Salads are awesome. In any shape or form. Combining simple ingredients with a flavorful sauce or dressing is pure genius. Today’s salad is made with Japanese soba noodles, broccoli, and tofu. It is very simple, then you add the sauce and voila! It’s an awesome salad.
You can swap in your favorite veggie or protein source to customize this salad. I love the texture of a good pan seared tofu bite, with the crunchy broccoli, but you may prefer some chicken with snow peas. Go with the flow, do as your heart desires.
If you have never tried soba noodles, I recommend them. The trick to a good soba noodle is plenty of rinsing after cooking to remove starches that make the noodles cling together. I have found that soba noodle brands vary greatly in sodium. Try to find a brand that does not use salt (or uses very little) because the sauce already has plenty of sodium.
The recipe calls for pressing your tofu. Pressing the water out of tofu allows it to absorb more of the flavors you are cooking with. If you have never pressed tofu it is very simple. Just put the tofu between a plate and a cutting board (or 2 plates) and top with something slightly heavy, like a few food cans fro
m the pantry. Tofu is soft and sometimes the cans will slip and slide during pressing. You can reduce this tendency by cutting the block into slabs, reducing the height and increasing the surface area.
Hot or cold this salad is a keeper! Enjoy!
- 4-6 oz soba noodles (2 ringed proportions)
- 4 oz broccoli, chopped
- 2 TBS rice vinegar
- 2 TBS sesame oil
- 2 TBS low-sodium tamari sauce (or soy sauce)
- 1 TBS peanut butter (creamy or crunchy, doesn’t matter)
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- ¼ tsp red pepper flake
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 8 oz extra firm tofu (half a block)
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- Sesame seeds for garnish
- Press tofu for 30 minutes.
- Cook soba noodles according to package directions. Rinse well with running water.
- Steam broccoli until bright green, about 4 minutes.
- Whisk together rice vinegar through garlic cloves in a small bowl.
- Coat a cast iron skillet with a thin layer of olive oil. Add Tofu and season with salt and pepper to taste. Fry until golden brown on all sides adding a splash of sauce (about 2 TBS) at the end and cook until absorbed (10 seconds). Remove from pan and toss with soba noodles and broccoli. Pour remaining sauce over noodle salad. Garnish with sesame seeds.
Recipe adapted from Cooking Light.
