Name: Garlic Udon Noodles
Prep time: 8 min
Cook time: 7 min
Total time: 15 min
Ingredients: 3 tbsp low sodium soy sauce; 2 tbsp light brown sugar; 1½ tsp sesame oil; 1½ tsp rice vinegar; 1 tsp chili oil; ½ tsp oyster sauce; ½ tsp powdered ginger; 1 tbsp butter; 1 head garlic (minced, about 4 tbsp); 14 oz Japanese udon (vacuum sealed); 1 pinch salt; 1 pinch white pepper; 2 scallions (sliced thin)

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These chewy garlic noodles come together in just 15 minutes for a super savory takeout style dish at home. Serve them as a lunch or light dinner, or pair them with other Asian favorites like dumplings and General Tso’s chicken for a more satisfying meal.

When we think of classic comfort food dinners, a takeout container of savory noodles often comes to mind.

That’s why these garlic udon noodles are one of our favorite Friday night treats! Full of rich umami flavor, they’re the perfect kind of dish for curling up with on the couch after a long week. They’re buttery, garlicky, and super chewy, aka perfection.

Plus, they’re ready in just 15 minutes. So they’re really a no-brainer any night of the week.

What This Recipe Entails

All you have to do for this recipe is mix up a quick sauce, mince the garlic, and then heat everything up on the stove in just a few minutes. Vacuum sealed udon makes this a simple, one-pan meal.

Ready in: 15 minutes
Serves: 2 people
Great for: An easy weeknight dinner or side dish for a Chinese takeout style meal at home
Flavor profile: Garlicky, umami
Why we love it: It’s takeout-style comfort that we can throw together quickly with ingredients we already have on hand. Plus, it pairs well with so many of our favorite Asian dishes when we want a more filling dinner.

What Are Garlic Noodles?

Garlic noodles are a savory, garlicky Asian fusion recipe typically made with Chinese egg noodles (like lo mein or chow mein noodles) or spaghetti. Believed to have been inspired by Italian spaghetti aglio e olio, garlic noodles are a perfect mashup of Asian and Western flavors, which makes them a popular dish in the United States.

For our version of garlic noodles, we take fusion one step further and use Japanese udon instead of lo mein or spaghetti. Udon are thick, chewy wheat flour noodles – aka, the perfect vehicle for a savory garlic sauce!

Ingredients

Fresh garlic – Skip the jarred minced garlic – it won’t give you the right flavor for this dish! Using a fresh head of garlic provides the most potent flavor and it sticks to the noodles much better than the jarred stuff. This will give you an even distribution of garlicky flavor throughout.
Japanese udon – Udon soaks up sauce super well, so it’s the perfect type of noodle for infusing with garlicky flavor! We love how the chewy texture of udon makes this dish even more comforting and indulgent. For best results, we recommend using vacuum sealed cooked udon – it’s super thick and provides ample surface area for the garlic to stick to. You can usually find this in the international aisle of your grocery store.
Butter – Butter is an essential ingredient for achieving perfectly cooked garlic and the buttery umami flavor profile in this dish. If you use another cooking medium like oil, you’ll be missing one of the key flavors that makes garlic noodles so good.
Savory sauce – This is what gives the garlic noodles their savory flavor! You’ll need soy sauce, light brown sugar, sesame oil, rice vinegar, chili oil, oyster sauce, powdered ginger, salt, and white pepper to make it.
Scallions – We like to add fresh scallions after cooking to brighten up this otherwise decadent dish. You can skip this if you like, but we love the bright pop of color and crunchy texture they add.

How To Make Garlic Udon Noodles

Grab a large wok or nonstick frying pan and you can have these garlic noodles on the table in just 15 minutes!

Prep: Mince the fresh garlic, slice the scallions, and whisk together the sauce in a small bowl. Unpack the udon noodles and set aside so they’re ready to toss in the wok when you need them.
Cook the garlic: Melt the butter in the wok over medium-high heat, swirling it around to keep it from burning. This will be quick, about 30 to 60 seconds if your pan is preheated. Then add the minced garlic and sauté until fragrant, another 1 to 2 minutes. You’ll want to keep it moving around so it doesn’t stick to the pan and burn.
Stir fry: Pour the sauce into the wok to deglaze the pan and stir or swirl to incorporate the cooked garlic and butter. Then add the udon and stir fry until the noodles are steaming, tender, and have soaked up the sauce – this should only take a few minutes.
Adjust and serve: Season the noodles with salt and white pepper to taste, then stir in the scallions and remove from heat. Serve immediately.

Asian garlic noodles served in a black bowl with a pair of chopsticks

Serving Suggestions

We like to have garlic noodles as a main dish for lunch or a light dinner, or make it as a side with our other favorite Asian dishes for a takeout-style feast at home! Here are some of our favorite dishes to serve them with:

Whenever you’re craving savory, comforting flavors with minimal effort, try our garlic noodles recipe. Let us know what you think by rating, commenting, and sharing below! We hope you love these noodles as much as we do 🙂

Expert Tips

Mise en place – Having all your ingredients ready to go before you start cooking is the best way to create more efficiency (and less stress) in the kitchen. This is important for a recipe like these garlic noodles, since they cook so quickly – and you won’t want to leave the garlic unattended in the wok, or sitting for too long before you can deglaze the pan. Make sure to mix up the sauce ahead of time, unpack your noodles, and have everything within arm’s reach before you start cooking. To learn more about this concept, read our article about what mise en place is and why it’s important.
Fresh garlic – We know it can be a pain to mince an entire head of garlic, but it’s absolutely necessary for this recipe. Don’t use the jarred stuff! We tried it, and it doesn’t stick to the noodles or provide enough flavor. Fresh garlic is so much more flavorful, and the sticky oils will help it cling. If you don’t want to mince by hand, using a garlic press is a good way to save some time.
Noodles – We tested this recipe with spaghetti, Chinese lo mein, and vacuum packed udon. The vacuum packed udon was the clear winner thanks to its thick and chewy texture, but the lo mein was a close second. We don’t recommend spaghetti, it was too thin and not the right flavor.
Cookware – Quality cookware makes a huge difference in how your final dish turns out. If you don’t own a wok but love to make stir fry dishes, we recommend investing in a high quality wok, like this carbon steel one we’ve been using for the last 5 years. It’s easy to clean and season, and it will last you a long time if you take care of it.
Cooking with a wok – Use a burner that’s properly sized for the bottom diameter of the pan. A wok flares out to a much wider diameter at the top, so if you use an oversized burner the pan will get too hot and you’ll risk burning the garlic. Applying heat to just the bottom surface of the wok gives you greater control over the heat level during cooking, so you can easily adjust as needed if your pan is too hot or too cold.
Use your senses – When you add the garlic to the wok, you should hear a slow build towards sizzling. If you hear a loud sizzle the second the garlic hits the pan, it’s too hot – simply lower the heat and stir the garlic around so it doesn’t burn.

Love this recipe? You may enjoy these takeout style recipes, too:

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