I Finally Nailed the Best Peanut Sesame Chili Noodles at hOMe

You know that moment when you get home hungry and your brain refuses to accept anything except one very specific comfort food? That’s where I start: I’m convinced I finally found the best recipe for sesame noodles, the kind some people call peanut chili noodles, and I walk you through exactly how to make them with simple pantry staples.

I share the food memory that set the bar so high, then get practical: what noodles work best, why runny tahini matters, how tamari deepens the flavour, and how peanut butter gives the sauce its clingy, creamy body. If you’re missing an ingredient, I talk through easy substitutions, including how to fake chili oil with a spicy paste and neutral vegetable oil. The technique stays beginner-friendly: while the noodles boil, you build the sauce in a bowl, loosen it with hot water, and toss everything together with nothing more than a fork.

Full disclosure- I found this pic online. It looks the closest to what my noodles looked like - since I didn’t have scallions on hand. 

Because this show lives at the intersection of mindful meals and sustainable living, we also zoom out to the bigger point: cooking satisfying food while reducing food packaging waste. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s repeatable choices, smart staples, and a meal you’ll actually want to make again. If you try the sesame noodles, share the podcast with a friend, subscribe, and leave a rating or review so more people can find it.

Thank you🥁🥁 

MINDFUL MEALS & SUSTAINABLE LIVING - The Art of Living an Elevated Lifestyle 

Transcript

Welcome And The Noodles Quest

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi my friends, thank you for joining me again for another episode of Recipes for Survival, Mindful Meals and Sustainable Living. I'm convinced I've finally found the best recipe for sesame noodles. So let's get on with the show. On Instagram a lot of people call them the peanut chili noodles. Anyway, I just got home from being in Rhode Island and I was doing a lot of work on my computer and stupid stuff. Anyway, and of course I'm hungry for something. And I was like, oh my god, I want to make sesame noodles. It's all absolute basic staples. But this is a good one. I wanted to get it down because I wanted to share a little story of how much I love sesame noodles. And I've been looking for recipes constantly online for them, and I think I've got it down now.

A New York Sesame Noodles Memory

SPEAKER_00 1:04

But when I was a college student and I was going out with a gentleman here in Soho, whenever I would come in, the first place we would go is a Chinese restaurant on Bleaker Street for sesame noodles. Because it was I had never had anything like it, and I was just mad for them. Then of course I was eating them everywhere I could, and the best place was on Doyer Street. They're

Pantry Staples And Low Waste Cooking

SPEAKER_00 1:32

no longer there. Anyway, I'm gonna quickly go through because it's a perfect recipe for survival. No food packaging waste, except maybe what you get your noodles in, but I'm gonna get noodles in something that doesn't have food packaging waste. And everything else is a basic staple. So let me run through the ingredients, they are gonna be spring onion scallions are always really nice to have. I never thought they were a staple. Now I'm beginning to think that they are, at least for me. I know they are for the women I work with. I have to always have scallions. Um, and then a package, you're gonna get noodles. I used rice noodles tonight, which was fine, but you might want like a ramen with a little curl in it. But a good sturdy noodle is great, organic. And then we're gonna use um garlic that I put through a press. This recipe calls for three garlic cloves. I used one, it was certainly fine. Um, and then crunchy peanut butter, and then this recipe calls for chopped peanuts. I didn't put that in, and it's just fine. But the other trick is that you definitely want really good runny tahini, about a quarter of a cup. I put in maybe two or three tablespoons, maybe a quarter of a cup, and then some tamari sauce. This is two tablespoons, and then for chili oil, because I didn't have chili oil, I have that Korean uh paste, and then I put in some vegetable oil, probably about two tablespoons. And then again, this recipe calls, and many of them call for lime juice. I didn't have a lime in the house. I'm going to from now on, and that's just a tablespoon. And then you definitely are gonna need. I used exactly five tablespoons of hot water, which is what this recipe calls for. And then it says for some sesame seeds. Believe me, I'm not running out for sesame seeds. But I think this is a perfect, you could even call it a date dish. It might be the perfect workshop series. Who agrees? Who would come to a workshop? Four different workshops for dishes that would be great. Date dishes. That's what I'm gonna do. You know, after basic knife skills, date dishes, four of them. I'm gonna work on that. So I hope you'll make some sesame

Mix The Sauce Then Toss Noodles

SPEAKER_00 4:08

noodles. And what you do is bring noodles well and some salted water, and then in a bowl, while the noodles are cooking, which takes no time at all, you're gonna put the ingredients into a bowl. And then once you add the once you have the the lime juice and the five tablespoons of hot water, mix it. You don't even need a whisk. A fork'll do just fine. Put your noodles

Workshop Idea And Listener Request

SPEAKER_00 4:38

in, stir them around, and then you top it with um chopped scallions. I'll definitely I'll do a recipe, I'll make it, and then we'll find it on YouTube. But I thought it'd be fun to get a podcast out, which I hadn't done in a long time. So whoever finds it, I appreciate it. And if you would maybe share it with friends or become a subscriber or give it a thumbs up or a star or two or five, that's a big help and that you're inspired to make sesame noodles and hopefully, you know, practice mindfulness to see what you can do to help eliminate food packaging waste. And thanks very much. I hope you enjoy the piece.