One of my wife’s favorite dishes from a local Japanese restaurant is their “Chicken Udon”, so I sought to reverse engineer their dish. As it turns out, the dish probably falls under the umbrella of “Kake-Udon”: udon noodles served in kakejiru broth with a variety of toppings (see here.) To lower the calorie count of this dish, we substituted shirataki noodles for udon noodles, and for simplicity dispensed with additional vegetables (though see the notes below for other ideas.)
Ingredients (makes 2 servings)
- 1 lb raw Boneless, Skinless Chicken Thighs
- 1 tsp Sesame Oil
- 6 cups Water
- 2 10 g Packets of Dashi Powder (Shimaya Dashino-Moto)
- 6 tbsp Tamari (Reduced Sodium)
- 3 tbsp Mirin
- 2 14 oz packs of Shirataki Noodles (Shirakiku Brand)
Instructions
- Cut the chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces.
- Add 1 tsp sesame oil to the 6 L dutch oven pot, and heat it on the stove-top on High.
- When drops of water flicked into the oil crackle, add the chicken to the pot, and fry it until the outside is seared off.
- Add 6 cups of water to the pot.
- As the water is heating up, add in the 2 packets of dashi powder, 6 tbsp of tamari, and 3 tbsp of mirin.
- While waiting for the broth to boil, rinse the shirataki noodles in cold running water, and drain them well.
- Once the water is boiling, add the shirataki noodles and boil for 2 minutes.
- Taste the broth. You may wish to add more tamari or mirin (more tamari would give it more umami, and more mirin would mostly make it sweeter).
- Serve in large soup bowls. If you’re watching your sodium intake or calories, refraining from drinking the broth should assist in both of these goals.
Notes
- You may need to fry the chicken in smaller batches if you really want a good sear (though in practice we never bother). Juices will come out of it while searing, and you really want to include those juices in your broth.
- Originally we went with a 1:1 ratio of tamari:mirin, though we’ll add more tamari if the broth seems anemic, and we reduced the mirin slightly to cut down on the calories.
- I had acquired a bottle of “real” mirin off of Amazon, and it definitely has better depth of flavor than the mirin typically available on store shelves. When using the store-shelf version, we compensated with adding more tamari to the broth.
- Regular soy sauce should be fine instead of tamari. Tamari just has a bit more depth of flavor that I thought would be good in this broth.
- If you want to make this with udon noodles and other vegetables (the restaurant version has napa cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms in it), cook these separately, so as not to impart other strong flavors to the broth.