Yesterday, I followed this recipe for Chicken Yakisoba noodles.

I cooked my noodles on a medium high heat for 6 minutes as the packet said. I put them in the pan with the chicken and veg, then adding the sauce and thoroughly tossing it to cover with sauce.

The resulting meal was... Bland as fuck. It felt like the noodles didnt hang on to the sauce at all somehow?

I have a yakisoba pot noodle, and that comes out with such a strong a punchy flavor! I'm using fine egg noodles.

This is why I rarely try noodle recipes, I seem to fuck them all up! I sometimes pull it off, which gives me hope, but I can never figure out where I go right!

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[–] 6 points 17 hours ago

I can't speak to your noodles in a broad sense but one thing I notice with the recipe you linked is it looks like they're doing a proper wok stir fry. Wok cooking is usually at much higher temps than regular stoves reach, and gets much smokier which adds a fair bit of flavour. You can get most of the way there with a regular pan but it's not as easy.

That means your cook times in just a flat bottom pan on a regular stove are going to be different, you can't just time it you'll have to actually look for the signs things are at the right stage. You'll need to cook the sauce down more to get it thick enough to coat the noodles, you'll need to make sure the chicken is properly caramelized, and you might need to cook the veg longer before adding the chicken back.

After the initial stir fry I'd cook the chicken and veg in the sauce some (kind of braising them) before adding the noodles to help it reduce and cling. This might overly soften the veggies so you'll have to play around with timings, or take the veggies out, reduce the sauce some, then add everything. Personally I'm too lazy for that, lol.

I guess a broad comment would be just make sure you learn to look for the signs of when to move on to the next stage of a recipe, don't just time things.

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