These Cold Dipping Noodles Are Perfect for the End of Summer

It is early August and a heat wave surges through California. A breeze travels down the Los Angeles River, along a bike path that leads straight to the shore and conveniently through a couple of neighboring houses. Amplified by a loud fan strategically placed next to the back screen door, that same breeze wafts through the kitchen, where Thrive Market Senior Designer Garrin Yabuta is preparing the perfect accompaniment to a summer evening: cold noodles.

Chopping the ends off a bundle of bean sprouts and setting a pot of water to boil, he is preparing dinner quickly, with what energy he has after a long, hot day of working. A recipe that he knows intuitively —cold dipping noodles — are a quick, delicious, and most importantly, useful meal for surviving the hottest months of the year. He adds a glug of soy sauce in a bowl, then squeezes honey and lemons in and stirs everything up.  Various dishes of cooked vegetables dot the table, open for anyone to serve themselves.

Growing up, cold dipping noodles, in the form of soba, were a staple for the Yabuta family in the summertime. His mother would boil buckwheat noodles on the stove then shock them in ice water when they approached the perfect amount of chew. These noodles were then dipped in a chilled broth and eaten with with various vegetables and fishcakes his father bought at a local Japanese market over the weekend. 

The noodles Garrin serves now are different than the ones he had when he was young. Over the years, he’s tailored the dish to his own tastes: preferring to make the broth from scratch and increasing the acidity and spiciness of it. Food is prone to nostalgia the way an old song is. The same dish that once sat on the dinner table of Garrin’s childhood – sister, mother, father – now feeds the table he shares with his partner, Laura, and their dog Leia snoring by their feet. 

Garrin’s Cold Dipping Noodles

Like the jazz-infused hip hop and dance music Garrin loves listening to, these noodles were born out of improvisation with a great reverence for the past. These elevate traditional soba noodles by introducing a healthy amount of lemon and scoops of chili oil — creating a vibrant, acidic, and tasty broth perfect for dipping the ice-cold buckwheat noodles into. 

Yield: 4 servings
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

4 tablespoons soy sauce
10 tablespoons lemon juice
1 ½-inch piece ginger, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon hondashi (powdered seaweed broth)
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
1 tablespoon chili oil
1 cup water, divided
1 teaspoon sesame seeds 
1 bunch green onions, sliced
16 oz buckwheat noodles
2 cups ice cubes (optional)

Optional Toppings:

Bean sprouts
Marinated bamboo shoots
Scrambled egg, sliced 
Soft-boiled eggs
Ham, sliced
Fish cakes
Seaweed salad
Kimchi

Instructions

Whisk soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, ginger, hondashi, sugar, and chili oil in a bowl. Adjust the seasoning of the broth by first adding in half of the water, tasting, then pouring in the rest until you reach your desired level of saltiness. Refrigerate this mixture.  

Bring a pot of water to a boil and add in the buckwheat noodles. Once the noodles are fully cooked, remove the pot from the heat and strain out the noodles. Run these hot noodles under cold water, or alternatively, shock in a bath of ice water. 

Before serving, take the broth out of the fridge and stir in the sesame seeds and green onion. Plate the noodles and broth in separate bowls. Add ½ cup of ice to each bowl with noodles and top with green onions. Encourage dipping.