Garlic Sesame Noodles
Noodles are a girls best friend and these easy garlic sesame noodles are without a doubt my favorite noodle recipe to date. They require just a few ingredients, are gluten free and can be eaten hot or cold!
Given the popularity of my sesame chickpeas, two things are very clear. One, you guys love sesame flavored things. Those chickpeas, sesame tofu and teriyaki tofu, it’s hard to deny the deliciousness that is sesame.
Second, you guys love easy, 15 minute style meals. I mean, who doesn’t? Especially when they involve noodles. So, I introduce you to (probably) your new favorite meal when you’re in a pinch: garlic sesame noodles.
They’re gluten free, vegan, ready in 15 minutes, can be eaten hot or cold (like my teriyaki noodles), pair well with salmon, tofu, or just on their own! If you love this recipe, try my spicy ramen noodles or a recipe from my roundup of the best asian noodle recipes next!
How to make sesame noodles
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta according to package instructions. While the pasta is cooking, prep the sauce. Start by mincing the garlic very finely or use a garlic press to get it super small since we won’t be blending up this sauce. You don’t want super large chunks!
Add the minced garlic to a pan with the neutral oil. This can be avocado, olive, or refined coconut oil. Avoid using virgin coconut oil since it has a stronger coconut flavor. Saute until the edges of the garlic look golden brown, about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk together all of the remaining sauce ingredients in a bowl until there are no visible clumps of ginger and the tahini is spread throughout.
Pour the sauce into the pan with the garlic and mix well. Let simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the sauce thickens slightly.
When the pasta is done cooking, combine with the sauce. Taste, and feel free to add any additional flavors you choose. Garnish with scallions, red pepper flakes, crushed peanuts and enjoy! Try my gluten free ramen noodles next!
Key Ingredients
The best thing about these sesame noodles is that they require ingredients you most likely already have in your pantry. If you’re in a pinch for dinner and need something quick, this is the perfect recipe for you!
Brown rice noodles: You can really use any type of noodle for this recipe. Ramen, soba, udon, regular spaghetti, brown rice spaghetti, whatever you have!
Soy Sauce/Tamari: I highly suggest using low sodium soy sauce/tamari for this recipe. If you use regular, it will still be delicious, but quite salty!
Honey: You can use maple syrup or even brown sugar or coconut sugar in place of the honey.
Tahini: Most sesame noodles are not going to use tahini, but honestly, sesame noodles without the tahini are just not as good in my opinion!
It helps make the noodles creamy and thickens the sauce a bit so you aren’t drowning them in pure soy sauce. You can safely sub the tahini for peanut butter for a sesame peanut noodle version!
Garlic: If you’re a regular around here, you know that garlic is a staple in virtually all of my savory recipe. Plus, they’re garlic sesame noodles after all!
Sesame oil: For this recipe, the sesame oil is where much of the flavor comes from. Be sure to use toasted sesame oil for the most flavor.
Rice vinegar: To help round out the flavors of the sauce. I’m not a huge fan of vinegar, so there is no strong vinegar flavor to these noodles.
It just acts to balance out the salty from the soy sauce, the sweet from the honey, and the spicy from the sriracha.
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Sriracha: For a little spice! Any hot sauce will do, and feel free to adjust to your spice preferences. As written, the recipe is not super spicy (and this is coming from someone very sensitive to spice).
What is tahini?
These sesame noodles call for tahini, which is similar to, but not the same as, sesame paste.
Sesame paste has a stronger flavor but it’s not found in all grocery stores, so I opted for a version that everyone will have access to.
Sesame paste is made with toasted sesame seeds, whereas tahini is made with raw sesame seeds (usually). Tahini is essentially the peanut butter of sesame seeds!
If you can find sesame paste near you, you can use that instead! You are also welcome to use peanut butter if you want a peanut flavor to these noodles.
Make it a meal!
There are so many ways you can serve this recipe and so many ways to jazz it up. I love it fresh out of the pot with a side of chicken or salmon. Or keep them vegan and add my peanut tofu or teriyaki tofu.
You can toss in some steamed broccoli, serve it alongside my General Tso’s chickpeas, or saute a bunch of veggies and make this a stir fry! You can use different noodles, sprinkle on peanuts, make it spicy, whatever you want!
It’s versatile and since it’s so great hot or cold, it makes for the perfect on the go and work lunch.
Just a quick note: if you do plan on adding protein or vegetables to the mix, I’d suggest doubling the sauce recipe! Same with my vegetable noodle stir fry!
How to store
Once prepared, these sesame noodles will keep for 5 days in an air tight container in the fridge. You can eat these noodles cold or warm them up in the microwave or stove!
If you do plan on serving these cold, I suggest slightly overcooking the noodles because rice noodles tend to get a bit firm when they sit in the fridge. Overcooking by 1-2 minutes helps keep them soft!
Are they spicy?
As written, these noodles are not super spicy on their own, you can add more sriracha or red pepper flakes for more spice if desired.
These are also delicious with a bit of chili paste! But if you’re looking for some really spicy noodles, try my chili noodles instead!
Need more easy recipes? Try these!
- Vegetable Lo Mein
- Chickpea Stir Fry
- Orange Chickpeas
- Korean Gochujang Noodles
- Chili Garlic Noodles
- Thai Peanut Sauce
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Garlic Sesame Noodles
by: claire cary
Ingredients
- 12 ounces brown rice noodles
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 6 cloves garlic
- 1/4-1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce or tamari
- 2 tablespoons veggie broth
- 1 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons tahini
- 2 teaspoon sriracha
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta according to package instructions.
- Mince the garlic very finely or use a garlic press to get it super small since we won’t be blending up this sauce.
- Add the minced garlic to a pan with the neutral oil. This can be avocado, olive, or refined coconut oil.
- Saute until the edges of the garlic look golden brown.
- Meanwhile, whisk together all of the remaining sauce ingredients in a bowl until there are no visible clumps of ginger and the tahini is spread throughout.
- Pour the sauce into the pan with the garlic and mix well.
- Let simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the sauce thickens slightly.
- When the pasta is done cooking, combine with the sauce.
- Garnish with scallions, red pepper flakes, crushed peanuts and enjoy!
Notes
Comments
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Very delicious. I used regular soy sauce and could handle it. Didn’t have any peanuts and I’ll make sure to have them on hand next time. This is what I want when I order noodles out.
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I made these yesterday as I was craving some cold pasta. I made the pasta and poured the hot sauce over the hot noodles and threw them all in the fridge for a few hours. When I went to eat them, the noodles were all stuck to each other! I’m planning to make this recipe for a retreat I’m leading in a few weeks. Wondering how to best get the noodles to not clump up and get sticky? I used Banza angel hair noodles. I’m really looking forward to heating them up, adding broccoli & veggie “meatballs” for dinner tonight! Thanks for a superb recipe
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So happy you enjoyed them! Unfortunately, Banza noodles are just inherently very sticky. You can try tossing the noodles with some oil before adding the sauce on and see if that helps!
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I just finished eating a bowl of these sesame noodles and WOW, this recipe was amazing. I was looking for a way to get rid of my left-over, hardly used tahini in the fridge. After this recipe though, I think that I’ll be sure to keep a jar of tahini on hand so I can make this recipe whenever I’m craving noodles.
I did make a couple of ingredient swaps. First, instead of brown rice noodles, I used soba noodles. I also switched out brown sugar for the maple syrup. Last, I did not add siracha – I used some Sichuan chili oil that I made using a recipe from the Omnivore Cookbook site – I really liked the authentic Chinese spice that it added to the tahini-soy base.
This definitely will be a regular dish for me. I’m looking forward to trying this with shrimp and more veggies in the future to make it a filling lunch or dinner option. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
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Thank you Melissa! So happy you enjoyed them and all the swaps worked out!
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So so yummy. I made a simple salad with cabbage, radishes, carrots, bell pepper and edamame beans and added the noodles. Squeezed some lime over it and garnished with coriander and cashew nuts. Finally added a small amount of bbq chicken breast. OMG this was so nice. Tasted exactly like my favourite chicken noodle salad from Eat. Recipe is a keeper.
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Yum, love the addition of BBQ chicken, sounds perfect!
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Omg so yummy and easy to make! I only did one teaspoon of Sriracha and that was a perfect amount of heat for my husband and I!!
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Perfect! So happy you both enjoyed it!
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This was delicious! I added broccoli and shelled edamame and the sauce coated them well. It kept well in the fridge and reheated perfectly at work for lunch.
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Perfect! So happy you enjoyed it!
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I’ve been loving this recipe but some of the ingredients seem to have disappeared! Can you please remind me how much peanut butter to use? And how much of the spicy chili sauce? Thank you!!
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Hey Samantha! I think you’re confusing these with my peanut butter noodles? There is no peanut butter or chili sauce in this recipe.
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Oops!!! Yes! Thank you so much for pointing it out. I love these noodles too!
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These look so delicious, and easy to make! Totally going to make this tonight for dinner. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!
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These are great! All ages love them. From my ten year old daughter to my fifty year old husband. It’s one of my favourite dinners. Nice and easy great way to eat vegetables. Love this!
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Is this fresh ground ginger or ginger powder?
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Just ground ginger powder!
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Loved this recipe! Making it again tonight but I’m adding broccoli and chicken. The first time I made it I only had 8 oz of quinoa pasta but it worked anyway So easy! Who knew you could use gluten free spaghetti noodles like this! Any told on adding things like chicken or broccoli? Does it require more sauce?
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So happy you enjoyed it!! If you’re going to be adding things to the dish, I would recommend more sauce! You probably won’t need too much more, but if you just double the sauce recipe and use what you need, you can store the rest in the fridge, which should keep for about 5 days and can be used in lots of other dishes!
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I had these for lunch today and they were so good! I subbed the tahini for PB and still so good! This is my third recipe from your blog and I’ve loved them all! Thank you ☺️
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YUM! I’ll have to try it with the peanut butter, that sounds so good!
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This is so amazing and delish!!!! I shared with all my friends! Really easy and fast to make it! I didn’t have the rice vinegar or scallions, I used cilantro for a
Little color and I added black sesame seeds! I will make it again ! Thank you-
Yum! So glad it still worked without the vinegar! Thank you for the feedback!
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Claire is 3 for 3!!! This recipe is SO yummy. I used pad Thai noodles and added broccoli and a veggie slaw mix. SO yum. This will be a staple!
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Thank you Jamie!! Sounds so good with the veggies, thank you for the feedback 🙂
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My husband and I tried this tonight and it was so yummy! Very easy and quick to make with such great flavor. We served it with sliced grilled steak and I put a squeeze of lemon on top because I love lemon 🙂 This is a wonderful meal all on its own without anything as well! If you haven’t tried this one yet it is a MUST cook and will most definitely be in our meal plan from now on!
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Thank you so much for the feedback! That sounds delicious with the lemon on top, so glad you both enjoyed!
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