Noodle Soup 101
A (probably overly comprehensive) guide into the world of noodle soups.
Online, whenever people ask “what are some dishes that’re absolutely not worth it to make at home”, the two most common answers seem to be (1) Vietnamese Pho and (2) Japanese Ramen. Logic being that there always feels this… slight absurdity… to toiling away for hours skimming an overnight beef stock, all while you could just purchase the same thing at a restaurant for like $12.
At the same time, instant noodles are probably one of the most enduring and popular quick “eh… fuck it” meals for home cooks – the world over. Given that, it seems most guides to soup noodles on the internet come in one of two flavors:
How to recreate the flavors of the much beloved noodle soups in Asia: either faithfully and obsessively, or hacking together something that hits most of the same notes
How to “level up” your instant noodles by adding various stuff to Top Ramen: adding vegetables, boiled eggs, etc etc
Nothing against either category of content – we’re big fans of both ends of the effort spectrum. But there does seem to be a bit of a “missing middle”, right? And that how a homecooks (in China or elsewhere) might actually approach making an actual noodle soup at home, without turning to the instant ramen packet.
Noodle Soups: A General Framework
Any noodle soup I can think of could be categorized into one of two general cooking methods:
1. The Assembly Method
Approach: Add various seasoning to a bowl. Add pre-cooked noodles to the bowl. Ladle over stock. Spoon over various toppings and/or serve alongside at the table.
If I asked you to think of a noodle soup in your mind’s eye, it’s probable that it follows this general idea. It’s by far the dominant approach in noodle shops and such, as the mise is exactly the type of thing that restaurants excel at – you can make a big batch of each component, keep it on the side during service, and whipping everything together in a flash as soon as a customer orders. Off the top of my head, noodle soups that follow this approach are (links in case you feel like going down a rabbit hole):
Suzhou Big Meat Noodles (大肉面)
Sichuan Braised Beef Noodle Soup (红烧牛肉面)
Cantonese Wontonmein (云吞面) (old recipe of ours, the noodles need adjustment)
Lanzhou Beef Noodle Soup (兰州牛肉面) (recipe via ChinaSichuanFood)
Liuzhou Snail Noodle Soup (螺蛳粉) (recipe in Chinese)
Thai Khao Soi (recipe in Thai with English ingredient list)
Thai Tom Yum Noodles (recipe in Thai with English ingredient list)
Vietnamese Pho Bo (not a recipe – in Vietnamese, visual of a Pho shop in Vietnam)
Tonkotsu Ramen (not a recipe – in Japanese with English subtitles, visual of a Ramen shop in Japan)
And so on, and so on. The nice thing about this approach is - especially if you’re a vendor - you can afford to really amp up the complexity. Whether it’s on the soup front or on the topping front, you can make these intricate and fantastically delicious components because, hey, they’re going to be going into hundreds of soup bowls.
There are other, more homecooking-friendly ways that you can apply the assembly method, and we’ll get to that in just a sec. But if do you ever find yourself with the ambition of making any of the above soups just like the restaurants do, a quick word of advice: purchase yourself a chest freezer first.
I’m only half kidding. Making one bowl of Pho Bo doesn’t pass any sort of rational cost/benefit analysis. Dozens of bowls, however, are a lot more compelling. Given that you’re probably not going to be feeding your whole apartment block, the way the whole project makes sense is by batch-prepping the way homecooks batch prep, and that’s by making liberal use the freezer.
Like, for reference, this is our Sichuan Braise Beef Noodle Soup recipe. If you actually wanted to take this dish and make it part of your life, the way to do is would be to scale everything up as much as humanly possible in your kitchen, then freeze. I’d probably portion out the braised beef into little plastic baggy-sized portions, tying it up with a rubber band like so. Similar thought process for the soup, albeit in little bottles (reducing by half can help with storage).
And like, you can do this. If you love cooking and are completely in love with any of one of these soups, it can absolutely be totally worth it.
But there’s also another method, one that – in practice – often ends up a little more relevant I think for the average home cook, and that’s the…
2. The Direct Cooking Method.
Approach: Make a quick <30 min soup by boiling flavorful stuff together – stock being an optional component. Often, noodles are added to the soup and cook simultaneously.
The fundamental idea here is that you’re going to be making the soup quickly, so often you’ll find yourself leaning on other flavorful and/or umami rich ingredients to be giving the soup the requisite complexity. Examples of this approach:
Cantonese Macaroni Soup (火腿通粉)
Tomato and Egg Noodles (番茄炒蛋面) (recipe via the fantastic Wang Gang)
Northern Thai Nam Ngiao (recipe in Thai, but the linked channel is great for Northern Thai stuff)
Northern Chinese Qiangguomian (炝锅面) (recipe below)
This approach, I think, fits the general mise of a home kitchen much better. Because what you’re doing is simply making a dish – albeit a soupy and flavorful one – and completing the meal by adding noodles. If you take a peek at how noodle soups are usually served in home kitchens in the north of China (where homemade noodles are a staple), this is usually what people do.
Before we get into some homestyle approaches however, there’s definitely an important question we should get out of the way at first:
To stock, or not to stock?
For a lot of people, I feel like one of the biggest pain points in many noodle soup recipes is the calling for of stock.
In many western cooking traditions, stock is foundational element in the cuisine. It’s equally commonplace in restaurant pan sauces and homemade gumbo. It’s one of the first things you learn how to make, countless hacks are available online to simplify the process with a slow or pressure cooker… and for those that can’t be bothered, supermarkets have practically an entire aisle of boxed stocks to choose from.
This is not the same in Chinese cooking. Stock is a foundational element in restaurant cooking, sure, but significantly less so in home kitchens. Box stock exists for the home cook, but is usually limited to one or two varieties (Knorr being the most common), and is not available at every grocer. That’s not to say that Chinese families don’t make soup, of course – in Guangdong at least, soup making (煲汤) is practically a Cantonese cultural institution – but these soups are usually distinct dishes in themselves, no intermediary products to go into a dish. In short, that weekend ritual of making big batches of chicken stock and freezing is not something that you’d usually see Chinese families traditionally do.
If I had to guess a reason, I’d imagine it’s likely because most Chinese cuisines tend to lean on fermented or dried ingredients instead. After all, an eight hour chicken stock is a lot less imperative for depth when you have a three year soy sauce at your disposal.
Of course, stock is certainly used quite a bit (practically always) in noodle shops! If you have the habit of making chicken stock anyway for western food, it’s easy to alter it so that it becomes equally applicable to Chinese cooking as well. Simply (1) do not roast your chicken pieces and (2) do not add herbs and aromatics, i.e. skip the thyme and parsley (Chinese stocks will usually only contain ginger and scallion).
If you would like to make a basic Chinese stock, that’s also easy enough as well.
How to Make a simple Chinese stock.
Ingredients:
Pork bones, 1kg. Ideally with a bit of meat still attached. You can also use chicken carcass, or a combination of chicken and pork.
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ~1 tbsp
Water, 5L
Ginger, ~2 inches. Smashed.
Scallion, ~30g. Tied in a knot.
Fill a small pot with water and add in the tablespoon of Shaoxing. Bring to a boil, then blanch the bones for ~3 minutes. Strain, briefly rinse under running water.
In a large pot, add in the water, the blanched bones, and the ginger and scallion. Bring up to a boil, skimming any scum as you do. Once boiling, swap the flame to low and give the thing one final skim. Cover (with the lid ajar if you’re using something with a heavy lid – e.g. a cast iron dutch oven), simmer for at least 3 hours and up to 8.
Strain, and store as you would store stock.
So then, what would a Chinese home cook use instead of stock?
This is an easy question to answer, and that’s Bouillon Powder.
In isolation, of course, bouillon powder plus water is far from a stock replacement. But when you use chicken bouillon powder in conjunction with dried, fermented, or other flavorful ingredients, it tends to do the job. For ideas for how it can be used to make a soup base, check out the section on “how to switch up the soup base” below.
For reference, we usually use Knorr chicken powder, this bottle. This brand is also solid, ditto with Lee Kum Kee.
The Direct Cooking Method: How to Execute at Home
Right, with that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks and teach you the direct cooking method. The dish we’ll be showing this with is a classic from the north of China, Qiangguomian (炝锅面).
Ingredients:
Pork, 70g
Marinade for the Pork:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
White pepper, 1/8 tsp
Napa cabbage (娃娃菜), 70g
Fresh shiitake mushroom (鲜香菇), 30g
Spices to Infuse the oil:
Star anise (八角), 1 small pieces
Sichuan peppercorn (花椒), 1/4 tsp
Dry chili (干辣椒), 2 small chilis
Aromatics:
Ginger (姜), half inch. Minced.
Garlic (大蒜), 2 cloves. Minced.
Scallion (小葱), 2 sprigs. White and green part separated. Whites minced, greens sliced.
Liaojiu a.k.a Shaoxing wine (料酒), 1/2 tbsp
Soy sauce (生抽), 1/2 tbsp
Dried noodles (干面条), 100g -or- (preferably) fresh noodles, 160g
Water, 3 cups
Five spice powder (五香粉), 1/4 tsp
Seasoning:
Salt, 1/4 tsp
Chicken bouillon (鸡粉), 1/4 tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp
Toasted sesame oil (香油/麻油), 1/2 tsp
Optional: Dark Chinese vinegar (香醋 or 陈醋), 1/2 tsp
Cut the napa cabbage, shiitake mushroom, and pork into thin slivers. Mix the pork with its marinade.
In a wok with ~1.5 tbsp oil, fry the star anise and Sichuan peppercorn over a low until the latter just barely begin to deepen in color, ~1 minute. Add the chilis, and continue to fry until the chilis deepen in color as well, ~1 minute more. Remove the spices, reserving the oil.
Swap the flame to medium. Add in the pork and fry until it begins to lose its color, ~30 seconds, then add in the garlic, ginger, and scallion white. Once fragrant, ~30 seconds, add in the shiitake mushroom and fry for another 30 seconds. Add in the napa. Quick mix, then swirl the Shaoxing wine over the spatula and around the side of the wok. Quickly mix, then do the same move with the soy sauce. Continue to fry until the napa’s softened, ~30 seconds, then add in the water together with the five spice powder. Swap the flame to high, bring to a rapid boil.
Add in the noodles, cook until done. Add in the seasoning and the sesame oil, transfer to a large bowl. Sprinkle over the scallion greens.
Serve at the table together with the dark Chinese vinegar. Eat immediately.
The Assembly Method: How to Execute at Home
Ok, so circling back to that original often-infamously-difficult ‘assembly method’, within the category there are certain soups that’re more applicable to an average weeknight than others, I think. Especially in the Jiangnan region (i.e. around Shanghai), you do see homecooks follow this sort of approach: Steph used to go up to Nanjing to visit friends quite a bit, and in their home at least, assembling quick noodle soups was basically a staple. They used the assembly method, but kept things easy by
Simplifying the soup base around hot water and seasoning
Leaning on a Jiaotou
So… right. This word – Jiaotou (浇头) – simply means ‘toppings laded over’ (bad translation mine), and in the end can really refer to almost anything cooked that you toss on a soup. Like, a fried egg is also a jiaotou. But often, a flavorful jiaotou can be used to really end up forging the final flavor of the soup.
Let’s take a look at that Sichuan braised beef soup again. Unlike something like, say, Wontonmein… if you really drill down into that recipe, the stock itself is squarely in a supporting role – I’d even go as far as to say that it’s optional. The reason being that that beef braising liquid? Can do a hell of a job flavoring things in its own right.
So if you wanted to execute that same recipe with a fraction of the pain, you could do something a bit like this:
Make a big batch of the Sichuan braised beef
Season a bowl according to the recipe, adding some chicken bouillon powder in the mix (say, ¼ tsp?)
Use hot, boiled water from the kettle instead of stock
Boil some dried noodles according to the package, then add them into the bowl
Simple, you could probably even do it drunk.
And if you want to make things even easier? No need to make a braise – a saucy stir fry could equally do the trick. Let’s take a look at an example:
The Assembly Method at Home: Jiangnan Xuecai Pork Sliver Jiaotou with a Hongtang Soup Base
Ingredients:
Xuecai pickled cabbage (雪菜) -or- Sichuanese Yacai (碎米芽菜), 30g
Pork, 70g
Marinade for pork:
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Sugar, 1/8 tsp
White pepper (胡椒粉), 1/8 tsp
Soy sauce (生抽), 1/4 tsp
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1/4 tsp
Cornstarch (生粉), 1 tsp
Water, 2 tbsp
Oil, 1 tsp
Sugar, 1/4 tsp. To season the xuecai when stir frying.
Ginger (姜), 1/2 inch
Scallion (葱), 2 sprigs
Liaojiu, aka Shaoxing wine (料酒), 1/2 tbsp
Soy sauce (生抽/酱油), 1/2 tbsp
Water, 3 tbsp
Slurry of cornstarch (生粉), 1/2 tsp mixed with water, ½ tbsp
Dry noodle (干面条), 100g -or- fresh noodles, 160g
For the soup base:
Hot, boiled water -or- stock, 2 cups
Soy sauce (生抽), ½ tbsp
Lard, ½ tsp
Sugar, ½ tsp
Salt, ¼ tsp
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp
In a small bowl, soak the xuecai for five minutes, then strain, squeeze and set aside.
Cut the pork into slivers and mix with the marinade.
To a wok, over a high flame heat up ¼ cup of oil until slight whisps of smoke are coming from the wok, about 185 Celsius. Add the marinated pork. Shallow fry for roughly one minute, until they’re cooked through and changed color. Remove and reserve.
Remove most of the oil from the wok, leaving in about one tablespoon. Flame on medium low, slowly fry the Xuecai until fragrant and appears ever so slightly dryer, about 2-3 minutes. Sprinkle in the sugar to season it. Add the ginger and scallion whites, fry until fragrant, ~30 seconds. Swap the flame to high. Add back in the pork, then swirl in the half tablespoon Shaoxing. Mix, and do the same move with the soy sauce. Pour in the three tablespoons water and let it come to a boil. Drizzle in the cornstarch slurry, then remove once thickened. Reserve.
Boil the noodles according to their package, or until done. Strain and reserve.
Mix together the ingredients for the soup base. Nestle the noodles in, and the stir fry on top. Sprinkle over some sliced scallion greens.
How to switch up the soup base
That was one homestyle soup base, but the Jiangnan region, often soups come in one of two flavors: (1) Hongtang (红汤), ‘red’ soup, and (2) Baitang (白糖), white soup. Like, if you’re at a noodle soup, you can often choose whether you’d like your soup red (i.e. with soy sauce) or white (without).
One day, we’ll go over all the bases exactly like you’d find them at the noodle shops. But in the meantime, for your reference, here’s a couple equally-easy soup bases if you’re in the mood for a little more diversity:
Red Soup Bowl:
Hot, boiled water -or- stock, 2 cups.
Soy sauce (生抽), ½ tbsp
Lard -or- toasted sesame oil (麻油), ½ tsp
Sugar, ½ tsp
Salt, ¼ tsp
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/8 tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp (note: usually home cooks in China will use chicken bouillon powder more than MSG – feel free to simply double up on the bouillon powder instead if you prefer)
If using stock, first heat it up. Mix everything in the bowl.
White Soup Bowl:
Definitely note that white soup bowls are usually defined by their stock base. Still, I think it’s possible to adjust it to water base, with a tweak or two.
Stock, preferably, or boiled water, 2 cups
If using water: abalone sauce concentrate (鲍鱼汁) -or- fish sauce (鱼露), 1 tsp. These would not be traditional elements in a white soup, but would provide the requisite depth, we feel.
Chicken Bouillon Powder (鸡粉), ¼ tsp
Salt, ¼ tsp
Sugar, ¼ tsp
If using stock, first heat it up. Mix everything in the bowl.
Spicy Soup Bowl:
While not really a named ‘thing’ per se, for a Sichuan-inspired spicy bowl you could do something a bit like the following:
Hot, boiled water -or- stock, 2 cups.
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp
Sichuan pepper powder (花椒面), ½ tsp
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), ¼ tsp
Salt, ¼ tsp
Sugar, ¼ tsp
MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp
Lao Gan Ma chili crisp (老干妈香辣脆油辣椒), 1 tbsp
If using stock, first heat it up. Mix everything in the bowl except the Lao Gan Ma chili crisp. Top the soup with the Lao Gan Ma chili crisp together with your toppings of choice.
How to get creative?
Sometimes in posts like these, it’s a little too easy to send people on their way by blithely saying “well, you can add whatever you want to your soup”. It’s true, of course, but not exactly… helpful. A little like instructing people on ‘how to sandwich’ by instructing “add what you enjoy between two slices of bread”, those culturally new to the sport might not have the background to know where to begin.
So if you’re stuck, try this: take your favorite stir fry, and soupify.
For example, one of the most popular dishes on our discord is Sichuanese Beef with celery. Want to turn it into a noodle soup? Easy. Make the stir fry, add hot water or stock. Bring to a boil. Add in the noodles, cook, then season.
Or alternatively, you could use the same stir fry as a jiaotou. If going this route, a nice idea might be to add a little bit of water (say, two tablespoons) and thicken with a slurry like the above pork with Xuecai (say, ½ tsp cornstarch mixed with ½ tbsp water). This will help the jiaotou hold up in the soup, but in a pinch you could also forget I said anything.
Ditto with braises. One of our all time favorite braised dishes is Guizhou Pickled Greens and Beans (酸菜豆米). Want it in noodle soup form? Just add a little water and cook some noodles in it, or slightly thicken with a slurry and add it as a jiaotou.
For bonus points you might want things to adhere to the ‘shape rule’. Perhaps if we were using a base of stewed beans, swapping the noodles for Macaroni might be nice, or even turning to shapes like Cat Ear or Noodle Sheets if you’re up for a simple fresh noodle project. Or maybe with that celery and beef stir fry, you could cut the beef and celery into slivers instead of a mince.
Still, it’s hard to imagine any stir fry or braised dish that couldn’t hold up to noodle soupification. The only ones I could think of that might not be super phenomenal out of the tin might be sweet and sour stuff, or maybe sweeter braises like Red Braised Pork (though this one could and does absolutely work in smaller quantities as a jiaotou).
So let’s try to give some basic formulas here, first for how to stir-fry-then-soupify, then for how to jiaotou-ify.
Formula: How to Stir Fry then Soupify 101
Ingredients:
One stir fry that contains roughly 250-300g of ingredients
Water or stock, 3 cups
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), ½ tsp. If not using stock.
Noodles: 100g dried, ~160g fresh
Seasoning to taste (you may need to add an additional ~¼ tsp salt)
Take your favorite stir fry. Follow the recipe up to the point where you’d add in the final seasoning. Skip the starch slurry, if the stir fry contains one.
Add in three cups of water (hot, boiled water if you’d like a milkier end result) together with a ½ tsp of chicken bouillon powder. Alternatively, add in a Chinese pork stock (or a plain western-style chicken stock). Bring to a boil.
Add in 100 grams of dried noodles, or about 160 grams of fresh. Cook until done.
Check the seasoning, you may need to add a little more salt (try a ¼ tsp at first).
Formula: How to Jiaotou-ify 101
Ingredients:
One stir fry that contains roughly 250-300g of ingredients
An extra 3 tbsp water
An extra 1/2 tsp cornstarch
One of the three soup bases that we introduced in the “how to switch up the base” section – red, white, or spicy.
Noodles: 100g dried, ~160g fresh
Take your favorite stir fry. Follow the recipe up to the point where you’d add in the final seasoning and/or slurry.
Add an additional three tablespoons of water and bring to a boil. Add an additional ½ tsp cornstarch to your slurry (or make a slurry with a ½ tsp cornstarch if you recipe does not contain one). Thicken, season, and reserve.
Cook the noodles until done. Strain.
Make your soup base, nestle the noodles in.
Noodle Soupification 201
Ok, that was a start. Let’s think of a few more variables:
Soupification 201: Considerations when Stir Frying then Noodle-Soupifing
The above will make you a perfectly delicious soup, but let’s up the complexity a hair and back to that Beef and Celery stir fry. To refresh our memory, this was the ingredient list:
Celery (western 西芹 or Chinese 香芹), 220g
Beef loin (牛里脊), 150g, minced
Marinade for the beef:
Dark soy sauce (老抽), 1/4 tsp
Liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tsp
Salt, 1/8 tsp
Cornstarch (生粉), 1/2 tsp
Sichuan chili broad bean paste, i.e. Pixiandoubanjiang (郫县红油豆瓣酱), 1 tbsp or 15g
Aromatics:
Ginger (姜), half inch or 5g, minced
Garlic (大蒜), 3-4 big cloves or 10g, minced
Sauce for finishing the stir fry:
Soy sauce (生抽/酱油), 1/2 tbsp
MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp
Cornstarch (生粉), 1 tsp
Water, 2 tbsp
If we were going to jiaotou-ify this, it’d be easy enough, basically ready out of the tin – just add more water and up the slurry quantity. But for the stir-fry-then-soupify approach, I think we can make some adjustments to make it even more delicious. Some ideas:
What I would do would be alter things so that they match the shape rule: cutting the beef into thin slivers instead, and the Chinese celery into ~1 inch sections.
Because we’ll be using meat as the base of a soup, you don’t necessarily need (or want) to go all that heavy on the marinade – I would cut out everything except the salt.
If you boil Chinese celery for as long as the stir-fry-then-soupify approach tends to demand, it’s going to get overcooked. I would take a small portion of the Chinese celery (say, 20g), mince that, and fry it with the garlic and the ginger as an aromatic. The remainder of the celery would be added in near the end of cooking.
A nice idea when stir frying the beef is to remove about 2/3 of the beef once it’s done stir frying, and adding that back in at the same time as the celery. This way part of the beef can flavor the soup, part of the beef can maintain a nice texture.
The slurry can be cut out.
I would likely swirl in some wine for a little more complexity, and add in the soy sauce when stir frying in a similar way.
Stick woks (or pots, dealer’s choice) can be nice for this sort of application.
A move that I personally like doing is cooking the noodles separately ~80% of the way (al dente) and then adding them right at the end of cooking. I feel I can control the consistency of the soup – and the final doneness of the noodles – a little bit better this way.
To put this all together, my new noodle soupified process might look something a bit like this:
Slice beef into 3mm slivers. Mix with 1/8 tsp salt and set aside
Mince the garlic, the ginger, and 20g of the celery. Cut the remainder of the celery into ~1 inch sections. Finely mince the chili bean paste.
Cook noodles until 80% done, or al dente.
Fry the beef in ~2 tbsp oil over a high flame. Scooch the beef to the side of the wok and remove two thirds of it, and add another tbsp of oil. Add in the chili bean paste and slowly fry out the red oil over a low flame. Add in the minced aromatics, fry until fragrant. Swirl in a half tbsp Shaoxing wine. Mix everything together, swirl in the half tablespoon soy sauce. Add in 3 cups of water together with a ½ tsp of chicken bouillon powder and bring everything to a rapid boil.
Season the soup to taste. You might want more salt or soy sauce.
Add in the noodles and mix, then add the reserved beef and celery and boil for ~30 seconds. Finish with MSG and an optional bit of chili oil.
Soupification 201: Using Rice Noodles/Other Starch Noodles
In this post, we focused quite a bit on noodles – like… noodle-noodles, made from wheat. For pretty much anything we discussed though, rice noodles would also be equally delicious.
If you’re using fresh rice noodles, the noodles do not need to be cooked – simply ladling hot soup over is enough. I would imagine that most people based in the west would be working from dried noodles however, and for these you’ll need to soak them (preferably) and cook them.
The soaking and cooking time can change drastically depending on the specific variety of rice noodles you are using. For example:
Very thin Rice Noodles, e.g. many of the Cantonese, Taiwanese, or Hokkein styles (stuff like this, or 排米粉, 新竹米粉, 江门米粉, 肇庆米粉). Soak in hot water until it cools down and softens. Cook in soup or separately in boiling water for 1-2 minutes.
Flat rice noodles, e.g. Pho, Pad Thai, or Hor fun noodles (stuff like this). Soak in hot water until pliable. Cook in soup or separately in boiling water for 1-2 minutes.
Medium thick rice noodles: e.g. some of the Jiangxi or Hunan styles (stuff like this, or 江西细米粉, 温州粉干, etc). Soak in hot water until pliable. Cook in soup or separately in boiling water for 3-5 minutes. Make sure that there are no hard white bits at the center.
Thick rice noodles: E.g. many of the Guangxi or Yunnan style, some of the Jiangxi style (stuff like this, 桂林米粉, 江西米粉, 过桥米线, etc). Soak in hot water until pliable. Cook in soup or separately in boiling water for 6-8 minutes. Make sure that there are no hard white bits at the center.
And then there are of course noodles that are made from starches besides wheat or rice:
Glass noodles (粉丝). Made from mungbean or pea, generally - this stuff. These are very thin and cook very quickly. Soak then in cool water for 10 minutes and cook for 30 seconds.
Flat mung bean, potato, or sweet potato noodles (e.g. something like this, or 苕粉, 宽粉, or 火锅宽粉). These are thicker, so soak in hot water until pliable, then cook for 5 minutes.
Round Sweet potato noodles (i.e. something like this, 红薯粉, 红薯粉条, etc. These need less cooking that than their flat sliblings. Soak in hot water until pliable, then cook for 3-4 minutes.
Soba/buckwheat noodles (荞麦面, this stuff). Buckwheat noodles can be cooked the same as dried noodles.
Soupification 201: Using Tasty/Umami Vegetables in the base when using the Direct Cooking Method
As a general statement, when noodle soupifying a stir fry… you’d probably want to add vegetables in at the end of cooking so they don’t get overcooked. Or with a lot of greens (baby bok choy, etc), it might even be a nice idea to separately blanch and nestle them on as a topping.
That said, there are certain vegetables that can be added early in the process to help add complexity to the soup. These are often the sweeter, more umami vegetables – off the top of my head, stuff like:
Napa cabbage
Mushrooms
Luffa Gourd
Kelp
Carrot
Bamboo shoots
Soybean sprouts (note: not Mungbean sprouts – the common ‘beansprout’ – those would be added at the end)
Far from a complete list, but if your stir fry uses any of the above ingredients (or you think it would be a tasty inclusion!), definitely add them in before the liquid.
Soupification 201: Using Fried Egg or Fish to Make a Soup Base when using the Direct Cooking Method
This is one of my all time favorite techniques. Basically, what you can do is take fried eggs, or pan/shallow fried fish and add hot, boiled water to it. You then bring it to a rapid boil and cook it covered for 8-10 minutes. This will yield you a rich, milky soup base.
A good example is Hengyang Fish Rice Noodle Soup, which’s a fantastically easy soup to whip up (and super underrated in the grand scheme of things). Unfortunately I’m not finding a ton of stuff in English that uses fried eggs as a base (we’ll have to cover this soon), but this video is a solid visual.
Similar things can be done with century egg as well – here we have a recipe for Cantonese Napa and Century Egg Soup that would lend itself quite well to noodle soupification (I might enjoy it with rice noodles, I think).