Kake Udon (Japanese Udon Noodle Soup)

A bowl of Japanese kake udon in a vegan dashi or shiitake broth with scallions and togarashi

5 from 5 votes

Kake Udon is my soul food. Something about its simplicity is perfect for those cold, rainy days. It’s also something I love to enjoy even in those hot summer days. It’s very simple to make and can be easily customised depending on any toppings you’d like to add. You can make kitsune udon by adding some inari aage (seasoned fried tofu pouch), wakame or rehydrated seaweed for wakame udon, tempura for tempura udon, and more!

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 10

Kombu Soak Time 1

Total Time 1 20

Course Main Course

Cuisine Asian, East Asian, Japanese

Servings people

Calories 327 kcal

Ingredients

Dashi

4 cups water
15 g dried kombu around 4x8” (see notes)
2 pieces shiitake mushrooms dried

KAKE UDON

Broth

3 cups kombu & shiitake dashi (recipe above, see notes)

Noodles

2 servings frozen udon or dry udon (see notes)

Seasoning

1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp mirin
1/2 tsp salt or to taste

To Serve

Chopped onion leeks or scallions chopped
Shichimi Togarashi , Japanese 7-spice blend
Inari sushi

Instructions

Kombu and Shiitake Dashi

Cut through your kombu using a pair of scissors. I like to fold mine in half and cut around five 1” (2.5 cm) cuts on each side. You can see the video below for a complete step-by-step.
Also, do NOT wash your kombu. The white powdery layer on the kombu is naturally occurring and is what adds to the umami flavour when soaked.
Place the kombu in a large container or jar. Add in the shiitake mushrooms. Pour in the water.
Leave the kombu and mushrooms to soak in the water overnight. I keep mine refrigerated.

Broth

The next day, remove the kombu and the mushrooms form the container. This will be your dashi. This will be around 3 cups since the mushrooms and kombu will have absorbed some of the water.
Do not discard the kombu and mushrooms. You can also cut the rehyrdrrated mushrooms and enjoy it with your udon or other recipes.
For the leftover rehydrated kombu, you can make this into Kombu Tsukudani or simmered kombu for a delicious dish with rice. You can see the recipe here.

Udon

Cook/prepare your udon noodles according to package instructions. For my frozen udon, I heated a medium sized pot with water and left it to boil over medium heat. Once boiling, I added the udon and allowed it to cook for a few minutes until chewy to my liking.
Remove the noodles from the water. You can opt to run this through some hot water to wash off any excess starch.
Divide between 2 bowls or 1 large bowl.
I cooked the noodles before cooking the broth so I could use only 1 pot for this recipe.
Remove the water from the pot.

Prepare the Udon and Broth

Add in the dashi into the pot. Add in the sugar, soy sauce, mirin, and salt. Taste the broth and allow the dashi to come to a boil.
Once it boils, turn off the heat. Pour in the soup into your bowl/s of noodles.
Top with chopped onion leeks/scallions, Shichimi Togarashi, and any other toppings of choice. Enjoy your udon while it’s hot.

WATCH Video

Notes

NOODLES

I recommend to use frozen Sanuki Udon if you can get some at your local Japanese or Asian store. These noodles are chewy and quite elastic. A lot better than dried udon in my opinion for their chewiness and delicious bite.

DASHI

If you have dash granules or other dashi you'd like to use, feel free to use this instead of soaking the kombu and shiitake mushrooms.

KOMBU

There are different types of kombu depending on what you have access to. My kombu was thin so I was able to cut these up into smaller pieces using some scissors. It’s best to cut these into smaller pieces or at least make some cuts into the large sheet/piece for the flavours to seep out during cooking.
Also, do NOT wash your kombu. The white powdery layer on the kombu is naturally occurring and is what adds to the umami flavour when soaked.

OTHER TYPES OF UDON

These are just some of those I've tried in the past:

KITSUNE UDON - topped with inari age
TEMPURA UDON - with fried tempura
WAKAME UDON - with rehydrated wakame or seaweed
NIKU UDON - topped with thin slices of stir-fried beef (usually in with a sweet sauce/seasoning)

NUTRITIONAL INFO

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