Miso Peanut Udon
Thick udon in a peanut-miso broth, built from a stove and a spoon.
- calories
- 900
- weight
- 8 oz
- cal / oz
- 113
- protein
- 38 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 10 min
- total time
- 15 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Canoe / raft
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Shelf-stable udon | 300 g | vacuum-packed noodles, no refrigeration |
|---|---|---|
| Powdered chicken bouillon | 2 tsp | makes 500 ml of stock |
| Peanut butter | 3 tbsp | single-serve squeeze packets do not leak |
| Miso paste | 2 tbsp | travels fine unrefrigerated for a week |
| Soy sauce | 3 tbsp | packets or a small dropper bottle |
| Rice vinegar | 2 tbsp | |
| Sesame oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Foil-packet chicken or pork | 2 packets | replaces the fresh pork neck |
| Freeze-dried spinach | 1 cup | |
| Dried green onion | 2 tbsp | |
| Toasted sesame seeds | 2 tsp | |
| Chili crisp | 2 tsp | in a leakproof jar |
| Dried cilantro | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Bring 500 ml of water to a boil. Stir in the bouillon.
- Take the pot off the heat. Add the peanut butter, miso, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil and stir hard until no lumps of peanut butter are left. Off the heat matters: miso goes flat when it boils.
- Put the pot back on a low flame. Drop in the udon and the freeze-dried spinach. Two to three minutes, stirring, until the noodles loosen and the spinach rehydrates.
- Tear in the meat packets and warm them through for a minute.
- Kill the heat. Top with green onion, sesame seeds, cilantro, and chili crisp. Split between two bowls or eat out of the pot.
The original poaches eggs and sears pork neck, which needs three pans and a fridge. On a stove in the dirt you get one pot, so the eggs are gone and the pork is a foil packet. What survives is the part that actually carries the dish: peanut butter and miso emulsified into stock, thick enough to coat the noodles instead of pooling under them.
Order matters more than technique here. Peanut butter dropped into boiling water seizes into strings; taken off the heat and beaten into hot stock it goes smooth. Vinegar and chili crisp are there to cut the fat, and without them 900 calories of peanut and sesame oil sits heavy after a long day.
Packing
Bouillon, dried spinach, green onion, cilantro, and sesame seeds go in one bag. Peanut butter, soy, vinegar, and sesame oil ride in packets or small bottles inside a ziplock, because one of them will eventually leak. Udon is heavy but bombproof.
Variations
- Skip the meat packets and use vegetable bouillon for a vegan pot. Check the chili crisp label.
- Ramen blocks work if you cannot find shelf-stable udon, but drop the water to 400 ml.
- A spoonful of peanut butter powder plus oil saves a little weight over the jarred kind.
https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/kos/ramen-med-udon-nudler