Quite a few varieties of A-Sha noodles are available at the Grocery Outlet these days and two of them made it into my emergency supplies closet! Actually they’re not just for emergencies – I’ve been eating them quite a bit lately, with veggies. I’ve already written about Momofuku noodles, which are made by A-Sha, but it’s worth covering A-Sha’s own noodles now as they’re at least on par with the Momofuku noodles. Two of A-Sha’s noodles are, I think, the best overall.
Drumroll…
My favorite A-Sha noodles are the Hakka Style Noodles with Chili Sauce and the Spicy Dan Dan Meteor Noodles.
I love the shape of the Hakka Style Noodles – extra wide, like tagliatelle – and the sauce is a perfect level of heat and umami for me. The wider Momofuku noodles (Tingly Chili and Sweet & Spicy) were also my favorites in that range and in fact the Tingly Chili may be the exact same noodle since both are made by A-Sha. If you want to avoid any cooking besides boiling water for the noodles then here’s a good way to create a 5-minute no-fuss meal with these noodles:
Hakka Style Noodles with shitake, greens, and peanut butter
To a pot of boiling water, add baby shitake mushrooms and/or greens (I like sliced gai lan, aka Chinese broccoli) around the same time as adding the noodles. After boiling for 4 minutes, drain the noodles and veggies and place them in a bowl. Stir in the A-Sha sauce packet and add a few teaspoons of crunchy peanut butter. I like the peanut butter best when distributed as globs (technical term) throughout the noodles rather than mixing it in uniformly. For anyone with peanut allergies, tofu is a good alternative to peanut butter.
[Image of noodles with gai lan and peanut butter. Use as featured. Perhaps with product behind?]
My second favorite A-Sha noodles were the Spicy Dan Dan Meteor Noodles. This spicy sauce is more unique as it comes with a second packet containing thick sesame paste, which needs a little massage to loosen it up before adding to the noodles. Served alone, this sauce is potentially better than the chili sauce that comes with the Hakka style noodles, but the latter is a good blank canvas for making additions. The reason these noodles are in second place is that I personally prefer the shape of the Hakka style noodles to the Meteor noodles.
According to NOSH, the Meteor noodles “feature A-Sha’s patented Meteor cut, crafted with a dual-blade technique to create bold, 3D ridges that grip sauce on every strand.”
What-ever!
A-Sha noodles: Ingredients and nutrition facts
The main ingredient to these noodles is unbleached flour (non-GMO). Whatever the flavor, A-Sha’s noodles are always made with just three ingredients: wheat flour, water, and salt. As mentioned in my post on Momofuku noodles, the instant noodles that I grew up with were trash – deep fried in palm oil – terrible texture, awful nutritionally, and destructive to the planet. I didn’t touch instant noodles for over a decade because these earlier versions (like the UK’s Super Noodles) were so bad.
Maybe that’s why I’m excited to discover that there are now healthy air-dried noodles that are close in both texture and ingredients to freshly-made noodles. In other words, it’s on par with good quality dried pasta.
Hakka Style Noodles with Chili Sauce
Noodle ingredients: Wheat flour, water, salt. Sauce packet ingredients: Soy sauce (water, sugar, salt, soybean, wheat, caramel color, yeast extract, malic acid), chili paste (water, sugar, soybean oil, spicy paste [capsicum, spices, salt], ground chinese cabbage, ground garlic, ground ginger, ground carrot, tomato puree, ground onion, ground green onion, glucose powder, salt, pepper, sichuan peppercorn, anise, galanga, soybean, yeast extract, food starch-modified, paprika oleoresin [canola oil, paprika, capsicum extract], lactic acid, medium chain triglyceride oil, pepper, sichuan peppercorn, anise, galanga, barley), white sesame oil (soy oil, sesame oil).
Spicy Dan Dan Meteor Noodles
Noodle ingredients: wheat flour, water, salt. Spicy sauce packet ingredients: water, cane sugar, canola oil, sugar, garlic, glucose, salt, soybean, wheat, paprika, caramel color, dried chili, yeast extract, alcohol, malic acid, antioxidant (vitamin e). Sesame paste packet ingredients: sesame paste, canola oil, sesame oil.
I have to say, the ingredient list for the chili sauce that comes with the Hakka Style noodles is impressive. It looks like a lot of effort went into concentrating flavor into that little sauce packet and this comes across when you eat the noodles. The sauce for the Spicy Dan Dan noodles is more straightforward and this allows the sesame flavor to shine.
Nutritionally, the Spicy Dan Dan Meteor Noodles have a bit more of everything (fat, fiber, sugars, protein, calcium, and iron) except for sodium, which is higher in the Hakka Style Noodles with Chili Sauce. This nutritional density is one of the reasons always like to have unseasoned veggies (like shitake and greens) with the noodles – to bulk them out into a full meal while diluting the sodium. If you add tofu or peanut butter then you’re easily getting 25 grams of protein per meal.
Ethical rating for A-Sha noodles
Here’s a summary of how I feel about the social and environmental impact of A-Sha noodles, which I’m scoring 4/5 Green Stars:
- All of the A-Sha noodles that I tried are vegan. Adopting a plant-based diet is the top thing you can do to mitigate climate change, deforestation, animal cruelty, and food scarcity.
- The noodles provide 11 to 14 grams of protein per serving, based on one of the most ethical sources of protein: wheat.
- Non-GMO ingredients. This matters to me not because of the genetics but because GMO crops are more likely to be grown from seeds coated with neonics and other pesticides.
- Dried products such as noodles can help reduce food waste, thanks to their long shelf lives. Also, they do not require refrigeration during transportation and sale (refrigerants contribute to climate change).
- A-Sha’s air-drying process avoids having to deep-fry noodles in oil, which is often palm oil.
- A downside is the plastic packaging, but the ratio of plastic to the food’s nutritional density is not terrible. The weight of packaging from three packs of A-Sha noodles is about the same as a single potato chips bag.
- Room for improvement: organic wheat and compostable packaging please!! Then A-Sha would deserve 5/5 Green Stars for sure.
Summary scores (out of 5) for A-Sha noodles:
- 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
- 4 green stars for social and environmental impact
Join the Green Stars Project!
Join the movement to hold corporations accountable (and recognize those with more positive impacts) by including a Green Stars rating when you review a product or business. Also, check out my sister site, The Green Stars Project, for a wider discussion on ethical consumption and social/environmental issues.
Here are a few GSP articles relevant to this post:
Grocery Outlet Ethical Bargains 
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