Japchae – Korean noodles

Japchae – the bright, colourful Korean noodle dish made with an abundance of vegetables, juicy bits of marinated beef and a sesame-forward dressing. Made with sweet potato noodles which have a unique slippery, chewy texture, this is sort of a stir fry, sort of a noodle salad, and 100% YUM!

Japchae

Japchae is a famous Korean noodle dish that I describe as sort of a stir fry, sort of a salad. It’s a cross between the two in my mind because stir fried vegetables are tossed with noodles and sauce in a bowl rather than on the stove, and served barely warm.

You start by mixing the sauce in a giant bowl, then pile all the ingredients in one after the other – the noodles, a giant mound of cooked vegetables then lastly the seared marinated beef. Then finally, you give it a big toss to mix it all together in the bowl. This part is really satisfying, getting really stuck into it! (Just make sure you use a really big bowl else you’ll be cursing!).

Ingredients in Japchae

Here’s what you need to make Japchae. I’ve broken it up into:

1. Noodles and sauce

2. Beef and marinade

3. All the colourful veg!

The noodles & sauce

Here’s what you need for the noodles and sauce:

Some notes on some of the pictured ingredients:

• Japchae noodles – The noodles used in Japchae are dried sweet potato noodles called dangmyeon. They are made from sweet potato starch and are almost transparent when cooked. It’s like the Korean version of glass noodles! The packets shown above are sold at large grocery stores in the Asian aisle, though you can get them cheaper at Asian stores.

  Substitute with glass noodles (ie the clear vermicelli noodles). And though Korean nationals may have my head for saying this, just quietly, you can totally make this recipe with any noodles. It will still be delicious!

• Soy sauce – Either light or all purpose soy sauce. But not dark soy sauce – flavour is too strong and the colour is too intense! More on which soy sauce to use when here.

• Sesame oil – toasted sesame oil is brown and has more flavour than untoasted (which is yellow). The default sesame oil sold in Australia is toasted, untoasted is harder to find.

Beef and marinade

We’re using beef short ribs in today’s recipe. Yes, it’s an unusual option for a stir fry – but I think you’ll be really impressed. It surprised me!

• Beef (choices!) – Beef short rib is my favourite cut to use in Japchae. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just for slow cooking! When cut off the bone then thinly sliced, the beautifully marbled meat is juicy, tender and flavourful when cooked quickly on high heat – just 90 seconds. (If using beef short ribs whole, however, they must be slow cooked to break down the tough fibres. Try this, this, this or this recipe).

  It really is so much nicer to have the beef bits extra tender and juicy in a noodle dish that is not as saucy as your everyday Chinese Beef Stir Fry. So I really hope you give beef ribs a go! I honestly think it’s better than even pricier steaks like scotch / rib-eye.

  Other options – Scotch fillet/boneless rib eye is best, as it is the juiciest. If using other steak cuts like rump, porterhouse/t-bone, sirloin/strip etc (especially if economical), I recommend tenderising them before using in the recipe so the beef pieces are extra tender (directions in recipe card). Thin strips of beef are difficult to keep juicy as they overcook in a microsecond. As mentioned above, you can get away with that in saucy Beef Stir Fries. Not so much in noodle dishes.

• Soy sauce – As above!

Vegetables

The vegetables shown below is a fairly common combination for Japchae, with a lovely contrast of colour, textures and flavour. But you can really use any stir-fry-able vegetables you want.

Just a note on a few of the vegetables:

• Shiitake mushrooms – These are Asian mushrooms with a more intense mushroomy flavour than standard white mushrooms, brown/cremini mushrooms etc. However, if you can’t find them or they are a bit pricey, feel free to use ordinary mushrooms. They are, as you’d expect, better value in Asian stores.

• Baby spinach – Substitute with chopped English spinach, the leafy part of Asian greens or even kale. *She ducks as Koreans start throwing rotten tomatoes at her*

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How to make Japchae (semi-traditional way)

Traditional Japchae recipes call for each vegetable to be cooked individually to factor in the different cook times and preserve the flavour of each. Yes, it’s cumbersome (you count 6 vegetables above!).

But if you jumble them all up into one giant stir fry then the flavours do tend to bleed into each other a bit. So I’ve compromised and cooked the vegetables in 2 lots, bundling vegetables together by factoring in cook times and flavour “bleeding” to best replicate the same result where vegetables are cooked individually. Bonus: We use less oil.

I hope my slight short-cut method doesn’t offend Korean nationals! 😇

Cutting beef short ribs

As noted above, I really think the best beef for Japchae is beef short ribs – juiciest, best flavour. It’s typically sold on the bone (off the bone is not common here in Australia), so here is how to slice the meat.

If you are using a boneless steak instead, or boneless beef short ribs, then you obviously don’t need to cut the meat off the bone!

1. Beef ribs – Not gonna lie. My step photo templates use even number of photos and I only had 5. So I stuck this in as a filler. “Beef short ribs. Ta da!”

2. Trim excess fat – Beef ribs tend to have quite a generous layer of fat on them. So slice off the thick layers on the surface. Not all of it though! The fat is what keeps it juicy!

3. Cut the meat off the bone simply by holding the beef rib upright then slicing the knife down against the bone. It’s easy – the bone is straight and flat.

4. Cut in half horizontally to form 2 thin steaks so we can cut thin beef strips.

5. Cut strips – Keep the halves stacked. Then cut into thin 0.5cm/ 1/5″ slices.

6. Voila! Tasty beef strips. You are going to love how juicy these are!

Cooking Japchae

1. Marinate beef ~20 minutes – Place the beef with the marinade ingredients into a bowl and toss to combine. Then just set aside while you prepare and cook everything else, so it ends up marinating for around 20 minutes. It doesn’t need to be marinated for long because the beef strips are so thin, though it wouldn’t hurt to leave overnight.

2. Mix the sauce ingredients in a very big bowl. We are going to be tossing the whole batch of Japchae in this bowl so I really mean it when I say make it a big one!

3. Cook the Japchae noodles per packet directions. Mine says 8 minutes in boiling water.

4. Noodles on sauce – Drain, rinse briefly under tap water, shake off excess water well then place in the bowl with the sauce. Do not mix – just leave it there.

5. Vegetables Batch 1 – Cook the onion, mushrooms and white part of green onions first, until the mushrooms just start to soft. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.

6. Vegetables batch 2 – Next, cook the carrot and capsicum/bell pepper first, until they are just cooked but still have a soft bite to them. ie “tender crisp”. Soggy floppy overcooked vegetables is unacceptable! 😂 Then add the spinach and the green part of the green onions and toss for a minute just until the spinach is wilted. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.

7. Cook beef – Lastly, cook the beef! Cook it on high heat just until you no longer see red – with a strong stove and good pan it should be barely 90 seconds. Hopefully in this time you’ll get a bit of browning in some patches too. Then add it into the bowl.

8. Toss! Add the sesame seeds, and now it’s time to toss! You used a giant bowl right, like I said to right at the start?? If you didn’t, you’ll start to cry (or swear) right about now.

   Toss, toss, toss, until the sauce is evenly distributed. Check by looking at the colour of the noodles – the sauce stains the glassy noodles a brown colour.

   Then tumble it all into a bowl, finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and serve!

YUM. That sauce is everything! I really like that it’s not as sweet as the Japchae sauce you get at some Korean restaurants which I find a little too sweet.

This is a big batch recipe so it’s an excellent one for taking leftovers to work. It will keep for 3 days in the fridge. Just lightly warm it – or serve hot if you want. Though honestly, it’s also very good at room temperature too! – Nagi x

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Watch how to make it

Life of Dozer

I can feel him heavy breathing on my feet. 🙄 Also, don’t miss Dozer’s cameo in today’s recipe video – at 0:36!