You layer the ingredients—sauce on the bottom, followed by noodles, protein, veggies, and aromatics. When you’re ready to eat, simply shake and enjoy. No need to heat anything up or take out another bowl or plate. Make as many jars as you need for the week or multiple jars for various family members! I also have 3 different versions and ideas for customizations based on what you like or what you have on hand.
The Perfect On-the-Go Lunch
When I was studying abroad in China one summer, a favorite student lunch involved heading to the cold noodle cart outside one of the dorms and getting a paper bowl filled with noodles, veggies, and tasty sauce. The lady running the cart had various ingredients that you could choose from and several sauces, so you could customize your bowl of noodles to your liking. When I moved to Beijing with my parents a few years later, I saw this same concept replicated not just by other street vendors, but also in grocery stores, where you could pick up a bowl of cold noodles from a stand right in the store while you were shopping. All this is to say that cold noodles are the ultimate convenience food. Not only are they filling and satisfying, they’re inexpensive, quick to mix up, infinitely customizable, and—as it’s now 90°F outside in our neck of the woods—refreshing on a hot day! This meal prep idea is based on all those quick cold noodle lunches I enjoyed both as a student in Qingdao and as a just-out-of-school-intern-who-worked-for-free-and-had-no-money in Beijing. The idea is simple. Layer the components in a jar—much like those mason jar salads you may have seen knocking around Pinterest. When you’re ready to eat, shake the jar and enjoy. A pair of chopsticks and a refreshing beverage is all you need for a midday pick-me-up, whether you’re at your desk at work, on the go, or in need of something fast in between Zoom meetings at home.
The Case for Thin Spaghetti
You may have noticed that rather than Chinese noodles, I used spaghetti. Thin spaghetti, to be more specific! Before you ‘authenticity’-folks start an uproar, let me explain. In our house, thin spaghetti has long been the noodle of choice for a bowl of cold noodles. Why? Not only is it easily accessible and always in our pantry, it actually holds up better to longer storage, and the noodles are much less likely to stubbornly stick together after cooking, making them easy to mix. Just toss the noodles in a bit of neutral oil after cooking, and they will stay loose and separated in your jars rather than clumping together into a ball that even the best chopstick skills can’t pry apart. In short, dried spaghetti is more robust and less prone to sogginess than other types of dried wheat noodles, making them the optimal choice for this type of meal prep. In fact, if given the choice between a fresh Chinese noodle and a box of Barilla thin spaghetti to make these cold noodle jars, I’d take the spaghetti every time. Save your fresh noodles for noodle soups and other recipes where you can eat your noodles right away, rather than prepping something in advance.
Three Sauce Versions
In this recipe, I include three different sauce variations: All the sauces are loose enough to mix evenly with the noodles after a few shakes of the jar.
Build Your Meal Prep Cold Noodle Jar!
So here is the basic formula for building your meal prep cold noodles: Okay, we already went over the sauce. Let’s talk toppings—the protein, vegetables, aromatics and herbs you can add. In the version photographed here, we used ground pork, julienned carrots and cucumbers, cilantro, and scallions. Here is a full list of options:
Protein:
Poached shredded chicken (see my mom’s recipe for poached chicken breast or use shredded leftover grilled or rotisserie chicken) Cooked ground pork, chicken, turkey, or beef (be sure to season with a sprinkle of salt!) Any leftover cooked meatSteamed wheat gluten Blanched shredded tofu skin
Vegetables:
Cooked baby spinach or other greens Julienned raw cucumber Julienned raw carrot Julienned raw bell pepper Blanched bean sprouts Cooked shelled edamame Finely shredded raw cabbage
Herbs & Crunch:
Chopped scallions Chopped cilantro Chopped Peanuts Roasted or fried soybeans Toasted sesame seeds
Recipe Instructions
Bring a pot of water to a boil for the noodles, and cook according to package instructions. Drain the noodles, and toss them in a couple teaspoons of neutral oil to keep them from sticking to each other. To build your jar, combine all the ingredients for your sauce of choice in a small bowl, and pour in the the bottom of the jar. Layer the noodles on top. Follow with the protein, vegetables, and herbs of choice. Refrigerate until ready to eat. Shake to combine all the ingredients just before enjoying.
