Noodles on sauce – Drain, rinse briefly under tap water, shake off excess water well then place in the bowl with the sauce. Do not mix – just leave it there.
Making Japchae – Korean noodles
Vegetables Batch 1 – Cook the onion, mushrooms and white part of green onions first, until the mushrooms just start to soft. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.
Vegetables batch 2 – Next, cook the carrot and capsicum/bell pepper first, until they are just cooked but still have a soft bite to them. ie “tender crisp”. Soggy floppy overcooked vegetables is unacceptable! 😂 Then add the spinach and the green part of the green onions and toss for a minute just until the spinach is wilted. Then transfer into the noodle bowl.
Cook beef – Lastly, cook the beef! Cook it on high heat just until you no longer see red – with a strong stove and good pan it should be barely 90 seconds. Hopefully in this time you’ll get a bit of browning in some patches too. Then add it into the bowl.
Toss! Add the sesame seeds, and now it’s time to toss! You used a giant bowl right, like I said to right at the start?? If you didn’t, you’ll start to cry (or swear) right about now.
Toss, toss, toss, until the sauce is evenly distributed. Check by looking at the colour of the noodles – the sauce stains the glassy noodles a brown colour.
Then tumble it all into a bowl, finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and serve!
Picking up Japchae – Korean noodles
YUM. That sauce is everything! I really like that it’s not as sweet as the Japchae sauce you get at some Korean restaurants which I find a little too sweet.
This is a big batch recipe so it’s an excellent one for taking leftovers to work. It will keep for 3 days in the fridge. Just lightly warm it – or serve hot if you want. Though honestly, it’s also very good at room temperature too!
