Midnight peanut butter noodles
The one-pot bowl you make standing up, for an audience of yourself.
At a Glance
Story
Peanut in a savory sauce is only strange if you have never left the pasta aisle. West African groundnut stews, Sichuan dan dan, satay across South East Asia all lean on it. What makes it behave in a bowl of noodles is fat meeting starchy pasta water: whisk the two and the sauce emulsifies glossy, the exact trick behind cacio e pepe.
Ingredients
- 4 oz spaghettior 1 package instant ramen, seasoning saved for another day
- 2 tbsp creamy peanut butterthe less fancy the better
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp Parmesangrated (plus more to finish)
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- salt
Method
Nobody's finest hour and everybody's favorite, a bowl of umami and fat you make in the pot the noodles cooked in. This is portioned for one, alone and unbothered, though the chips will scale it up if you're feeling generous, which at midnight you are not.
- Bring a pot of water to a boil and salt it if you are using spaghetti. Cook the noodles to the package time.
- Before you drain, save half a cup of the cooking water, the cloudier the better. That starch is what turns fat into sauce. Drain the noodles and put them back in the pot off the heat.
- Add the peanut butter, butter, Parmesan and soy sauce. Stir hard for a solid minute, loosening with the reserved water a splash at a time, until the sauce goes glossy and clings to every strand.
- Season with salt, top with more cheese, and eat it directly from the pot if the hour calls for it. It usually does.
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