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This Noodle Recipe Will Save Your Life
This is for the hungry, strike-affected college students of Toronto. The title might be a bit dramatic, but if you’re a student – or just eat like one – this recipe could save you from being the subject of a “Oh my god! My friend knows a guy who got scurvy! Honest to god, SCURVY!” story. This is faster than going to the dining hall, easy enough to do on no sleep (or if you’re, you know, otherwise impared), and only requires ingredients that can sit around in your dorm room and bar fridge from frosh week to finals. And it tastes great -what more could you ask?
Level of Difficulty from 1 (umbilical cord) to 10 (Larousse Gastronomique): 2
Ingredients
–1 pkg Ramen noodles. No seriously, ramen noodles. You probably already have some, and if you don’t, they’re, like, 33 cents a pack and available at any convenience store.
–3/4 cup frozen green beans and/or broccolli. These are flash frozen at the harvest site, so they’re actually more nutritous than the regular kind. Get a package in the frozen foods section of the grocery store and put it in the freezer. It lasts forever and you avoid scurvy. Ta daaa!
–6 frozen shrimp or about 1/3 cup of any other protein. Cooked chicken, beef or pork, canned salmon or tuna, cooked tofu, TVP, peanuts or cashews, an egg, your roommate’s leftover veal chop, whatever.
–Soy sauce, Hoisin Sauce and Sesame Oil. Don’t be scared! You only have to go to the grocery store ONE TIME to get these and then you’re done. You can do it! If you like spicy food, add any kind of hot sauce. If you’re really poor and desperate, leave out the hoisin and sesame oil and just steal soy sauce packets from cafeteria.
Equipment
-A pot if you have an oven or microwave safe container and a microwave, if you don’t.
What to do
1. If you’re using a pot on the stove, boil the noodles (discard the flavour pack that comes with them) with the vegetables and the shrimp (don’t defrost them, just put them in the water) or other protein for about 3 minutes, until the noodles are soft and the shrimp has turned pink. If you’re using a microwave, put everything in the microwave safe container with enough water to cover it and microwave on high for 3-4minutes.
2. Drain the mixture, and add about 1tbsp of the soy sauce, 1 tsp of the hoisin sauce, 1/2 tsp of the sesame oil and 1/2tsp of hot sauce, if using. You don’t really have to measure these, just drizzle them from the bottle until it seems right.
3. Stir it up and eat it. That’s it. For real.
Tarting it up
Hungry overachievers can experiment with other kinds of asian noodles, like rice noodles, glass noodles or soba, to name a few. Or try adding thinly sliced carrots, mushrooms. baby corn or even spinach, topping this with freshly sliced green onion and sesame seeds, or using oyster or black bean sauce instead of the hoisin. Just don’t get bogged down in the details – this is delicious, student-friendly and very, very easy. Enjoy the strike!