If you’re a lover of Japanese noodles, mentsuyu is a very important sauce to have on hand. It’s a basic noodle soup broth, so it’s essential in both hot and cold udon, soba, somen, and ramen dishes. On its own it’s used as a dipping sauce for cold noodles, then diluted down a little it’s used for noodle soup. Very easy to make, homemade mentsuyu tastes way better than from a bottle, so it’s a great way to bring added flavor to your favorite noodles!
While you can make a whole batch of mentsuyu right away and keep it in the fridge ready to go, if you’re only cooking for yourself or you have a small fridge, you might not want to invest that much storage space to it. Since mentsuyu is made up of kaeshi and dashi, I like to make a big bottle of kaeshi and have it handy for whenever the noodle craving hits! That way it only takes up half the space and you’re not sacrificing any flavor. Then when you need some mentsuyu, all you have to do is mix equal portions of kaeshi and dashi and you’re ready to go!
The recipe for kaeshi is really easy to modify too, so you can halve of triple the ingredients depending on your needs. Not sure if you want to keep kaeshi on hand for the occasional noodle dish? Another great thing about kaeshi is that it can be used in any recipe that calls for soy sauce, mirin (or sake) and sugar, so for instance, in my Bacon Wrappd Tofu Teriyaki, you can use about a half cup of kaeshi instead of the soy sauce, mirin and sugar to simply the recipe even more!
Recipe – Mentsuyu and Kaeshi (Noodle Soup Base):
To make Kaeshi (Noodle Soup Concentrate):
– Add the soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a small pan, then bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium so it doesn’t boil over and let simmer for 5 minutes until the alcohol has cooked off. Remove from heat and let cool.
To make Mentsuyu (Noodle Soup Broth):
– Add equal parts of the kaeshi base and dashi soup stock to a small bowl. Stir to combine.
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