Weeknight
Twelve everyday noodle bowls to cook on rotation
A go-to set of everyday noodles makes planning meals far lighter. Twelve home-style bowls — soup noodles, tossed noodles and heartier mains like beef noodles and scallion-oil noodles — for busy weekdays and easy weekends.
Getting the noodles you cook most often written down in one place makes planning meals through the week a lot lighter. This set gathers a range of home-style noodles — soup noodles, tossed noodles, and heartier bowls that fill you up — suited both to a busy workday and to a weekend when you feel like cooking something a little richer. The order of steps, the main ingredients and the flavour direction are all set out clearly, so meal-prep for parents and cooking for a helper both get easier.
On a slow morning, breakfast pork chop and egg noodles start the day right; on a busy night, scallion-oil noodles or upgraded instant noodles come together fast, while beef noodles and meat-sauce noodles are there for when you want something more substantial. Keep them in rotation and no two days' noodles feel the same.
1. Breakfast Pork Chop and Egg Noodles
A breakfast bowl of home-made pork chop and egg, built on a beef broth base and finished with a tomato flower rolled from thin slices. It looks good in the bowl, and carries enough to see you through a morning.
2. Upgraded Instant Noodles
Instant noodles do not have to stop at boiling water poured over the block. Five more minutes — a handful of lettuce, a few slices of sausage, an egg and a drop of sesame oil — turns the same packet into a bowl that eats like a proper meal.
3. Hand-Rolled Noodles
Zhajiangmian is the best-known local dish of old Beijing, and the hand-rolled noodles that go with it want a firm dough rather than a soft one — a little salt worked into the flour builds the gluten. Shake the dusting corn flour off the cut strands before they go into the pot, and the broth stays clear and the noodles slippery.
4. Instant Noodles with Fried Egg and Greens
Instant noodles are not an every-day thing, but every so often a child will ask for exactly this. A fried egg and a couple of stalks of greens make the bowl more than just the noodle block and its seasoning packet.
5. Beef Noodles
A bowl of beef noodles — meat and noodles together — is lunch settled in one go. The beef takes on colour from caramelised rock sugar, then braises long and slow before tomato and tofu join it, and the thickened sauce goes over hand-stretched noodles.
6. Lard and Greens Noodle Soup
A handful of noodles and a few stalks of greens make the simplest bowl of soup noodles there is. Lard and soy sauce underneath lift it by more than a little. Add a boiled egg or two and it rounds out further — quick, easy, and well suited to a rushed breakfast.
7. Meat Sauce Noodles
Meat sauce noodles are a dish for summer. Pork tenderloin, diced and fried down into a tender sauce, goes over noodles rinsed cold — chewy strands, a fresh savoury sauce, and a bowl that eats light and whets the appetite.
8. Mushroom and Vegetable Noodles
A breakfast bowl of yellow matsutake, broccoli and coloured cherry tomatoes over fresh noodles. Different ingredients, different colours — simple to put together, and a bowl that looks appetising before the first mouthful.
9. Scallion Oil Noodles
Scallion oil noodles come from the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai region, and Shanghai's version is the best known of all. The character of the dish is a balance of sweet and salty against chewy noodles. At home it comes down to three things: rendering the scallion oil, mixing the sauce, and cooking the noodles right.
10. Tomato and Egg Hand-Rolled Noodles
Tomato and egg is a standby, and a different version means a different flavour. This one cooks onion and tinned tomato paste into the sauce, spoons it over hand-rolled noodles, and finishes with a little salted Chinese chive.
11. Tossed Noodles with Chinese Toon
Chinese toon noodles are about the plain flavour of the toon itself — no other seasoning needed. The blanched leaves go into a blender with sesame oil, salt and a splash of noodle water, then get tossed straight through the strands. A spoonful of chopped chilli sauce is optional; without it the bowl is just as good.
12. Shrimp and Egg Buckwheat Noodles
A buckwheat noodle bowl built around prawns and egg — high in protein, easy to handle, and well suited to breakfast. There is not much to it, and it cooks quickly enough to manage on a morning when you are heading out the door.
Every bowl here is written in Chinese, English, Filipino and Indonesian, so whoever cooks — you, family or your helper — works from the same recipe. Line a few up in your weekly plan and you've got a different noodle bowl ready for each day, from breakfast to a late-night supper.
Cook this, this week
Find the dish, plan the week, and share it with everyone at your table.
