Here’s a few recipes that I randomly found online, that are surprisingly good, and easy to make, with just pantry staple ingredients. By easy, I mean, it took me 15 minutes or less to make, with minimum mise en place.

Noodles with butter and oyster sauce

I saw this recipe for the first time on Kenji’s Youtube channel. Apparently, this recipe came from Tiktok? (I am not sure!).

Ingredients:

  • Noodles (anything, could be long pasta as well)
  • Butter
  • Oyster sauce
  • Any greens (optional)
  • Green onions (optional)

Steps:

  1. Melt butter, then add oyster sauce to the pan
  2. Add cooked noodles (with a bit of its clung water), then agitate to emulsify the sauce
  3. You can add any greens at this step
  4. Top with green onions, and serve!

Sweet pasta

I saw this recipe from a book called Tasty. Healthy. Cheap., by Kevin Tatar. A great book for beginner home cooks. This combination of sugar and pasta is a bit unusual, but it’s surprisingly good for me.

Ingredients:

  • Walnuts (sometimes I swap it with peanuts if I don’t have walnuts on hand)
  • White sugar
  • Any pasta

Steps:

  1. Dry-toast walnut on a pan, then crunch with a food processor. Add a little bit of salt.
  2. Mix white sugar in.
  3. Add pasta in the walnut-sugar mixture. Enjoy!

Peanut butter noodles

I can make this dish probably more 4 times a week if I am too lazy to cook. I couldn’t remember where I saw this recipe for the first time, but I cook this dish a lot.

Ingredients:

  • Soy sauce
  • Mala (Sichuan peppercorn), pounded in mortar and pestle
  • Peanut butter
  • Chilli flakes
  • A bit of honey
  • Any type of vinegar. I usually use Chinkiang vinegar (Chinese black vinegar).
  • Any type of noodles
  • Green onions (optional)

Steps:

  1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl, except the noodles. Add a few table spoons of hot water to dissolve the peanut butter.
  2. Mix cooked noodles with the sauce. Top with green onions, and serve!