Sesame Noodles

One of my favorite inauthentic but totally satisfying take-out inspired dinners. These sesame noodles are made with simple ingredients you can find at a regular grocery store and take all of 15 minutes to make, which means a tangle of saucy noodles topped with fresh green onion is only a few steps away.

Easy Sesame Noodles

To say these take-out inspired sesame noodles are easy to make is definitely an understatement because they are so easy (less than 15 minutes start to finish! Recipe calls for simple pantry ingredients! Only two simple steps!) I feel like I need a better word to describe them, like maybe effortless, or uncomplicated, or straightforward. This dinner is, in fact, all these things, but it’s Monday and if there’s anything we need on a Monday night for dinner it’s something “easy”. So I’m going with that.

My sesame noodles – an unabashed inauthentic version, yet a totally satisfying tangle of noodles and sauce, are adapted from a recipe I found almost two years ago on the New York Times Cooking website. The original one is served cold, and I enjoy them that way but usually serve them warm. They’re hard to resist, and sometimes I don’t have the patience to wait for them to chill.

Recipe Notes

What I love about this recipe is that it’s easy to scale up or down. This sesame noodles recipe is for four servings, but sometimes I halve it for two servings.

It’s a super fast and easy recipe – perfect for weeknight dinners. It’s one of those dishes that you might make if you happen to have a night with nothing planned except a good Netflix binge, and you want to make something for dinner that minimizes the time in between the actual making of dinner and when you crash on the couch. In this case, that’s about a 15-minute window.

I took some liberties with the ingredients and opted for ones I could find easily. The biggest switch is the noodles – I use regular spaghetti, but feel free to substitute your favorite Asian-style egg noodles.

And, with the exception of the noodles, all of the ingredients are for the sauce, which you mix up while the noodles are boiling. The inspiration recipe is for cold sesame noodles, but over time I’ve taken to just tossing the hot noodles with the sauce and digging in right away while they’re still warm because they taste as delicious without having to wait for the noodles to chill.

Ingredients

One of my kitchen pet peeves is buying a bunch of ingredients for a recipe that I never use again and end up buried in the dark recesses of my pantry only to be discovered years later. I don’t wish that for you either, so I’ve linked additional recipes at the end of this post that calls for most of the same ingredients I’m sharing here in case you’re interested in more recipes. Again, authenticity is not my goal. My goal is faking my favorite take-out dishes with accessible ingredients. So here are a few you’ll need…

• Sesame oil
• Low-sodium soy sauce
• Rice vinegar
• Oyster sauce
• Peanut butter
• Ginger paste or grated fresh ginger
• Sriracha, red pepper flakes, or chili sauce – any of these will work for a kick of heat
• Sesame seeds
• Sliced green onions or scallions for garnish
• Spaghetti

How to Make It

Boil the spaghetti according to package instructions until they are al dente. While the noodles cook, you can make the peanut sauce.

Combine the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. Once the noodles are ready, drain them and place them back in the same pot. Add the sauce to the hot noodles and stir to coat the noodles evenly. Transfer the noodles to a bowl and top them with green onions and sprinkle the sesame seeds over the top.

A Few Tips and Recommendation

If you want cold sesame noodles, I recommend rinsing the noodles under cold water and then drain them well. Toss them with the sauce and then refrigerate them.

You can serve them as a main dish just as they are or as a side dish. Sometimes I add shredded or diced chicken to make it more of a meal.

Any long noodle will work. Look for Asian-style wheat or egg noodles, or try Japanese soba noodles at the store. Or, you can use spaghetti noodles, linguine, or fettuccine.

You can also add in veggies like thinly sliced cabbage or diced red bell peppers.

Add these to your dinner plan and you won’t be disappointed. So easy, so quick, and so easy to eat. Enjoy!

More Take-Out-Style Recipes to Try

• 30-Minute Sesame Beef Bowls
• 30-Minute Ginger Beef Noodles
• 30-Minute Beef and Broccoli
• Beef and Veggie Noodle Bowls

📣 Do you love this recipe? I would love to know! Leave a comment below the recipe along with your recipe star rating.

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The nutrition information in this recipe is an estimate only and was calculated using Nutrifox, an online nutrition calculator.

Post and recipe updated May 1, 2021.

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