Lucas Sin’s Cold Sesame Noodles Are Your New Go-To Summer Dish

There are chilled sesame noodles on Chinese takeout menus everywhere. Some people say it was invented here in New York City. Some people say it was invented in Taiwan. Some people say it was invented in Hong Kong. Nobody is really quite sure. But this is my version of chilled sesame noodles that you can make at home, and I'm gonna show you the little tips and tricks on the way to make it even better than you might get at takeout. Hi everyone, my name is Lucas Sin. I am the chef of Nice Day Chinese and Jun's The Kitchen, and we're making chilled sesame noodles today. Sesame noodles are one of our signature dishes at my restaurants. We usually serve them hot, but since the summer is coming, we're gonna do it cold today. The chilled sesame noodle might seem simple to begin with, but if we really pay attention to everything that goes in, you can have a really elevated experience. Subscribe to Food & Wine, and I'll show you also how to make a not-so-generic yuzu Asian noodle salad, as well as Hong Kong-style bag noodles. Your main building block for this noodle is going to be this 100% sesame paste. It's got no peanuts in it. It's proper. This is the way to go. On top of this, you're gonna need a little bit of sesame oil, as well as the secret ingredient of what we call furu, or Chinese fermented tofu. Other than that, you need light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, sugar, aged Chinese black vinegar, Sichuan peppercorn oil, and a little bit of Kewpie mayonnaise. First thing we're gonna do, we're gonna make the sauce. First thing into your bowl is gonna be your sesame paste. Try to get nice 100% sesame paste. Most Chinese-American restaurants use a blend of sesame paste and peanut butter. Both are fine, but I just like the intensity of sesame that's made with nothing but sesame. Second thing we're gonna add in is fermented tofu that we call furu. Think of it as similar to a type of cheese made out of soy. There are multiple variations. This here is the standard-issue white fermented tofu. You can also use tofu that's colored a little bit red. You can also get furu that has a little bit of rose flavor in it. It all is going to work. But what this is gonna do is that it's gonna provide us with that umami, savory base note to the sesame sauce. And we're gonna make sure that we mash it up real nice so that it's incorporated fully into the sauce. Once that's good to go and you make sure that there are no lumps, we're going to add basically all the other ingredients in here. Doesn't really matter what order. You just wanna make sure that everything's incorporated. So light soy sauce. Light soy sauce here is for saltiness as well as soy flavor. On top of this, we're also going to add dark soy sauce. Dark soy sauce is just for color. We're gonna also add Sichuan peppercorn oil. So Sichuan peppercorn oil is really beautiful. It's oil that's made from Sichuan peppercorns. It's got that little bit of a numbing effect, but also has a little pop of citrus brightness. So just a touch of that. And the sesame oil, which is going to reinforce the sesame flavor that's already in that 100% sesame paste. At some point, you're gonna be faced with the clump that I see in front of me. So we're gonna switch to a whisk and just slowly start to incorporate everything. You can obviously use a blender or a food processor. You see how that texture is coming together? Now you know that it's starting to emulsify. We're gonna finish it off with a little bit of acidity. Chinese black vinegar is the vinegar of choice. Balsamic is a really great substitute. With all that soy sauce in there, you're gonna need sugar. Bring it all together. Make sure that sugar is dissolved. At some point, you're gonna see a little bit of a clump like this. We're gonna add a little bit of water, a little bit at a time, to make sure that it stays emulsified. You see it was a clumpy mess. Now it's starting to get nice and smooth. Be cautious with the amount of water you add in. You want it to be a little bit loose, but you don't want it to be runny. So it's up to your discretion, really. Just make sure to add it in small batches so that it doesn't split. It's kind of the worst case. You see how beautiful this is? There you go. See? So, final coup de gras. This is the QP mayonnaise. The first time I heard about mayonnaise in sesame noodles, I was repulsed. But I realized that this actually gives it just a little bit of that velvety, sort of like creaminess touch at the end. And it's also an extra emulsifier. So just about a tablespoon or so. This is not an original idea. I picked it up from my friends. We spent a lot of time in Taiwanese street markets. And this unnamed gentleman adds mayonnaise to all his sesame sauces. Make sure it's nice and well-mixed. That's what your sauce is supposed to look like. So we have a sauce here for four people, but this can easily be made into a salad dressing if you add a little bit more vinegar. This can easily be something that's really great for chilled tofu, or even like an on-diet salad or something like that would be really outstanding. I think it needs a little bit more sweetness, couple pinches more of sugar, and I'm gonna hit it with a little bit of salt too. And the texture is pretty good for me, but I think since I'm gonna pour our noodles, I'm just gonna give it a little bit more of a touch. Water. You see, this is the job of the chef, which is to take a very, very simple thing way too seriously. That's how you make a difference. There you go. Beautiful velvety, ready to go. Done. The right way to do this is to cook your noodles by package instructions. We are using a flour noodle today. A flour noodle has a little bit of roughness so it catches onto the sauce in a nice way. And this is the noodle that I prefer for this. But honestly, almost any type of noodle will do. Before you drop your noodles into water, make sure you're just separating it so that it doesn't clump and it cooks evenly. Stir it occasionally. Make sure it's submerged. No salt, no oil. You don't need any of that stuff in this pot. Just the noodles in rolling, boiling water. You wanna stir it for the first 30 seconds or so to make sure that it's nice and even and it's not stuck to the bottom. But after that, you can kinda let it chill and let it do its thing. When you think your noodles are done, the best way to check is to taste a strand. Make sure that it's nice and tender but there's a tiny bit of bite in the middle. But it's not al dente. It's like maybe a couple steps after al dente. The other way you can tell that it's cooked is you can see that the outside of the noodle has gelatinized. It's a little bit sort of transparent so you know that those starches are activated. Take those noodles out as quickly as you can to stop it from cooking. So here are those cooked noodles and this is why we're not going to run this through an ice bath. When you run noodles that are made especially from flour, from wheat, through an ice bath, you end up stripping both the texture and the flavor from the noodle. This flour is a deliciously smelling noodle and you would hate for that to run off into the sink. The second thing is if you shock it with ice water, it will also lose its texture because of that gelatinized starch on the top will all run off. It won't catch onto the noodle as nicely. So it's proper form in Chinese chilled noodles to just let this chill as is either on the countertop or in the fridge with a little bit of oil to stop it from sticking to each other. This is actually vegetable oil that has been heated up. Heating up the oil gets rid of some of those grassy sort of raw oil tones and it just makes it into oil that you'd be very happy to use even in a cold dish where it's not gonna get cooked any further. So this is oil that's just been heated up inside of a little pan and we just let it sit on the counter to cool to use for cold dishes. The noodle is gonna go into the fridge and you're gonna chill it down until it's cold or to the temperature of your liking. Okay, chilled noodles. See this, right? This tensile strength. It's like bounciness and it's so nice and loose like this is what you want. We're gonna garnish this with three things, keeping it simple because this thing is so darn delicious that you doesn't really need that much else. So scallions, chili oil, and toasted sesame seeds. Chili oil, I prefer to make my own. You can get store-bought as well. Nice red color. Sometimes it comes with chili flakes. For these scallions, yes, we are cooking for ourselves at home, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be slicing your scallions nice because you love yourself. So a little bit of a bias to make it look pretty. This is self-care right here. Don't cut it like a maniac. Just, you know. Actually, you know what? I'm gonna show you another way to cut this. Scallion time. Take your sharp knife in the middle of the scallion. Don't take it all the way down. Once it holds on, and then you're just gonna hold this right here, and you're gonna get nice. With the tip of your knife, you're gonna drag, and you're gonna make nice little ribbons. The end of the scallion is gonna help hold the whole thing together. And then you're gonna cut off all that. Goes into the water. So again, lay it flat. With the tip of your knife, you're gonna drag. Make nice little shreds on the go. Cool. The last thing we're gonna do is we're gonna grind our sesame seeds. Yes, everybody knows about toasting their sesame seeds. That's all well and good, but did you know you could grind them up for extra flavor? Toast the sesame seeds into a mortar and pestle, and you will know immediately. Listen to that for a second. The sesame seeds are popping, and the whole room can smell when you start to grind sesame seeds. It's ridiculous. And suddenly, it's gonna be a sesame noodle like you've never had before. Okay, time to plate. We're gonna make a nice little portion here. You can spin either the bowl or your chopsticks. You get a nice little coil here, right, like so. Generous amount of your sesame sauce right over the top. You want it to cascade. You want people to see the love that you put into this sesame sauce. You took it so seriously. There you are. And then scallion, crowning jewel on the top. We'll do white and green. All sorts of chaos. Brown sesame seeds over the side. And then chili oil for that little bit of heat and a little bit of that pop all over, because that's what's gonna make it. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. There you have it. Chilled sesame noodle is done properly. We fussed about every single element in this, but hopefully it's gonna pay off. Get that sauce everywhere. There you go. I've been making this noodle for five years now, and we've been adjusting it here and there little bit by little bit. And it is ridiculous to me that every time you have this first bite, it still seems to transcend any sort of ideal of sesame sauce that you think could possibly exist. It's creamy, obviously. Look at this texture, right? It's perfect. It's velvety. It's got a little bit of heat from the chili oil. It's got a little bit of that kick from the raw scallions, but everything in that sesame sauce is built off of umami, and it's built off of this beautiful toasted sesame flavor. It's nutty, and it's pure, and it tastes true. That's cool. That was delicious. There's more deliciousness to come. Two more chilled noodles for you. First is gonna be my take on a generic Asian noodle salad, and the second is gonna be Hong Kong-style bagged noodles. Subscribe and follow, and you'll get to see the rest of them too. If you're a fan of the cold noodles, sound off in the comments below.