Easy Soba Noodle Bowl

This soba noodle bowl is a quick and easy dinner recipe, perfect for weeknights! It’s a filling vegetarian meal full of healthy veggies.

No one’s going to complain about more quick and easy recipes, right? This one the ultimate quick weeknight meal, a filling vegetarian dinner that comes together in 20 minutes flat. Meet this soba noodle bowl! It’s filled with stir fried broccoli, red pepper and onion, mix with a savory sauce with creamy peanut butter. Even better: eggs are scrambled right into the mix (like fried rice, but with noodles!). This healthy stir fry comes to you straight from our friend Rachel’s cookbook Just the Good Stuff. And it’s chock full of good stuff.

An even faster soba recipe: Try these Quick Soba Noodles!

Why to make this soba noodle bowl

This soba noodle bowl is more like an easy stir fry than a free-form noodle bowl with lots of veggie toppings. This makes it quicker and easier to put together than the type of noodle bowl that has lots of components. Here are some of the reasons it’s a candidate for your go-to list:

• It takes 20 minutes. There’s no limit to the amount of easy dinner recipes you can have in your arsenal! The quick prep time makes it perfect for whipping up on a weeknight with limited ingredients.
• The 2 ingredient sauce brings big flavor. The sauce here couldn’t be easier: just coconut aminos or soy sauce plus nut butter! We used peanut butter, but you could use almond butter or cashew butter. (All 3 link to our homemade versions!)
• It’s a protein-filled vegetarian dinner. The best part of this recipe is the savory scrambled egg! It’s like the egg you’d scramble into fried rice, but with soba noodles. The egg plus nut butter makes for enough protein to make it a filling meal.

About the book: Just the Good Stuff

This soba noodle bowl is from Rachel Mansfield’s book Just the Good Stuff: a compilation of “guilt-free recipes to satisfy all your cravings.” Alex and I met Rachel speaking on a panel together at a conference, and she even more lovely in person than her Instagram self (if that’s possible!).

Like us, Rachel is passionate about eating real food and organic ingredients. The book is filled with gluten-free, Paleo-friendly recipes made with healthy ingredients: but you never feel like you’re giving anything up. If this recipe is any indication, this book is absolutely packed with flavor! (Note: it’s not vegetarian or vegan, but there are plenty of plant based options.)

Get it: Just the Good Stuff

Scale this soba noodle bowl as needed!

This soba noodle bowl can be made in any quantity. The original healthy noodle stir fry recipe is actually in the “Solo Meals” chapter of Just the Good Stuff: it was written as a recipe for one. But since we are most often cooking for 3 and all the recipes on this website are for 4, we increased the quantity. Plus, we love leftovers! We love cooking once and eating for a few days.

But if you’d rather: this makes a great single serving meal! Just divide the quantities by 4.

The skinny on soba noodles

What are soba noodles? Soba are thin Japanese buckwheat noodles. They’re often served in soups or chilled with a sauce: or in a noodle stir fry like this one! All buckwheat soba noodles are gluten-free, but some brands are made with wheat flour and buckwheat flour. Make sure to check the package if you eat gluten-free.

One note on soba noodle brands: Alex and I have found that every brand of soba is different! Some brands’ noodles are very thin and tend to break; we prefer soba brands that have a thicker noodle. Make sure to experiment a bit to find the soba you like.

Variations on this soba noodle bowl

While we love this soba noodle bowl as is, there are plenty of ways to mix it up! Here are some ideas on ways to accessorize it:

• Add shrimp. Cook up some garlic shrimp on the side and throw it on top!
• Add tofu. Try our easy marinaded tofu or tofu scramble. Tofu scrambles are perfect as a vegan protein for quick weeknight meals!
• Add more of your favorite veggies. Anything that would work in a stir fry works here: mushrooms, carrots, cabbage, snap peas, snow peas, zucchini, edamame, green onion, etc. For approximate cook times, go to Easy Vegetable Stir Fry.
• Use rice noodles, zucchini noodles or squash noodles. For gluten-free, try any of these three noodle varieties. You can also try Roasted Spaghetti Squash or Instant Pot Spaghetti Squash.
• For nut free, use sun butter. Sun butter is a good substitute for the nut butter.

This soba noodle bowl recipe is…

Vegetarian and gluten-free. For vegan, plant-based, and dairy-free, omit the egg.

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