Yakisoba

Yakisoba is a Japanese dish of wheat noodles stir-fried on a flat griddle with vegetables, meat and a sweet, tangy brown sauce.

What it really is

Yakisoba is built on steamed or pre-cooked Chinese-style wheat noodles, usually sold ready to cook, which are fried with shredded cabbage, carrot, onion and thin strips of pork. The noodles are seasoned with a thick brown sauce, most often a Worcestershire-style sauce, and finished with pickled red ginger and dried green seaweed flakes. The name means "fried soba", but the noodles are wheat, not buckwheat, which is what soba means in Japanese.

Street-stall and festival versions are cooked on a large flat iron plate and eaten from paper trays. Home versions use a single wok or frying pan. Yakisoba differs from Chinese chow mein mainly in its sauce, which is sweeter and thicker, and from yakiudon, which uses thick udon noodles instead of wheat noodles.

How it's served

• Hot from the griddle, in a paper tray or on a plate
• Topped with pickled red ginger and dried green aonori seaweed flakes
• Often finished with a little dried bonito flakes or mayonnaise, depending on the region
• Eaten with chopsticks, typically at festivals and street stalls

How to write it on the menu

• Name the noodles and sauce: wheat noodles stir-fried with cabbage, carrot, onion and pork in a sweet Worcestershire-style sauce
• Flag WHEAT (noodles), and SOY and WHEAT (the sauce usually contains soy sauce), and FISH if bonito flakes are added
• State the topping: pickled red ginger and aonori are classic; bonito flakes and mayonnaise are common variants
• Specify whether the dish is made with pork or with seafood or chicken, as the protein changes the allergens