Best Sauces For Egg Noodles ⋆ All Of The Combinations To Consider! ⋆

Egg noodles are delicious. But if you’ve come here looking for what sauces pair best with them, you probably already know that! As it turns out, there are many different sauces you can use when serving egg noodles, though they tend to have one ingredient in common… 

So, what sauces are best for egg noodles? The most common sauces for egg noodles typically have a soy base. Sriracha soy sauce, sweet chili soy sauce, lime and ginger soy sauce, and sticky soy sauce (for the protein that’s mixed with the noodles) all work well with egg noodles too.

A lot of egg noodle dishes are called lo mein, and I’ve included a lo mein sauce recipe. 

However, it’s not the sauce that makes the dish a lo mein dish. 

Lo mein simply means that the noodles have been fully cooked before they are stir-fried. 

Chow mein means that the noodles are soaked and then cooked with the other ingredients (i.e., they aren’t fully cooked before you stir fry them). 

Now, let’s explore the recommendations above for egg noodle sauces in greater detail and also go into what sauces you want to avoid when serving egg noodles!

The Best Sauces for Egg Noodles

Soy Sauce

This is a soy-based sauce but saying it’s just a soy sauce is perhaps a bit misleading as it contains plenty of other ingredients.

So what’s this sauce made of?

Dark soy sauce, regular soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and white pepper.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy–it certainly doesn’t require a lot of different ingredients. 

Perfect if you’re stir-frying some noodles for a simple meal. Toss in some vegetables and protein, and you’ve got yourself a complete meal. 

Another option would be to combine dark and regular soy sauce with Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, white pepper, and sugar. Talk about a simple sauce to make!

Love tomato-based sauces? Try combining soy sauce, ketchup, brown sugar, lime juice, dark sesame oil, and chili paste (such as sambal oelek) for a nice egg noodles sauce. 

Want a fishier option? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.)

Sesame oil, dark soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing cooking wine, sugar, salt, and black pepper. 

If you want a soy and fish sauce that also contains green onions, you’ll need the aforementioned green onions, as well as soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and black pepper. 

As a general rule, soy sauces (and other sauces on this list) are combined in a bowl, then tossed into the wok as you fry the noodles. 

The exception to the rule is if you fry the protein (meat, seafood, or tofu) on its own and make a sticky sauce for the protein, as opposed to making a sauce for the noodles.

Sometimes you’ll need one sauce for the protein and one for the noodles. 

Sweet Chili Soy Sauce

If you want something sweet and spicy, you can opt for a sweet chili soy sauce. 

This sauce contains few ingredients and is easy to make.

Light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, onions, garlic, and sweet chili sauce are everything you need. 

Technically speaking, the garlic and onions don’t belong to the sauce—you stir fry them in the wok before adding the noodles and the sauce, but if you’re to make the sauce on its own, it doesn’t hurt to add the onions or garlic. 

If you want a super easy recipe, though, you can leave them out. 

Sriracha Soy Sauce

Like your noodles spicy? Try some sriracha soy sauce.

For this, you will need soy sauce, tamari (optional), sriracha sauce, Shaoxing wine, sugar, vegetable oil, and garlic. And apart from the noodles, you fry some green onions, carrots, and bean sprouts in the sauce. 

If you like sweet, salty, and spicy all at the same time, this could be the recipe for you!

A variation on a theme would be using soy sauce, sriracha, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, and maple syrup. 

Lo Mein Sauce

Lo mein noodles are really popular, and there’s a reason for that—they taste fantastic!

For a lo mein sauce, you’ll need dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, cornflour, Chinese cooking wine or mirin, sugar, sesame oil, and white pepper. 

If you’re making lo mein noodles, you’ll also need vegetables (such as onions, green onions, bell peppers, garlic, and carrots) and protein (such as chicken or tofu), as well as an oil to fry it. It’s an easy and tasty dish to make!

Lime and Ginger Soy Sauce

I got this recipe from Jamie Oliver (not in person–on his website, I’m afraid! LOL), and it’s for “Hangover Noodles.” (In fact, he calls them Hungover Noodles.) 

Whether you’re hungover or not, it’s a brilliant sauce, however, and works for all sorts of stir-fries with egg noodles in them. 

The sauce is simple enough–fresh ginger and lime, garlic, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. 

He then serves the noodles with hot sauce, but there’s no saying you can’t add that directly into the sauce. 

Personally, I often like to add some form of sweeteners–sugar, honey, or maple syrup–to my soy sauces.

So in a recipe like this, I’d definitely do that. 

You can find Jaime’s recipe for Hungover Noodles here. 

Egg Noodle Sauce for Crispy Egg Noodles with Seafood

If you want to make a sauce for crispy egg noodles with seafood, then this one is a winner. 

You get crispy noodles by soaking them in water, cooking them for one minute, pouring them into an ice bath, then letting them dry for a few minutes before frying them in oil. 

The ingredients are light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, chicken stock, Shaoxing rice wine, and cornstarch. 

Sauce for Egg Noodles with Sticky Beef or Chicken

The recipe for stir-fried beef egg noodles calls for a secret ingredient: ketchup. Not particularly Asian, but it definitely works to give a sauce a nice tomato flavor.

So what goes into this sauce? Tomato ketchup, soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, rice vinegar, and water. So it’s a pretty sweet sauce, in other words. Kind of like a BBQ sauce–it’s sticky in nature. 

 Want the full recipe for making this beef stir fry? Check out the recipe here. 

You can make another sticky sauce by combining honey, soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili flakes, and cornstarch/flour. This recipe is great for chicken. 

What Types of Sauces Pair Best Egg Noodles?

Egg noodles are usually stir-fried with soy sauce. This soy sauce is sometimes flavored with ginger, lime, garlic, hot sauce, or onions. Often it contains Shaoxing wine or rice vinegar, as well as a sweetener. You can also use soy sauce combined with fish and/or oyster sauce. 

Soy sauce. That’s the bottom line here. You’ll have to search high and low for a recipe that doesn’t call for soy sauce. Many call for both dark and light soy sauces. 

The dark soy sauce is often Chinese and made from fermented soybeans, salt and water. 

The light version is usually Japanese and is made by fermenting both wheat and soybeans. 

The taste is, therefore, sweeter, and it contains alcohol (unless removed) as alcohol is naturally created in the fermenting process. 

Just knowing that you can alter your soy sauce recipe based on your own taste preferences. 

If you absolutely can’t stand the taste of soy sauce, try making a sauce with hot sauce or combining chili (or chili paste) with vinegar, sugar, salt, and perhaps some garlic, ginger, and lime.

You can sub your soy sauce with tamari sauce if in a pinch, but that, too, contains soy. 

What Sauces To Avoid Serving With Egg Noodles 

In short, anything that isn’t a soy-based sauce is usually avoided when it comes to egg noodles. However, as mentioned above, it’s possible to make your own sauce without it! Some people get confused and serve egg noodles with pasta sauce, but that’s sauce made for pasta made with eggs, not Asian egg noodles! 

When you google egg noodle sauce, chances are you’ll find recipes for pasta sauces, too. That’s because some pasta is made with eggs, and some people call it noodles. If you’ve bought Asian egg noodles, you don’t want to serve them with an Italian pasta sauce! 

You also have to beware of spice when you’re making a sauce for your noodles. 

If the recipe calls for a lot of ginger, you’ll want to go light on the hot sauce or chili flakes unless you really want your food to burn! Well, technically, it’d be you, not your food, that’ll be burning.

While you can sub traditional soy sauce for tamari sauce, using hoisin sauce will change the flavor profile. Hoisin sauce also contains soy, though. 

Likewise, kecap manis is a soy sauce from Indonesia, but it tastes different from regular soy sauce. It’s made from soy, sweeteners (like palm sugar), salt, and aromatic spices.