Best Soba Noodle Salad with a sweet and tangy sesame soy vinaigrette dressing. An easy simple recipe that’s great for lunch or potluck. Use 100% buckwheat noodles to make it gluten-free.
Soba noodle salad recipe that is the perfect combination of two of my favorite things – soba noodles and salad. Unlike the traditional Makguksu recipe, this soba noodle (Memil Guksu 메밀국수) salad recipe is really simple and easy to make. Until about 10 years ago, I have never had soba noodle salad. I certainly had many soba noodles before, served Japanese style: ice cold buckwheat noodles with the wonderful sweet-salty dipping sauce. It’s called Zaru Soba.
When I was living in New Delhi, India, as a child, cold soba noodles or Zaru Soba was absolutely the best thing to have during the HOT summer days of India. I mean HOT – with temperatures that can go over 110°F!! The ice cold Zaru Soba was all I wanted to eat and it was such a treat!
BTW, another great noodle dish to have on a hot summer day is Cold Soy Milk Noodle Soup (Kongguksu 콩국수) You must give it a try if you like soy milk.
Soba noodle or Memil Guksu (메밀국수) in Korean are noodles made from wheat and buckwheat flour. Memil or Buckwheat is grown all over Korea. There is even a Buckwheat festival in the town of Bongpyeong, in the province of Gangwondo. We were actually able to visit a festival when I was living in Korea. The festival took place next to this beautiful field of Buckwheat flowers and people were allowed to just roam through the pretty fields of Buckwheat.
Buckwheat or Memil is known to be low calorie, good for cardiovascular health (lowers cholesterol) and also for better blood sugar control. During college, I remember my girlfriends always having soba noodles for lunch because they thought it would keep them slim. I could never do it because I get hungry too quickly and then end up eating even more calories with snacks…sigh…Anyway, read more about health benefits here.
This soba noodle salad recipe is based on a church friend’s (Jane L) recipe from a long time ago. She was the one who first introduced me to this wonderful dish and I will always be grateful to her for that. Unlike many versions I saw online, this one does not use any ginger, garlic or peanut butter. It is light and fresh and is a great, easy soba noodle salad recipe that you can make ahead and serve at parties or potlucks.
Here I use salad greens from my vegetable garden but you can easily just buy a bag of mixed baby greens or just chop up whatever salad greens you have. I find that using a variety of salad greens including kale, frisee and/or mizuna add great texture and flavor to the salad.
Tips for Best Soba Noodle Salad
- For best result, dress the salad right before serving. Leftover dressed noodle salad does not keep well so dress only the amount you are going to eat.
- Make a large batch of the dressing and store in the fridge and use later.
- The original version has oyster sauce in addition. I don’t find it necessary but you are welcome to try adding it. Probably about 1 tsp is good for this recipe.
- This goes great with any Korean party meal. It can also be a great simple lunch menu or a yummy side for any meal.
- Add some lime juice or lemon juice for more zing. But don’t add too much – 1 tsp or so.
- For gluten-free, make sure you buy 100% buckwheat noodles which are not easy to find but available. Also, use gluten-free soy sauce like Tamari.
Soba Noodle Salad Recipe
Servings: 1-2 Prep Time: 5 min Cook Time: 10 min Difficulty: Easy
Step-by-Step Directions
- Boil water and cook buckwheat noodles according to package directions.
one dry soba noodle bundle – 120 grams (4 oz) Bring water to boil, do not add salt and cook for 5-7 minutes. It will easily boil over so keep a close watch. Add some cold water to stop from boiling over if it does. Noodles should not be al dente but also not mushy.
- Have a bowl of cold water ready and rinse cooked buckwheat noodles well. Rub noodles with your hands until all the sticky stuff is gone. Drain.
- Wash greens. Drain. Unless you are using baby greens, cut your greens into strips.
Cut Salad Greens for Soba Noodle Salad Some beautiful Lacinato Kale, Red Leaf Lettuce and Perilla leaves from my vegetable garden!
Oh and some small Red russian kale leaves at the bottom too.
Salad greens of kale, red leaf lettuce, perilla and baby red russian kale from my vegetable garden You can use whatever combination – just try to have some leaves with firm texture, like kale and frisee. And greens like Perilla or Ssukkat which will add another great dimension of minty flavor.
- Make dressing: mix soy sauce, vinegar and sugar until sugar dissolves. Add sesame oil and wasabi and mix again. Add sesame seeds. If you find sesame oil fragrance too strong, you can use 1 tsp sesame oil and 2 tsp vegetable oil instead. You will have a little more than 3 Tbs of dressing.
Assemble noodles and greens together in a bowl. DO NOT pour all the dressing. It’s hard to measure the amount of dressing needed per uncooked noodles but I use 2 Tbs + 1 tsp dressing for 4 oz soba noodles. As a general guideline, I use 4 tsp dressing per 1 cup cooked noodle but adjust to taste. Add dressing, toss and serve. FYI – you will get about 1 3/4 cup cooked noodles from 1 bundle of 4 oz (120g) soba noodles. Noodles will absorb the dressing so toss right before serving.
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JinJoo
Soba Noodle Salad
Ingredients
- 120 g dry buckwheat noodles (soba) (4 oz)
- 1 cup cut greens (kale, lettuce, frisee, perilla) or 1/2 bag 4 oz packaged mixed baby greens
Dressing - this is more than you need
- 4 tsp soy sauce (Jin Ganjang 진간장)
- 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp sesame oil
- 1/4 tsp wasabi
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
Instructions
- Boil water and cook buckwheat noodles according to package directions. (Bring water to boil, do not add salt and cook for 5-7 minutes. Noodles should not be al dente but also not mushy.
- Have a bowl of cold water ready and rinse cooked buckwheat noodles well so all the sticky stuff is gone. Drain.
- Wash greens. Drain. Unless you are using baby greens, cut your greens into strips.
- You can use whatever combination – just try to have some leaves with firm texture like kale and radicchio. And greens like Perilla or Ssukkat which will add another great dimension of minty flavor.
- Make dressing: mix soy sauce, vinegar and sugar until sugar dissolves. Add sesame oil and wasabi and mix again. Add sesame seeds. If you find sesame oil fragrance too strong, you can use 1 tsp sesame oil and 2 tsp vegetable oil instead.
- When you are ready to eat, assemble the noodles and greens together in a bowl. DO NOT pour all the dressing. I use about 2 Tbs + 1 tsp dressing for 1 bundle of dry noodles. Generally, I use about 4 tsp dressing per 1 cup of cooked soba noodles. Add dressing, toss and Serve. Noodles will absorb the dressing so don’t mix too much ahead of time.
Tips & Notes:
- Keep any leftover dressing in the fridge.
- Goes great with any Korean party meal. It can also be a great simple lunch menu or a yummy side to any meal.
- PLEASE NOTE Nutritional Facts have calories and sodium calculated for ALL the dressing. You will use much less than what is on the recipe. Also the high sodium content comes from Buckwheat noodles - check your package for more accurate sodium content.
Can you please add salad/noodle dressing and side dipping sauce as one of the types or categories, whichever you deem appropriate. Store bought salad dressings are so expensive and full of unpronounceable ingredients I have to stop buying it and make my own. I looked for your recipes this morning and not found them. The soba noodles dressing sounds delicious, and so does the tofu salad dressing. Thank you for your consideration. I have made many of your recipes and found them to be delightfully delicious. My husband thinks so too. 🙂
Hi! What a great idea! I’m going to work on it right away. Korean sauces and dressings actually can be narrowed down to a set of versions so this is giving me ideas.. I did just create a new category called ‘sauces and dressings’ and started to add recipes that belong there. I’m going to see if I can find a way to have just the sauces and dressings as the main recipe with instructions on how to use them. Thank you so much for the suggestion!! OH and here’s a link to the category page – https://kimchimari.com/category/sauce-n-dressings/
I made this recipe today on a whim….I’m so glad I did! DeliciousQ!
Yay!! Soo happy that you made it! It’s one of my go-to salads to make.
This was delicious and I will definitely make it again! It was easy and relatively quick too.
Wonderful!! So happy to hear that! Enjoy~
During quarantine, I was missing my favorite foods. This soba salad is exactly like the kind I get at my local restaurant. I make it all the time! I don’t have wasabi, so I put some lemon juice. This is really awesome. Thanks for the tips on how to cook the noodles too!
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! And using lemon juice instead of wasabi? Interesting. Thank you for sharing!