How to make MAZE-SOBA (Taiwanese style soup-less noodle) 〜まぜそば〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiju's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make Taiwanese-style mazesoba. So this was a request from someone and I actually never tried this myself in Japan, but I knew of it and so I looked it up and tried it myself and it was very delicious. Even though it says Taiwanese mazesoba, this was invented in Japan and actually in my hometown, Nagoya. Because somehow in Nagoya, where I come from, there are quite a lot of Taiwanese restaurants. One of the Taiwanese restaurants kind of just made this up and it was very liked from the customers so it has spread out in Japan in the last 5-10 years or so. It's fairly new and it's really not traditional Japanese food, but nonetheless it's something we eat in Japan. And the recipe that I'm making contains two ingredients that's not quite popular. One is the tobanjian chili sauce and the other is oyster sauce. But if you don't have those, that's okay. You can make without them, but it just kind of gives a little more depth to the flavor. And also the Chinese chives, which kind of gives a little more kick to it, but like I said, it's not that crucial so you can make without them. Other than those ingredients, it's quite very easy and it's also a perfect summer dish so I hope you give this a try yourself. Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for mazesoba. If you can get hold of raw ramen noodle, that's great. If not, that's okay. Today I'm going to show you an alternative version of kind of imitating the ramen noodle using regular pasta and baking powder. For the topping and ingredients, I have two stalks of scallion. And here I have Chinese chives. In Japanese they're called nira. If you can get hold of these, it's not so crucial. But if you can find it in some Asian store, then great, get that. Because this kind of adds a little depth to the flavor and a little kick. I have bonito flakes for the topping. About 100 gram of ground pork meat. Two cloves of garlic. One for the meat sauce and one for the topping. And I also have here onsen tamago. To make that, I have another video on that, so please check that out. Or you can also use just regular raw egg yolk. But I would assume many people are against eating raw eggs, so onsen tamago is a good alternative. And then for the seasoning, I have sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, toba jian, a chili bean sauce. If you don't have this, you can use cilantro or some kind of chili sauce. Or if you don't like it spicy, you can skip this as well. Then I also have here oyster sauce. In many supermarkets in the western countries, you can find them nowadays. And this will kind of add a little depth to the flavor. But you don't have to have this. Don't get this extra for this recipe. But this is also good for many stir-fried recipes or also a lot of Chinese recipes. So you can give this a try as well. Then let's start cooking. First, we're going to prepare all the ingredients. So I'm going to start with the bonito flakes. What I'm going to do, I'm going to make powder out of these. So these bonito flakes are, as it's called, in these flakes form. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to kind of squish them together like this. They're just going to break apart and be powdery. So just about this much is fine. Now let's prepare the garlic and ginger. So the garlic, I'm going to take off the bottom. So with a garlic smasher, I'm going to grate this like this. And the other for the topping. Then the ginger, I'm going to peel the skin off. And also using a garlic smasher, just like this. I'm going to cut up the scallion. So this is usual. I'm going to cut it into small pieces. So half of it, I'm going to save it for the sauce. And the other half is for the topping. Now let's cut up the Chinese chives. Take the end off. And this as well, I'm going to cut into small pieces. Then these are finished. These two are for the spicy meat sauce. And these four are for the topping. Then let's start cooking. So I forgot to list this in the ingredients in the beginning, but we're going to use a little bit of nori seaweed as well. So these go stale very fast. I would suggest storing them in a Ziploc like this in a fridge. Even if this is stored properly, they go stale. So to check this, if you can fold like this without any sound and without ripping, then this is pretty stale. You can kind of touch it and it's pretty soft. So to freshen up, we need to roast this. So I'm going to show you how to do that with an oven like this. I'm going to turn the heat to medium. All we're going to do is go above the flame like this and change the side. Go over like this 20 to 30 times or so. Turn it off. So this will be re-roasted like this. And then to check it, if it's fresh, you can fold it like this. You can hear this is very crunchy. Just like this. Today I'm going to use about two to three sheets like this. So I'm going to cut this in strips like this. And this is finished for that. Now let's make the meat sauce. So I'm going to heat up the frying pan with medium heat. So once the frying pan is heated, I'm going to put in a little bit of frying oil. Today I'll have sesame oil, but whatever frying oil is good. About a tablespoon. And this I'm going to put in the garlic and ginger. Give it a little roast like this. And then right away I'm going to put in the scallion. So once the scallion has been roasted a little bit, I'm going to put in the meat. Now once the meat has been cooked thoroughly, I'm going to put in here the doubanjiang or chili bean sauce. I'm going to put in about one teaspoon. So to bring out the spiciness of chili, it's very important to fry it. If you like it spicy, you can also put in more chili sauce of course. So after the chili sauce has been mixed and cooked thoroughly, I'm going to put in the rest of the sauces. So first oyster sauce, also about a tablespoon. Soy sauce, also about a tablespoon. And then sugar, about half teaspoon. So once it's been mixed thoroughly and cooked thoroughly like this, and this is finished, I'm going to turn the heat off. I'm going to put this aside. Now let's cook the noodle. So in a pot, about a liter of water, I'm going to bring this to boil. Turn the heat to high. So once this comes to a boil, I'm going to put in here the baking powder. Just about 8 to 10 grams or so. Then I'm going to put in here the pasta. So just about a bundle like this much, about 100 grams. So to make it flare, I'm going to twist like this. And then put it in here as twisted like this. Well, didn't go so well, but whatever. So this says cook for 5 minutes. So I'm going to set the timer to 5 minutes. And then cook like this for 5 minutes. So this is finished. I'm going to turn heat off. So after this, I'm going to have to move very quickly. So I'm going to put this on a plate. And this I'm going to put in a little bit of sesame oil, about a teaspoon. And just kind of give it a little mix. So this will prevent the noodle to be sticking together. Now we're going to put all the toppings. So first, I'm going to put the meat sauce on the top. Make a little dent for the egg. I'm going to put all the ingredients on the side. So a little bit of the scallion, the Chinese chives, nori seaweed, the bonito flake powder, and grated garlic. And as the last thing, onsen tamago on the top. Then this is finished for mazu soba. Let's eat. Oh, it smells already good. So let's break off the onsen tamago. Oh yeah, it looks great. So to eat this mazu soba properly, you just have to mix everything. So it's not going to look very good, but that's the way we eat them. And the main thing, the flavor is going to be awesome. So I'm just going to mix everything up like this. So to eat this properly, I'm going to slurp. So if you don't like the sound of slurping, please skip to the end. Mmm, this is delicious. Oh, the spicy meat sauce is so totally delicious. It also matches with the scallion and the Chinese chives perfectly, combined with the garlic and noodle. This is such a great harmony. Oh, that was delicious. Oh, that was totally filling. So as you saw, for this mazu soba, it does require quite a lot of ingredients, but you don't have to use all those ingredients, like oyster sauce and the tobanjan, chili sauce, and also the Chinese chives. You don't necessarily have to have all of them. It'll just give the depth to the flavor. And without those, it's pretty easy to make. So I hope you give this a try. And this is also kind of considered as a summer dish because it's kind of like a ramen noodle, but without the soup. So it's not so hot. And so for the coming summer season, I think it's perfect. So I hope you give this a try yourself. If you enjoyed what you saw, I'd love it if you could hit the like button for me. And if you have any feedbacks or requests, please feel free to write anything in the comments below. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye.