We need to stop at Noodle Town! This noodle miracle consists of tender short ribs, bright spinach, sesame, and ginger soup, as well as noodles.
Yes, this fun train has been rumbling along the tracks, and we’ve come to a delicious side stop in Noodle Town—the best town. These spicy noodles, marinated in ginger broth, are ready to satisfy your most voracious noodle needs.
Ribs are the tenderest, most fragile, and most tear-worthy because they taste so good! Right at the top of your pile of noodles, next to it is some bright soy milk spinach sprinkled with sesame seeds and drizzled with a bit of toasted sesame oil. Oh, mine. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
What is Kochi sauce?
This noodle-like little wonder gets a rich and exciting spice from the hot sauce. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a sauce made with gochujang, a staple Korean dish with a delicious afterheat and a rich umami flavor mixed with other ingredients like soy sauce, vinegar, and sweetener. The hot sauce is a sweet and salty sauce made from fermented soybeans, red pepper flakes, glutinous rice, and salt commonly used to flavor meat dishes, soups, stews, and sauces. You can learn more about how it’s made and used from Christina Chaey at Bon Appetit.
Ingredients for short rib soup
Because hot sauce has such a strong flavor, especially when paired with spices like ginger and garlic, the ingredients list itself is short!
- Trimmed short ribs, removed from the bone (For a first-class soup experience, it pays to cut/prepare them before cooking)
- gochujang sauce
- Tomato sauce
- Ginger, garlic, onion minced
- Beef soup
- Dry ramen or other fried noodles
- spinach
- Scallion, sesame, and sesame oil
How do you make these spicy rib noodles
Because we had our old friends – instant POTS – working for us, things were relatively simple to do.
- Fried Spare Ribs. Sprinkle generously with salt to taste, then put them in the pan and turn outside to brown.
- To give it some flavor, add the hot sauce, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, and shallots, leave for a while, and then add the broth.
- Cook. Press under high pressure for 30 minutes. The meat will be very tender when it’s done.
- Noodles! Return to stir-fry mode, add noodles, and cook until noodles are tender.
- Spinach. Fry in a separate pan, then add your soup (optional, but this is an excellent highlight). If this is your jam, throw it straight into the pan!
Top your soup bowl with chopped short ribs, stuff in your smart spinach, and sprinkle with chopped green onion, sesame seeds, and sesame oil. YUM!
Make it your own
The recipe was created after trying to replicate this delicious bowl from Daly’s plate that was spotted on Instagram years ago. While the dish isn’t made according to a specific traditional recipe, it certainly has more culturally distinctive combinations of spicy beef and noodle soup, such as this homemade Shin Cup-style spicy Korean ramen beef noodle dish or this Taiwanese beef noodle dish from Life Pot, both of which sound like more traditional recipes and are delicious.
Here, we have a super gooey, inside-out heating of your soup/noodle combination, which is the perfect base, and you can customize it from there! We tried a few different cuts of beef, and our favorite tenderer was short ribs, but the others worked! If you’re feeling timid, you can do that. Of course, you can also make it vegetarian by adding a little vegetable stock and then topping it with pickled crunchy tofu or oven-roasted mushrooms. There are so many possibilities!
If you’re not an instant pot owner, don’t worry; with a little more time, this dream can still be yours. What if all you have is a bag of ramen? Good. Throw out the seasoning packet and let the noodle pieces swim. We’re talking about combining ginger, garlic, and hot sauce to make anything delicious.
Always fun soup!
Instant pot spicy short rib noodle soup: Common problems
What’s the difference between hot sauce and hot sauce?
Yes, we do! This recipe uses a different type of hot sauce, which has a distinct taste and spiciness because it is mixed with other ingredients. If you can only find hot sauce, add soy sauce, honey, or sugar to balance it.
Can I make vegetarian dishes?
Absolutely! Use a vegetable soup, or top with delicious pickled crispy tofu or oven-roasted mushrooms to add flavor.
How am I supposed to do this without an instant pot?
In a large pot on the stove, sear the ribs with some oil until they have a nice brown crust. Remove the ribs from the pan, add the tomato paste, hot sauce, ginger, spring Onions, and garlic, and cook for a few minutes until the aroma is translucent. Add the beef broth and return the ribs to the pan. Simmer for a few hours until the ribs are tender and fall apart. Add noodles and cook.
Instructions
- Set the Instant Pot to Saute mode. Sprinkle the ribs generously with salt; stir-fry them without disturbing them until the surface is browned.
- Fry the hot sauce, tomato sauce, ginger, garlic, and shallot in an instant pan with the ribs for 1-2 minutes.
- Add broth. Cook under high pressure for 30 minutes. The meat should be very tender and delicious.
- Set to stir-fry mode again. Add noodles and cook until tender. Taste the broth with a little salt, pepper, or rice vinegar, and add anything else you want.
- Fry the spinach in a separate pan (optional).
- Top noodle soup bowl with ribs, spinach, scallion, and sesame oil.
