickled in umeboshi brine. I got pickled ginger that was in the same section as other pickled ginger and the umeboshi, and it was red, but it was labelled “Kizami Ginger.” I think that just means that it’s slivered instead of thinly sliced. I suspect it’s close to beni-shoga.

The sauce is made with the Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sugar.

Thinly sliced pork belly is stir-fried until rendered and starting to crisp. I found it took a while to get the pork belly to get any kind of crisp on it.

Then thinly sliced onion, carrot, and cabbage are added and stir-fried until tender. Finally scallions are added, tossed, and then everything is removed to a bowl.

The noodles are stir-fried until hot and then all of the previously stir-fried ingredients are added back and tossed. I was disappointed in these noodles. They were quite fragile and easily broke into small pieces just working with them. I think next time I’ll try normal ramen noodles as Kenji notes as an option.

Next the sauce is added and tossed and you season to taste. The dish is moved to plates, sprinkled with the ao-nori and beni-shoga, and then drizzled with the mayo.

We enjoyed this one. My son especially liked the crispy pieces of pork. Similar to the Easy Stir-Fried Noodles with Mushrooms, Carrots, Basil, and Sweet Soy Sauce dish there are a lot of vegetables that get hidden away in the yakisoba. I think it had enough going on for Megan to like it, too. She definitely helped eat the leftovers.

I’ll make this one again, likely with fresh ramen noodles, though.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.