No more half-empty bowls
Choose your noodles, who's eating and how hungry they are. The ticket tells you how much to weigh out, how many packs to open and roughly how long to cook them. The packet has the final word on times.
Plain Chinese wheat or lo mein noodles. Regular appetite, 4 adults, as a noodle main course.
How to cook
Boil, 3–6 min. Drain a minute before the packet says if they are going into the wok; they finish cooking in the sauce.
Follow the packet. Noodle thickness and brands vary a lot, so the times on your pack come first; these ranges are a guide.
Choose your noodles, how many adults and children are eating and how hungry they are. The ticket gives the weight to cook, dry or fresh as the noodles are sold, rounded up to the next 5 g so nobody goes short. Add the weight of one pack to see how many to open.
Dry or fresh? Dried noodles soak up water as they cook, so a portion weighs much less on the scale than fresh or ready-cooked noodles. That is why ready-cooked udon looks so heavy per person.
Main or side? The amounts are for noodles as the main event, such as a chow mein or a big bowl of noodle soup. Serving them alongside other dishes? Choose Light, or count fewer people.
Times. Noodle thickness varies a lot from brand to brand, so the cooking times here are ranges. The packet comes first.
| Noodle | Weighed | Light | Regular | Hungry | Cook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dried wheat noodles | dry | 60 g | 80 g | 100 g | Boil 3–6 min |
| Fresh egg noodles | fresh | 100 g | 130 g | 160 g | Boil or blanch 1–3 min |
| Rice vermicelli | dry | 45 g | 60 g | 75 g | Soak 3–5 min |
| Flat rice noodles | dry | 60 g | 80 g | 100 g | Soak 20–30 min |
| Udon (ready-cooked packs) | fresh | 150 g | 200 g | 250 g | Loosen 1–3 min |
| Soba | dry | 60 g | 80 g | 100 g | Boil 4–6 min |
These are our suggestions for a noodle main course, weighed as sold. Children get half.
It depends on the brand. Look for the pack weight and the number of nests on the label, divide one by the other, and you have the weight of a nest to compare with the ticket.
Both shed a lot of surface starch. A rinse under cold water washes it off, stops the cooking and keeps the strands from clumping into a gluey mass.
Yes. Cook them a minute short of the packet time, rinse in cold water, drain well and toss with a teaspoon of oil so they don't stick. Keep them in the fridge until the wok is hot.