Buttery Oyster Sauce Noodles | TASTE

One evening once I was a child, I had a neighborhood good friend over for dinner. We have been ten years previous on the time, and he sat completely nonetheless together with his arms in his lap for the entire meal, politely declining all of the dishes my mother provided him. On the finish of the meal, after a lot insistence from my mother, who couldn’t stand to ship him residence on an empty abdomen, he quietly requested a bowl of buttered noodles. My mother had by no means heard of such a dish. I hadn’t both. Her quick-fix pasta was normally a mound of massively overcooked noodles tossed with no matter Chinese language condiments we had within the fridge, normally a mash-up of oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, and sesame oil. It was scrumptious and positively not nutritious. My sister and I liked it. So these buttery noodles, coated in savory oyster sauce and toasty sesame oil, are devoted to that good friend, to all the children who don’t wish to eat something from this guide, and to all of the mother and father (like us) who’re too drained to think about anything.

Excerpted from the guide “Salt Sugar MSG” Copyright © 2025 by Calvin Eng and Phoebe Melnick. Images copyright © 2025 by Alex Lau. Printed by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group. Reprinted by permission.