Soba (蕎麦) are thin noodles made from buckwheat. They are grey-brown in colour and firmer than they look. Together with udon, the thick, soft white noodles made from wheat, soba belong to the older half of Japan's noodle world. People here ate them for centuries before ramen came from China.
Hot or ice-cold
There are two ways to serve soba, and the season decides. In winter, soba comes hot in a bowl of dashi broth with soy sauce and mirin, a sweet rice wine for cooking. Sometimes tempura sits on top. In summer, soba comes cold. The cook rinses the noodles in ice water, drains them and lays them on a bamboo mat. A small cup of chilled dipping sauce sits beside them. You take a few strands, dip only the bottom half and eat. At the end, the cook may bring you sobayu, the starchy water from boiling the noodles. You pour it into the leftover sauce and drink it as a broth.
Slurping, and the noodle at midnight
With soba, slurping is not rude but expected. The air cools the noodles, and cooks say it also carries the aroma. Buckwheat has almost no gluten, so the dough barely holds together. A soba maker either works fast with a dough that is mostly buckwheat, or adds wheat flour for strength. Every maker is proud of their own ratio. One soba custom has a fixed place in the calendar. On New Year's Eve, families eat toshikoshi soba, "year-crossing soba." A long, thin noodle is easy to bite through, and in the same way, the old year should end with a clean cut.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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饂飩 (udon): the thick, soft wheat noodle that shares menus with soba. It has a milder taste and a chewier texture.
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年越し蕎麦 (toshikoshi soba): the bowl of soba people eat late on New Year's Eve. It cuts off the old year cleanly, so its troubles do not drag into the new one.