We are big pasta eaters in my house and most days it’s far from fancy. A red sauce with some veggies or roasted chicken on top is what we heat many weekday meals. But, I like to push flavor boundaries with the kiddos and this quick roasted garlic peanut sauce is a lovely change up to your normal pasta.
I like to use udon noodles for this dish, which are wider than spaghetti, but they are also harder to cook and can get soggy if you overcook them. Honestly though, any pasta could be tossed in this sauce and it would work just fine.
Roasted garlic is one of my absolute favorite flavors and it’s one of a few reasons I’ll crank up the oven on a hot summer day. It goes well with the other savory flavors in this sauce and gives it a nice, mellow backbone of flavor.
If you didn’t use all this sauce on your pasta, you can use it for dipping with veggies or even steamed shrimp! It’s a great all-purpose sauce with a little change-up from the standard peanut sauce situation.
Roasted Garlic Peanut Noodles
Ingredients
- 8 ounces udon noodles, cooked
- 1 head garlic, roasted
- ½ cup peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- ¼ cup warm water
- Chili garlic sauce, garnish
- Sesame seeds, garnish
- Scallions, garnish
Instructions
- To roast garlic, slice the tip end of the garlic head off with a paring knife. Drizzle the garlic head with a little oil and a pinch of salt and wrap tightly in foil. Roast in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes until the cloves are very tender.
- Remove roasted garlic and push out roasted cloves into a food processor with peanut butter, hoisin, soy sauce, chili sauce, sesame oil, and water. Blend until smooth.
- Meanwhile cook udon noodles until just cooked. Drain and toss with roasted garlic peanut sauce.
- Divide noodles between bowls and garnish with sesame seeds, scallions, and chili garlic sauce.
- These noodles are best eaten right away. If you are going to store them for later, store the noodles and sauce separately and toss them together right before eating.
- These are also great topped with roasted chicken, pork, steak, or any roasted veggies you can imagine. Go crazy!
Nutrition
Did you make this recipe?
Roasted Garlic Peanut Noodles
If you aren’t roasting garlic on the regular, why do you even have an oven? Just wrap a whole head of garlic in foil, cut off the tip of the head and add some olive oil and salt. Roast it at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Delicious.
Once the garlic is roasted and cooled slightly you can just push out the cloves with your fingers. Add them to a food processor with all the other sauce ingredients. I love love love these flavors.
I added 1/4 cup of warm water just to make the sauce a bit more liquid. You might need to add a little more depending on the peanut butter you use. The sauce should hold its shape on a spoon and not be too liquid.
To finish your pasta, just toss in a few spoonfuls of the sauce with the hot pasta and toss it together with tongs. I recommend saving a little hot pasta water and add a few spoonfuls of that if the sauce seems too tight. It should lightly coat the pasta and be silky in appearance.
Then garnish to your heart’s content! Sesame seeds, scallions, and chili garlic sauce are just a start.
These roasted garlic peanut noodles are delicious on their own, but would also be a great base for any number of things including grilled protein like chicken or steak, roasted veggies like cauliflower, or crispy tofu!
Dig in!
David Angel
This recipe looks fantastic ! thanks for sharing. I too love roasted garlic, it is one of my favourite flavours and we miss it so much now we are currently living in Australia . When we lived in Britain you could buy huge bags of garlic from Spain for only 10 pounds a bag and it would last us 6 months. In Australia garlic is very, very expensive and often imported from China so doesn’t have that nice a flavour. Another recipe I recommend is spaghetti, roasted garlic, olive oil , wilted baby leaf spinach and parmesan cheese. Fantastic !
Diego Lopes
That’s interesting, I never would have thought to add peanuts to my pasta. It’s almost like a Thai dish.
sweetamyleigh
Delicious! The roasted garlic made it, but the recipe was still so easy and flavorful for a weeknight. We thought the recipe was a little thick, which might be down to the peanut butter we used. Doubled the udon. Would be awesome with added protein like chicken. A lovely keeper of a recipe.
Nick
Glad you liked it! You can always thin the sauce out with hot water until it’s the right texture for you. Thanks for reporting back. :)