Tanabata Somen Recipe: a Japanese Summer Festival Noodle
Learn how to make an easy, beautiful, ombre tanabata somen for the Japanese star festival in July. These cold noodles are refreshing in the hot summer months and can be made with many variations.
What is Tanabata?
Tanabata is a Japanese summer holiday that falls on July 7 every year. Also called the Star Festival, it celebrates the old Chinese legend of the cowherd (called Hikoboshi) and the weaver girl (called Orihime in Japanese). Hikoboshi is represented by the star Altair and Orihime by the star Vega. In the legend, the two lovers are separated by the Milky Way and only able to meet on the 7th day of the 7th month in the year. In Japan, people celebrate with summer street festivals and by hanging paper decorations onto bamboo trees.
For more information on Tanabata holiday traditions, check out my How to Celebrate Tanabata post!
What is Tanabata Somen?
Because the story of Tanabata has to do with the Milky Way, it’s become common to eat somen during this holiday. It’s theorized that somen noodles, with their thin white strands, look like the Milky Way, or perhaps they look like the threads woven by Orihime. Either way, it’s also a great dish for the summer heat as the noodles are eaten cold and dipped into a cold, soy sauce-based soup.
You can find some somen sold with fun colors like green and pink. Usually somen is plain white. To emphasize the star theme, tanabata somen often is decorated with vegetables cut into star shapes.
For my tanabata somen in this recipe, I decided to go even harder on the galaxy theme by making an ombre blue to purple noodle! I saw several people make blue and purple noodles on Japanese instagram, so I can’t take credit for the idea. I don’t know who the original creator was, but if anyone knows, please do tell.
How to Make Blue Ombre Noodles
Start with plain white somen noodles. You’ll boil them as usual, following the package instructions, but to naturally dye them blue, you’ll add a teaspoon of butterfly pea powder to the boiling water. Butterfly pea powder comes from a blue flower and has a unique property in that it’ll change to purple or magenta when mixed with something acidic.
After you cook the noodles in the butterfly pea powder water, they should come out light blue when you strain them. Place them in an ice bath to cool. To serve, you’ll drain the noodles again and put them in your serving dish (mine is from Musubi Kiln and I love it). Now, put an acidic juice into a small spray bottle – something like lemon, lime, or yuzu. I actually really love the flavor of yuzu when mixed with the Japanese soup broth. Spray the citrus on one side only of the noodle. At first, you not feel that it’s changing color, but wait a few minutes. The side you sprayed should be closer to purple or pink! You can spray more if you want a stronger contrast, or spray a tiny bit in the middle of the noodles for a gradual gradient.
That’s it! So easy and so beautiful!
Cold Somen Ingredient Ideas
The decorative elements on top of the noodles are completely up to your preference. Cucumber, ham, cheese, and cherry tomato are probably the most common that I see. Other veggies such as sliced bell peppers, lettuce, edamame, corn, and cabbage would all work fine. Shredded kamaboko or omelette work too. Think of it like a noodle salad!
For the soup broth, I always use a store-bought Japanese noodle soup base called tsuyu or mentsuyu (“men” means noodles). It’s a broth concentrate sold in a bottle that’s easily available at Asian grocery stores or online. You add water to dilute it, depending on what kind of noodle you’re making. Typically cold noodles that get dipped into a broth use a highly concentrated soup, whereas hot noodles served in a bowl of soup (like udon) are a little more diluted. You can follow the guidelines on the bottle or use my recommendation in the recipe card below, but really you can adjust to your tastes.
Of course, this soup broth can be made from scratch, but 99% of Japanese families I know just use the store-bought tsuyu.
More Summer Recipes
Interested in more recipes for hot summer days? Check these out:
Tanabata Somen
Ingredients
- 2 bundles somen noodles
- 1 tsp butterfly pea powder
- 1 quart water for boiling
- 1 tbsp lemon juice or yuzu juice
- 1 slice cheese
- 1 slice ham
- lettuce
- any other vegetables of choice
- 1/4 cup tsuyu (Japanese soup base)
- 3/4 cup water
Instructions
- Put water in a medium sized pot. Add teaspoon of butterfly pea powder and stir to disperse the color. Bring water to a boil.
- Add somen noodles and cook for two minutes, or according to the package instructions.
- Drain noodles and place in an ice bath while you prepare the vegetables. Your noodles should be a light blue color.
- Arrange lettuce on the bottom layer of your serving dish. Use cookie cutters or pastry cutters to cut star shapes out of the cheese and ham. If adding other vegetable toppings (such as cucumber, egg omelette, cherry tomatoes, etc.) slice them now.
- Drain noodles from the ice bath and layer them on top of the lettuce, trying to keep the noodles from getting too tangled.
- Put lemon juice in a spray bottle and spray the noodles on one side of your dish only. Wait a few minutes for the color to change, then spray more juice as needed for a stronger gradient.
- Arrange your cut and sliced vegetables and ham on top of the noodles.
- Create a dipping sauce for your noodles by putting two tablespoons of tsuyu into two small soup bowls. Add 6 tablespoons of water to each bowl. Taste the soup and adjust saltiness to taste by adding more tsuyu or water as needed.
- Serve noodles with the dipping sauce. Leftovers do not keep well.
