The thermometer on the garage wall said 103 when I went out to the chest freezer at 4:30 on Tuesday. Inside, the AC was holding at 76, but the afternoon sun was pouring through the big window by the kitchen table, and I could not imagine turning on the oven. That's the kind of afternoon these noodles were made for. One pot of boiling water for about ten minutes is the only heat they need, and the rest happens in a big bowl on the island.
Cold peanut noodles with cucumbers and shredded chicken take about twenty minutes, feed the five of us with a lunch left over, and cost about $11. They've landed on the paper plan on the fridge at least once a week since school let out.
What goes in
For five of us, plus one lunch:
- 1 pound spaghetti: $0.99
- 1 Costco rotisserie chicken, skin off and shredded: $4.99
- 2 cucumbers: $1.18
- Half a bag of shredded carrots: $0.50
- 3 green onions: $0.35
- A small handful of salted peanuts, chopped: $0.45
- Sauce: 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 3 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons honey, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 2 cloves garlic, a thumb of fresh ginger (or 1/2 teaspoon ground), the juice of a lime and hot water to thin: about $2.58
When we make a Costco run, I bring home two rotisserie chickens and shred both that night, and one of them is usually spoken for by this recipe. Between Costco runs, I poach two pounds of chicken breast in the Instant Pot in the morning, which costs about 60 cents more.
How I make it
I set up my station before I turn on a burner, because the whole thing comes together fast once the noodles are done. Cucumbers cut into matchsticks (or half-moons when I'm feeling lazy), carrots in a pile, green onions sliced thin, chicken shredded into a bowl, peanuts chopped on the corner of the board.
The sauce goes into a quart mason jar: peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, sesame oil, grated garlic and ginger, lime juice and about 1/4 cup of hot water from the pasta pot. Lid on, shake hard. It should pour like heavy cream. If it's still thick, add another splash of water and shake again.
Cook the spaghetti a minute past the package time. Cold noodles firm up as they sit, and that extra minute keeps them from turning stiff. Before I drain the pot, I pull Eli's portion with tongs and toss it with a little butter while it's warm. He gets plain noodles, plain chicken on one side and cucumber coins on the other, with nothing touching. Then I drain the rest, rinse it under cold water until it's cool all the way through and toss it with a teaspoon of sesame oil so it doesn't clump.
Everything else goes into the big bowl with about two-thirds of the sauce, and I toss it with tongs until every strand is coated.
The mistake I made the first summer
The first time I made these, I dressed the whole bowl an hour early so dinner would be "done." By 5:45 the noodles had soaked up every drop and gone dry and gummy, and the cucumbers had turned limp. Now I hold back a third of the sauce and put it on the table in the jar, and I don't toss anything until about ten minutes before we eat. Fire the noodles at 5:15, dinner at 5:45, and they stay glossy.
Matt adds sriracha at the table. Wyatt eats two bowls and asks why we don't have this in the winter (we do, sometimes, served warm). Rosie gets noodles and cucumbers cut small on her booster tray, and most of the sauce ends up on her forearms, which is what the bath is for. Biscuit waits under her chair for the carrots she drops on principle.
Leftovers go into one of the glass containers with a blue lid, and that's my lunch the next day while I work at the kitchen table. The noodles are honestly better on day two, as long as I loosen them with a spoonful of the reserved sauce.
Receipt check: $11.04 for five with a lunch left over, about $2.21 a serving, and the oven never came on.
