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The 50+ Best Noodles: #5 Carbonara, #4 Japchae, #3 Lasagna, #2 Bolognese, #1 Soba (2 Viewers)

Eephus said:
#3 Lasagna
Origin: Italy

The wide,flat sheets of pasta used for lasagna are among the oldest noodles in recorded history. A Roman dish known as lasanum dates back to the time of Christ. There are numerous references to layered pasta baked en casserole from late medieval and early renaissance times but the lasagna that’s recognizable today didn’t appear until the tomato arrived from the Americas.

There are many ways to cook lasagna but the prep I’m going to talk about is the common version with pasta layered with a red sauce, a white sauce made from either ricotta cheese or a bechamel and a topping of more cheese. Magic happens in the oven as the cheeses melt and flavors meld while in the oven.

I honestly prefer a good homemade lasagna. I’m usually disappointed by restaurant versions, partially because of unreasonably high expectations going in but also because the lasagna has probably been sitting parbaked in a sheet pan since before the restaurant opened.
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zoonation said:
Eephus said:
#56 - Chef Boyardee Canned Pasta
Origin: A Can

Gummy noodles in a bland tomato sauce. Beefaroni is probably the best of the varieties because of a better pasta to sauce ratio but it's been a while since I've "enjoyed" pasta from a can. If I have to eat an entree hobo style, I'll opt for canned chili, pork and beans or beef stew over Chef Boyardee every time.
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I mean nobody wants to admit they ate 9 cans of ravioli, but I did and I'm ashamed of myself. The first can doesn't count and then you get to the second, and the third. The fourth and fifth I think I burned with the blowtorch and I just kept eating.​

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In my younger days, I would eat Boyardee cold straight out of the can.
 
I'm fine if you want to combine bolognese and other ragus, but Spaghetti with Meatballs deserves to be its own dish. I feel I've chased the perfect meatball recipe for longer than any other cooking quest. From trying to amp up the funkiness by using buttermilk, grass fed beef, and pecorino to doing the food lab thing and incorporating little cubes of gelatinized stock into the meatballs, to doing the "authentic" Italian thing and making tiny meatballs so you get a little meatball with every bite.
 
Eephus said:
#2 Pasta alla Bolognese
Origin: Bologna

Pasta alla Bolognese is the classic recipe that incorporates slow cooked meat and sauteed aromatics in a tomato-based sauce. @Scoresman and others will probably object to me lumping a traditional ragu of pork, beef or lamb with the tomato-heavy meat sauce that’s an American standard. I understand that argument because a true Bolognese is a wonderful thing that combines the richness of the meat, the fragrant notes of the soffritto and the acidity of the tomatoes in perfect harmony. But I’ve made similarly sweeping generalizations with other lower ranked noodles and it’s hard to be outraged when it’s still highly ranked.

You might think the typical Ital-American red sauce is the big beneficiary of combining it with a Bolognese but it’s deserving in its own right. There are differences from Bolognese in the consistency of the meat, the blend of herbal seasonings and the ratio of tomatoes to meat, but spaghetti in red sauce is wonderful comfort food that we’ve all enjoyed hundreds of times.
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Glad to see it here! But yeah Bolognese is different from “meat sauce”.

One of my pet peeves eating out are places that put bolognese on the menu but then it’s not bolognese.

Also places that serve it with spaghetti when that is the wrong noodle.

Good list. There are for sure some omissions but it would have to be a top 100 to include them all.

For example, I can think of many distinct kinds of lasagna, then there’s stuff like stuffed shells, regional sauces, even stuff like Sunday gravy. Those would probably all make my top 50.
 
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
I'm fine if you want to combine bolognese and other ragus, but Spaghetti with Meatballs deserves to be its own dish. I feel I've chased the perfect meatball recipe for longer than any other cooking quest. From trying to amp up the funkiness by using buttermilk, grass fed beef, and pecorino to doing the food lab thing and incorporating little cubes of gelatinized stock into the meatballs, to doing the "authentic" Italian thing and making tiny meatballs so you get a little meatball with every bite.
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Chaos34 said:
Scoresman said:
even stuff like Sunday gravy
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What puts this atop my list is the hunks of slow cooked pork. Meatballs and sausage slow cooked in red sauce are delicious, but something magic happens to those pieces of pork.
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I feel vindicated by the fact you guys are talking about the meat and not the noodles.

Sunday gravy sounds delicious though
 
Quattro Formaggi would have been top ten for me. Should be a rigatoni dish.

Maybe Cacciatore isn't considered a noodle dish, but with mom cooking for 8 it was. I see plenty of images of it topping pasta so. Also top ten for me. The emphasis on bell pepper and onion makes it fairly distinctive. Finishing with mushrooms makes a magic sauce. Chicken slow cooked in it falling apart and melting in your mouth. Maybe top 5 but I'm weak on Asian.

Japchae seems involved but doable at home. Going to the Asian grocer to get the ingredients in a few minutes. Any advice? Brands? Techniques?
 
While I pushed back a little on Arrabiatta, I would list Fra Diavolo somewhere. The difference is the seafood in Diavolo. Spicy shrimp is good.
 
Eephus said:
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
I'm fine if you want to combine bolognese and other ragus, but Spaghetti with Meatballs deserves to be its own dish. I feel I've chased the perfect meatball recipe for longer than any other cooking quest. From trying to amp up the funkiness by using buttermilk, grass fed beef, and pecorino to doing the food lab thing and incorporating little cubes of gelatinized stock into the meatballs, to doing the "authentic" Italian thing and making tiny meatballs so you get a little meatball with every bite.
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Chaos34 said:
Scoresman said:
even stuff like Sunday gravy
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What puts this atop my list is the hunks of slow cooked pork. Meatballs and sausage slow cooked in red sauce are delicious, but something magic happens to those pieces of pork.
Click to expand...

I feel vindicated by the fact you guys are talking about the meat and not the noodles.

Sunday gravy sounds delicious though
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@Sunday Gravy
 
Chaos34 said:
Quattro Formaggi would have been top ten for me. Should be a rigatoni dish.

Maybe Cacciatore isn't considered a noodle dish, but with mom cooking for 8 it was. I see plenty of images of it topping pasta so. Also top ten for me. The emphasis on bell pepper and onion makes it fairly distinctive. Finishing with mushrooms makes a magic sauce. Chicken slow cooked in it falling apart and melting in your mouth. Maybe top 5 but I'm weak on Asian.

Japchae seems involved but doable at home. Going to the Asian grocer to get the ingredients in a few minutes. Any advice? Brands? Techniques?
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Good catch on quattro formaggi. It's in the Alfredo/cacio e pepe family but different enough to be ranked.

Preparing Japchae is all about the organization. Have all the meat and veggies prepped before starting. You can cook the meat and vegetables sequentially in the same pan and transfer them to the serving bowl as you go. Everything comes together quickly once you get rolling. The pre-cut dangmyeon noodles are a rip off; they cost more and you get less. They're easier to work with in the pot but you can cut them after they're softened.
 
Eephus said:
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
I'm fine if you want to combine bolognese and other ragus, but Spaghetti with Meatballs deserves to be its own dish. I feel I've chased the perfect meatball recipe for longer than any other cooking quest. From trying to amp up the funkiness by using buttermilk, grass fed beef, and pecorino to doing the food lab thing and incorporating little cubes of gelatinized stock into the meatballs, to doing the "authentic" Italian thing and making tiny meatballs so you get a little meatball with every bite.
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Chaos34 said:
Scoresman said:
even stuff like Sunday gravy
Click to expand...

What puts this atop my list is the hunks of slow cooked pork. Meatballs and sausage slow cooked in red sauce are delicious, but something magic happens to those pieces of pork.
Click to expand...

I feel vindicated by the fact you guys are talking about the meat and not the noodles.

Sunday gravy sounds delicious though
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This is where I disagree on your assumptions. While yes we are talking about the meat a lot, papardelle bolognese and spaghetti and meatballs are clearly pasta dishes which makes them both noodle dishes.

I don’t look at a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and think that it is a meat dish.
 
Something cool has come from this topic for lonely old me. Yeah, I confess to getting lonely lately. Single, many friends and family have moved away, bigger house than needed kind of out of town a few miles into the desert. No pets atm. I've gone entire days without speaking.

This thread got me thinking how long it's been since I made the family Sunday gravy. So I made it last weekend for guests. Nice time. I invited them back this Sunday for my first crack at Japthae. All rsvp'd. The nephew's wife asked if she could return the favor and do the cooking some Sunday. My daughter said she wants to cook something for us too. So we're going to take turns. My only rule: It happens in my house. All agreed. The nephew has a couple high schoolers who will be joining us, and also lots of friends in town I don't know. Sounds like this could be expanding soon. I've been smiling about this for hours.

So thanks for being weird enough to write 8k words about great noodle dishes and a couple thousand about aberrations. Hat tip to Drunken Knight, Ramsey and Scoresman for bringing the culinary knowledge and playing along. Fun thread.
 
Eephus said:
#23 Cacio e pepe
Origin: Italy

In retrospect I probably should have combined Cacio e pepe with Alfredo but at least they’re pretty close in the rankings. Cacio e pepe is a peasant dish while the urban creation Alfredo is a little more refined. Traditional cacio e pepe consists just three ingredients: pasta, pecorino romano cheese and coarsely ground black pepper along with some pasta water. Romano comes from sheep’s milk and has a sharper taste than the parmesan used in an Alfredo. The other key difference between the two dishes is the addition of butter to the Alfredo which gives it a richer texture. I’m ignoring the black pepper as a differentiator because you can add it to fettuccine Alfredo.

Just like for Alfredo, American recipes for cacio e pepe often add cream. That’s OK; nobody gets hurt by that except maybe our arteries. The flavors of the romano and pepper are strong enough to shine through.
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Absolutely my favorite. So simple and so perfect. I ate that almost every night I was in Rome (I don’t eat meat so the other signature Roman pastas were out).
 
Did La Mian not make it or considered under something else? We have a local place that makes them fresh and then has various soups and stir frys
Love getting some of that Szechuan peppercorn in there for that numbing effect
 
Thanks @Eephus i learned a lot of good stuff from this thread and have some work to do.

One thing that occurred to me is that when I eat Italian style pasta noodles I always use a fork, sometimes with a spoon. For chicken noodle soup I’m probably using an American soup spoon. But when I eat Asian noodle soups I always use the classic deep Asian soup spoon with chopsticks. It feels pretentious but I keep all these implements at home and in my office. It’s just not right for me eating a ramen with a fork and western (shallow) spoon.
 
Doug B said:
the moops said:
Doug B said:
- Thai drunken noodles (too close to something else?)
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Close to pad see ew no?
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They have different names in Thai (drunken noodles = pad kee mao) and separate Wikipedia articles. But reading up on them, they’re close. Pad see ew is supposed to have a finishing char on the noodles, where drunken noodles remain “wet”. Might be more difference that that.
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I had Pad Kee Mao for lunch today, my absolute favorite. If they don't have it, I get Pad See Ew. Honestly, I'm not sure if I could tell them apart as they are both great.
 
This was totally fun... Thank you, Eeph!


I'm sure you gave the explanation along the way, but I keep finding myself confused with noodle dishes shifting from the actual noodle (soba) to the sauce (carbonara). I don't care, really- love seeing all of this- just sharing some confusion.
 
El Floppo said:
This was totally fun... Thank you, Eeph!


I'm sure you gave the explanation along the way, but I keep finding myself confused with noodle dishes shifting from the actual noodle (soba) to the sauce (carbonara). I don't care, really- love seeing all of this- just sharing some confusion.
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I had the same confusion along the way, but didn't post because I didn't want to seem like a jerkface.

Not saying that you seem like a jerkface. I'm just generally more of a jerkface than you are so didn't want to risk it.
 
krista4 said:
El Floppo said:
This was totally fun... Thank you, Eeph!


I'm sure you gave the explanation along the way, but I keep finding myself confused with noodle dishes shifting from the actual noodle (soba) to the sauce (carbonara). I don't care, really- love seeing all of this- just sharing some confusion.
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I had the same confusion along the way, but didn't post because I didn't want to seem like a jerkface.

Not saying that you seem like a jerkface. I'm just generally more of a jerkface than you are so didn't want to risk it.
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That's true. You are a tremendous jerk-face.

Which coincidentally fell just outside of the top 50 noodle dishes.
 
Chaos34 said:
my first crack at Japthae
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This went well. I made a small portion Saturday to learn what I was doing before cooking for company. For me, an Asian noodle noob, the most fun is just sharing the names of what I cooked up.

For starters everyone got a small yachaejeon and a fried mandu. Sangchu-geotjeori was served immediately. Then the japthae. Finished it off with homemade cinnamon mango ice cream. I couldn't find a Korean dessert that both sounded good and wasn't too complicated. I used Maangchi for all my dishes. Her recipes were the easiest to follow and the videos help a visual learner like me.

Next Sunday the nephew's wife is up and she's doing... Lithuanian. We're having pink soup, zeppelins, and fried bread.
 
Overall solid list.

One glaring omission is the lack of a Chinese knife-cut noodle dish like Taiwanese beef noodle soup. I really like the thick chewiness of these noodles.
 
Eephus said:
#4 Japchae
Origin: Korea

Japchae is a compound word that means mixed vegetable in Korean. It originated as a non-noodle dish served to royalty and aristocracy. Noodles didn’t enter the picture until about a hundred years ago. By that time, the dish had moved downmarket and was popular among all classes of Koreans. Chinese traders introduced the clear cellophane noodles that characterize the dish today. Koreans used sweet potato starch to manufacture their version of glass noodles called dangmyeon.

Japchae incorporates chopped meats, mushrooms and other vegetables with the noodles. The toppings are typically cooked separately from each other and added to the noodles just before service along with a savory and slightly sweet soy and sesame sauce. It’s a very flexible dish that can be served hot or cold. I love the contrasts in texture, the springiness of the dangmyeon noodles and the crunch of the vegetables. I think the mushroom and sesame oil flavors work perfectly together and the slithery transparent noodles are cool.
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I was going to comment on it earlier, but this is a dish that I just cannot get into and it's the noodles themself that turn me off to it. My SIL is Korean and my backyard neighbor is Lao and both make versions of this dish and I frankly do not care for either one despite both of them being tremendous cooks.
 
I probably missed... but did Cold Sesame Noodles make it in here?

in college, there was a favorite delivery spot that gave you free order of Sesame Noodles if you ordered more than $10. so we'd go in on our orders and always end up with this- so good. and yet, easy to get wrong.
 
Dickies said:
Overall solid list.

One glaring omission is the lack of a Chinese knife-cut noodle dish like Taiwanese beef noodle soup. I really like the thick chewiness of these noodles.
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I think my list was light on soups. I put a few in for representation purposes but there's a world of noodle soups out there.
 
I've been thinking about cacciatore since typing the word here. I have a couple chicken legs in need of cooking. I read the wiki on the dish with a little surprise. Surprised by the variety of styles and the lack of... er, history and popularity. I thought there was just one simple way to do it. When I was cooking alot because I had people to cook for it was one of my most requested dishes, even my mom praised mine. Ofc, I just copied her.

This is close enough maybe lacking a little advice for technique. The first comment below the recipe has the right idea. More wine, more garlic. Deglaze the pan with the wine (red for us) when the onion, peppers and garlic go in. We slow cook it a couple hours. It's kind of like a Sunday gravy for veggies and chicken. Cook like Mario Batali and don't skimp on the garlic and olive oil. Rough chop the veggies, big pieces, even the garlic, just smashed and lightly chopped into big pieces.

Romas or other dead ripe paste tomatoes should be blanched, peeled, seeded and halved. Tomato puree added to almost cover everything. Small porcinis cooked whole at the end. When they've shrunk and released their goodness the dish is done. It's rustic. Chicken Cacciatore = Hunter's Chicken. Which made me wonder why Italians have to hunt chicken.

I also thought it was a pasta dish. The chicken carefully removed as it should be at the falling apart stage. Almost finished pasta and pasta water added. Bring it to a bubbling simmer. Toss the pasta around. Plate it topped with the chicken. It's very simple. No mom magic. Anyone can match it. Distinctive for the big hunks of veggies and shrooms and big dose of red wine. /cacciatoreramble
 
Mrs. Punk and I tried to make the SF Crabhouse Garlic Noodles and the recipe I used called for 16 cloves of garlic. It was ridiculously garlicky and no way that could be doubled. Mrs. Punk asked to help and make the sauce but omitted the oyster sauce (it was sitting on the counter … just saying).

It ended up being a weird garlic noodle, so we have to try this one again.
 
Does anyone here make their own pasta? I never have, but want to. Been thinking about getting the Kitchenaid attachment for my stand mixer.
 
Atomic Punk said:
Mrs. Punk and I tried to make the SF Crabhouse Garlic Noodles and the recipe I used called for 16 cloves of garlic. It was ridiculously garlicky and no way that could be doubled. Mrs. Punk asked to help and make the sauce but omitted the oyster sauce (it was sitting on the counter … just saying).

It ended up being a weird garlic noodle, so we have to try this one again.
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When I looked up some recipes while doing my write-ups, I was surprised by how much garlic some of them called for. When I've eaten them at crab houses, my memory is more of a garlic fragrance than any garlicky sharpness There also was a distinct sweetness that I've tried to recreate with oyster sauce plus a little sugar added to taste. I don't think you want visible pieces of garlic like in aglio e olio; grated or extruded through a press is better. I was given some minced jarlic by my mother in law during the pandemic and this was one of the few things that it was actually good for. The weird jarlic taste was camouflaged pretty well.

There are differences in type of garlic as well. The flat-bottom Chinese ones have a slightly spicier taste but the cloves are usually smaller as well.
 
the moops said:
Does anyone here make their own pasta? I never have, but want to. Been thinking about getting the Kitchenaid attachment for my stand mixer.
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We have one my wife never used or maybe once. I often bring this up in response to some menial task she wants done

Right next to the cutting a cake in half kit
 
the moops said:
Does anyone here make their own pasta? I never have, but want to. Been thinking about getting the Kitchenaid attachment for my stand mixer.
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We make our own about 80% of the time. It is so easy and makes such a difference. We have an old hand crank pasta maker from my nonna that we use but my wife just bought the Kitchenaide attachment, so we’ll be trying that out soon.
 
Drunken knight said:
@Atomic Punk
@Eephus

Fried or blanched tames it a bit.

@the moops
Yes… quite a bit. Different pastas/noodles will have different thickness/denseness/texture. Are you thinking Italian or Asian? Do you have any racks for them?
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We sautéed the garlic for about five minutes but I think the combination of the garlic being very fresh and forgetting the oyster sauce made the meal way too garlic forward. It obviously needs that sweetness to balance the dish.
 
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