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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

How to Make Your Own Soba Dipping Sauce (soba-tsuyu)

I love cold soba. Especially in this current hot spell in Malaysia. It's great that even Hubby loves it, especially when I serve with my homemade gyoza, which means that I can cook (and eat) this as often as I like.

It's always handy to have a bottle of soba tsuyu (dipping sauce) in the fridge. Cold soba is great as a quick lunch - it takes only 5-6 minutes to cook your soba, and at the same time you can grate your radish and chop your spring onions, and then pour out your soba tsuyu. How's that for FAST? Lightning fast I say! Cold soba is also extremely healthy, as literally no oil is used. 

It's easy to make your own soba tsuyu, not to mention much cheaper too.  Just combine Dashi Stock 1 (recipe here) with Japanese soy sauce, mirin and caster sugar and chill. The great thing about making your own as well is that you can control the saltiness of the sauce, since I have heard many people complaining that store bought ones can sometimes be too salty. If you do not have time to make dashi from scratch, it is also fine to make dashi using sachets





Soba dipping sauce (soba-tsuyu)
Recipe by Baby Sumo, adapted from Japanese Bible
Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time: 1 minute
Makes 500ml (6-8 servings)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups dashi stock I (or use sachets)
1/3 cup Japanese soy sauce
1/3 cup mirin (sweet cooking wine)
1/4 tsp caster sugar

1. Combine dashi, Japanese soy sauce, mirin and sugar in a small saucepan. Over medium heat, stir until sugar is dissolved - this will only take about a minute.

2. Transfer to a jug and refridgerate to chill. Make at least 1 hour in advance so that your tsuyu has sufficient time to cool down. Once chilled, you can transfer to a bottle and store up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

3. See here for full instructions on how to serve Japanese cold soba dish.


We always have a bottle of this soba tsuyu in our fridge, just in case we're feeling lazy and want a quick lunch!


Japanese cold soba

25 comments:

  1. Hungry edi! Look so good. Just like what we had in Japanese restaurant. Japanese soya sauce and mirin can easily get from Daiso?

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    1. Melissa, I think those larger Daiso will have, if not you can try Shojikiya or the Japanese section of the supermarkets. I usually get all my Japanese ingredients from Jusco MV.

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  2. What a delicious looking Japanese meal. Didn't know soba tsuyu is so easy to make. Thx for sharing.

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  3. I am learning so much about your cuisine..lovely to see so much variety and yes that bottle of homemade sauce does look very helpful!!

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    1. Hi Amrita, I'm also learning to make Japanese cuisine at home for my family. Great to share with u all.

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  4. This meal looks so appetising! Japanese food is also so refreshing. And especially good with home made sauce.

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    1. If it takes under 15 mins to make, I will usually go for homemade nowadays.

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    2. Love buckwheat soba but very hard to find tsuyu sauce without mirin and alcohol. Last time I had the Tsuyu 3 bai without the alcohol and mirin. Other alternative for the mirin?

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  5. it's a rainy evening today, but i wouldn't mind some nice, cold soba either! :D

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  6. What a refreshingly delicious meal , Yen-san :D Great meal for our warm weather here ....

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  7. great yen that we now know how to make our own soba dipping sauce. I still hv some dashinomoto at home :) such a lovely japanese meal with gyoza!

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    1. Never knew it was so easy to make, now I don't buy it anymore since it's pretty pricey vs homemade.

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  8. I had some hot soba over the weekend becoz it was too cold to have cold soba. Winter is coming very soon here when the rest of the world is having their summer. Very clever, making your own soba dipping sauce!

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    1. Thanks Jessie, more convenient than hunting in the shops also since I have all the ingredients in my pantry.

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  9. It's soba and somen season! I'm so happy the weather is warming up here so I can enjoy cold noodle dishes! Your tsuyu looks wonderful!

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  10. Can you store the tsuyu longer than 2 weeks in the fridge?

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    1. Hi, I've tried storing it for up to 6 weeks and it was still good.

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  11. hi, may i know specifically what type of japanese soy sauce did you use for this?

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  12. You can use any type of Japanese light soy sauce such as Kikkoman.

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  13. Hai, is there any substitute ingredient for mirin?

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  14. Wow, I never knew it was so easy to make soba sauce! Thank you so much for this post. I just made some sauce to use with my World Market soba and it was oishii!

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