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This is an incredibly tasty weeknight stir fried udon based on classic Japanese spicy beef that comes together easily and quickly with only 8 ingredients. It’s spicy and savory with a great mix of textures – the suppleness of the udon, the chew of the beef, and the crunch of properly cooked vegetables – that just explode in your mouth. I originally made this dish only to shoot for this blog post; we planned on saving it and having something else for dinner, but we couldn’t stop ourselves from finishing it. Our real dinner sat languishing aside, wishing it was this udon. It was so good we both decided it’s going into our weekly rotation.

Cooking Notes

This is not one of those fake 10 minute dishes, but there are caveats. Namely, if you have time to cut your own cut of beef and marinate for 20-30 minutes, it would be a lot better. To do it in 10 minutes requires you to buy presliced beef and vegetables, which is still very tasty and way less work. If you were to go the 10 minute route, it would look like this:

1. T-10 minutes: whisk together the marinade ingredients in a bowl and add your beef
2. T-9 minutes: fill a bowl with hot water and soak udon
3. T-8 minutes: roughly halve an onion, then slice one half into 6 slices, open package of presliced mushrooms and prewashed broccolini, and slice the broccolini in half
4. T-7 minutes: preheat your pan
5. T-6 minutes: add beef
6. T-5 minutes: add vegetables
7. T-3 minutes: add udon and marinade
8. T-1 minute: plate, garnish, open a beer
9. T-0: blast off!

Ingredient Notes

The marinade ingredients are all available in the Asian aisle of any medium sized grocery store today. Buy cooking sake, not drinking sake. Also, buy Japanese soy sauce (kikkoman, yamasa, etc) if you can. If you can’t find mirin, skip it and add 2 tablespoons of sake and 1 teaspoon more sugar, but it’s better to have mirin. These three ingredients form the base of a lot of Japanese cooking, so they won’t be collecting dust on your shelf once you have them (not that Dinner & Chill would ever ask you to buy single use ingredients).

Gochujang typically comes in a red tub with Korean writing; the green and brown tubs are other pastes. These days, it also comes in a squeeze bottle, but I’ve never tried the squeeze bottle.

You can buy presliced beef, typically labeled “stir fry beef”, or buy a cheap cut of whatever you like and slice it yourself, it’s not that much extra work if you have a good knife (it sucks if you have a bad knife though). I like brisket: it’s cheap and if you slice it thin, it has a good chew without being tough when you stir fry. You can also replace the beef with for pork, chicken, or tofu with no issues. Whatever you buy, if you can marinate for 30 minutes or more, it’ll taste 30x better (or more).

The vegetables are your choice, but in this recipe I use 4 ounces each of crimini mushrooms and broccolini and 1/2 a red onion.

Finally, unless you live in Japan and have access to freshly made udon, the best udon you can buy comes frozen, ideally with no english at all on it. If you can’t find that, try the shelf stable plastic bags labeled nama udon. Finally, as a last resort, use dried udon from amazon.

What do you need?
A large nonstick skillet and 2 medium-large bowls.

The best 10 minute spicy beef weeknight stir fry udon recipe
Serves 2
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Total time: 10 minutes

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 2 tablespoons sake
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons gochujang (dependent on spice preference)
• 8oz beef, thinly sliced
• vegetables of choice (see note above)
• 2 bricks udon

1. Make a marinade by combining sake, mirin, soy sauce, sugar, and gochujang in a large bowl.

2. Slice your beef if you are not using a presliced cut and add to the marinade.

3. Fill a large bowl with hot tap water and soak the udon.

4. Prepare your vegetables of choice.

5. In a nonstick pan or wok, preheat a small amount of oil over medium-high heat. Using a pair of tongs or chopsticks, remove the beef from the marinade and add to the pan. Set aside the marinade and stir fry your beef for 1-2 minutes, then add vegetables and fry until the vegetables are very lightly cooked.

6. Drain and add the udon and reserved marinade. Toss well and bring the marinade to a boil, then fry for 1-2 more minutes, or until udon is warmed through.

7. Enjoy!

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