Creamy sesame noodles ready in just 15-minutes. It’s made with a handful of ingredients to make the most rich and savory sauce. Simply boil your noodles, prepare the sauce, and toss everything together!

Sesame Noodles: Ready in 15-minutes

Many of you know just how much I love noodle dishes for it’s simplicity and tastiness. Whether you’re busy with work, classes, or just need a quick and easy meal, this noodle dish will become your new go-to recipe!

15 minutes is all it takes for this dish (while you’re waiting for the noodles to cook, you can start to make the sauce at the same time!)

The best part is that this recipe is incredibly versatile. If you wanted to make this dish a more complete/heavy meal, you could always incorporate more sliced veggies into the mix or even serve it alongside some protein. As always, be sure to adjust the sauce according to you tastes!

I’m absolutely hooked onto the sesame sauce. It’s creamy, rich, and savory, the perfect dressing to coat our chewy noodles with. Give it a try and let me know how it tastes!

Ingredients for Sesame Noodles

Noodles: for this recipe, I used fresh Korean somyeon noodles. Sometime’s they’re labelled as “vermicelli” or “wheat” noodles (they’re usually found in the refrigerated section). Otherwise, feel free to use any other noodles of your preference. Knife-cut noodles, udon, or ramen work amazing with the sesame sauce!

Sesame paste: the star of this dish. It tastes somewhat very similar to peanut butter, in that they’re both very rich and savory. For this recipe, we’ll be using Chinese sesame paste (more details below).

Chinese sesame paste — My favorite brand of sesame paste is “Wangzhihe”

Sesame oil: the toasty, nutty sesame oil will further enhance and concentrate the sesame flavor.

Peanut butter: we’ll be adding a small amount of peanut butter to our sauce, just enough to lend the sauce its richness, but not enough to overpower the main flavor of the sesame!

Soy sauce: this will boost those savory and umami flavors of our sauce. It will also add some slight saltiness.

Sugar: sugar will help to balance out the richness of the sesame/peanuts and the saltiness of the soy sauce. Feel free to adjust the amount more or less according to your preference.

Black vinegar: this type of vinegar is slightly more earthy and “smoky” than your typical white vinegar. Try to look for it in your local Asian groceries, but if you don’t have any luck, any other white or rice vinegars should work just fine. This will help add some brightness and tang.

Ginger, garlic: freshly grated ginger and garlic adds those delicious aromatic flavors to the dish. You could also substitute this with powdered/dried ginger and garlic!

Chili crisps: this ingredient is totally optional, but highly recommended! You could mix this directly into the sauce or just save it as a garnish on top. It adds a nice kick and mildness to the noodles.

Sesame paste

For this recipe, we’ll be using Chinese sesame paste. I love this stuff because I use it everywhere! From dips, to marinades, stir-fries, and in this case: sauces. It’s essentially toasted sesame seeds that’s been ground/processed into a paste, resulting in a dark, rich, and creamy texture. You can typically find these being sold in glass containers from most Asian groceries.

You might be familiar with Tahini, which is another sesame condiment that’s popular in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. But is Chinese sesame paste and tahini the same? The short answer is no.

While Chinese sesame paste is made from heavily toasted sesame seeds, tahini is typically made with lightly-toasted (or even raw) seeds. The resulting flavor of the Chinese sesame paste is therefore more toasty and robust. Neither is necessarily better than the other, just that the two kinds of pastes work better in their respected dishes with specific flavor profiles.

With that being said, if you absolutely cannot find Chinese sesame paste in your local Asian grocery, tahini would be your next best substitute. Just expect the flavor of the sauce to be much milder.

Instructions for Sesame Noodles

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Cook the noodles according to its packaged instructions. Just before draining the noodles, reserve some of the noodle water for the sauce and set aside.

Prepare the sesame sauce by whisking all the ingredients together until smooth and creamy.

Add in the cooked noodles and toss to combine until fully coated.

Garnish with sesame seeds and julienned cucumbers. Enjoy!

Garnishing with sesame seeds and cucumber

How to Serve

You can definitely serve the noodles as-is since it works great as a stand-alone dish, but you could also serve it as a side dish with many other mains.

Here are some of my favorite mains to serve alongside these noodles!