Meals · Noodles & ramen

Miso chicken udon

Name: Miso chicken udon
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 5 cups chicken broth; 3 tbsp miso; 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce; a thumb ginger, sliced; 3 cloves garlic, smashed; 2 breasts chicken breast; 2 portions udon noodles, cooked and drained; 2 egg, soft-boiled, halved; 1 1/2 cups white button mushrooms, sliced; 3 handfuls baby spinach; 3 green onion, sliced thin; 1 tsp sesame oil; 2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

A weeknight noodle bowl that borrows the shape of a ramen-ya without the twelve-hour broth: miso whisked into good stock, chicken poached in it, and the toppings doing the rest. Soup is the format satiety per calorie likes best — a litre of broth is volume the body counts and the calorie label barely does.

Time: 35 min (15 prep + 20 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 358 kcal
Protein: 31 g

Ingredients

5 cups chicken broth1200 g
3 tbsp miso60 g
1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce25 g
a thumb ginger, sliced12 g
3 cloves garlic, smashed9 g
2 breasts chicken breast300 g
2 portions udon noodles, cooked and drained400 g
2 egg, soft-boiled, halved100 g
1 1/2 cups white button mushrooms, sliced120 g
3 handfuls baby spinach100 g
3 green onion, sliced thin25 g
1 tsp sesame oil6 g
2 tsp toasted sesame seeds4 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Bring the broth, ginger and garlic to a bare simmer. Slide in the chicken breasts and poach 12–14 minutes until just cooked, then lift them out and shred.
Add the mushrooms to the broth and simmer 3 minutes. Fish out the ginger and garlic.
Take the pot off the heat before the miso goes in — whisk it with a ladle of hot broth first, then stir it back. Boiled miso goes flat and grainy.
Add the soy sauce, then the spinach, which wilts in the residual heat.
Divide the cooked noodles between four deep bowls, ladle the broth over, and top with the chicken, an egg half each, spring onion, sesame oil and seeds.

Can I make it less salty?

Yes — use a low-sodium broth and hold the soy sauce until you taste at the end. Miso alone brings plenty; between the broth, the miso and the soy this bowl carries around a gram of sodium per serving.

Ramen noodles instead?

Works exactly the same — use the noodles from an instant packet and bin the seasoning sachet, since the broth here is doing that job with far less salt and actual chicken. We score it as udon because that is the noodle our food catalog actually holds, and we would rather the ingredient list be true than the title be catchier.

Why this score

exceptionally filling

Low energy density — a lot of food for the calories.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

35% of kcal

85% water

9 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1432 kcal goes into the pot, 2361 g of ingredients comes out as ~2200 g of food → 65 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 65
Protein: (35%); 6 g
Fat: (26%); 2 g
Carbohydrates: (39%); 6 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 428 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.