Easy Japanese Cold Noodle Salad

This Easy Japanese Cold Noodle salad is a nice change up from the typical summer salad and is the ideal light meal. Made with fresh vegetables, it's healthy, easy to make, and even uses up leftover ham. However, it's not your traditional Japanese Cold Noodle Salad (Hiyashi Chuka), it's a North American Chef's salad version of cold noodle salad.

This Japanese noodle salad is especially popular in the summer and ideal for summer picnics, although it's a great meal any time of the year. It's also dairy-free, light, and WW friendly, yet a hearty meal on its own. And it pairs well with my Everything Bagel Cloud Bread Recipe.

🥘Ingredient Notes

Unlike many versions of this salad, this one has no peanut butter. For this recipe, you'll need:

• Instant ramen noodles. I use the dry noodles from the packages of instant ramen soup and discard the seasoning
• Ham. You will need to use cooked ham- I use fat-free ham
• Shredded lettuce. I use green leaf lettuce or romaine lettuce
• Black sesame seeds. Black Sesame Seeds tend to have a higher nutritional value than white sesame seeds offering more antioxidants, calcium, and beneficial oils. They are also have a nuttier flavor and are a nice contrast to the other colors in this salad!

📖Variations & Substitutions

• Sesame seeds - you can use regular white sesame seeds if you can't find black sesame seeds in your local grocery stores. However, you can generally find black sesame seeds at Asian or Japanese grocery stores such as T&T and A-Mart.
• Sesame seed oil - you can substitute regular oil (canola or olive oil) and add regular sesame seeds
• Noodles - you can use a different type of noodles for this recipe, depending on your preference or what you have on hand, Soba noodles or Udon noodles, instead of ramen noodles, or use fresh ramen noodles instead of dry
• Add-ins - bean sprouts, snap peas, red cabbage, or shredded carrots
• Spicy - add a drizzle of chili oil or red pepper flakes
• Lettuce - you can use leaf lettuce, romaine, iceberg lettuce, or butter lettuce
• Lunch on the go - Pack it in a mason jar and take it for lunch

🔪How to Make Japanese Noodle Salad

Prep: Cut ham and red pepper into thin strips, chop lettuce and green onion, and grate cucumber lengthwise through the large holes on a box grater.

Dressing: In a small saucepan, bring chicken broth/stock, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, and ginger to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Strain through a sieve into a small bowl, then refrigerate the liquid until cool. Discard remnants in a sieve.

In a large pot of water, boil noodles until tender and firm. Drain and chill under cold running water.

Add noodles to a large bowl and toss with sesame oil

Hard boil the eggs, then cool in cold water, peel and slice. *I recommend using an egg slicer (see equipment).

🎥 VIDEO

Video: How to cook hard-boiled eggs

Arrange cold noodles on plates, top with ham, lettuce, cucumber, red pepper, and sprinkle with green onion. Add sliced hard-boiled eggs (you can do this on a platter or on individual plates or both).

Sprinkle with black sesame seeds.

Add dressing to your liking. You can pour it all on the whole salad or add to individual portions.

🥗 Desserts to Serve with Cold Noodle Salad

If you want to keep it lighter try this Glazed Fruit pizza (shown) or my Raspberry Chocolate Dulce de Leche Icebox cake. For a quick and easy dessert, I recommend this Mixed Berry Crumble. And if you're looking for a cold dairy-free dessert, try this Orange Creamsicle Pie!

🌡️Storage

You can make this noodle salad in advance and put it together just prior to serving. Store the veggies, ham, noodles, eggs, and dressing all in separate containers. Leftovers will keep for up to 2 days (due to the eggs' shelf life) in an airtight container.

This recipe will not stand up to freezing.

👪 Serving Size

This cold noodle salad recipe makes 6 servings. However, you can half, double, or triple the recipe by clicking on the serving number and selecting the number of servings you'd like. The ingredient quantities will automatically adjust.

🔢WW Points

This easy recipe is Weight Watchers friendly @7 points using regular ramen noodles and fat-free ham. The nutrition calculator on this blog only accounts for regular ham, so although it shows 20 grams of fat in this recipe, that would not be the case using fat-free ham.

❔ Recipe FAQ's