Vegan soba wraps
Today I am throwing in another simple recipe for you. If you ever found yourself wondering of ways to use rice paper other than filling it with fresh fruits or veggies, this may be what you were looking for. When it comes to me, these vegan soba wraps saved a whole pack of rice paper from expiring.
A few years back I saw posts on social media where people were making these strange tiny see through wraps filled with cucumber, carrots, celery and other good stuff. I thought this looked really cool and I wanted to make these myself, but I couldn’t find any rice paper in my town. So you can imagine my excitement when I did find it a few months later. Then I bought some strawberries, bananas and mango, wrapped them up and dipped in some maple syrup.
And after that, I put the rice paper in my pantry and completely forgot about it. Soba noodles were a completely different story. Noodles were always my guilty pleasure and a go-to meal when I was a college student. It is not a very healthy meal option, but when something is so cheap and tasty, it is very hard to say no. So when I discovered there was a buckwheat version of these, I was beside myself, ate them for days in a row. And they did not even require a lot of seasoning or sauce.
Eventually, I wanted to find a different way to prepare them. And this particular soba recipe saved my rice papers from going bad.
These vegan soba wraps are unbelievably delicious and easy to make. And if you are a noodle addict like myself, I could not recommend it enough.
Some health benefits
You may not think there are a bunch of benefits you can get from eating a noodle-based dish, but there are some interesting facts about buckwheat, from which these noodles are made from.
Buckwheat is mainly composed of carbs. It also boasts a good amount of fiber and resistant starch, which may improve colon health. What’s more, it offers small amounts of high-quality protein. Buckwheat is richer in minerals than many other pseudocereals and cereals. It’s high in manganese, copper, and magnesium but low in most vitamins.
It is a healthy choice for people with type 2 diabetes or those who want to improve their blood sugar balance. Studies link buckwheat intake to lower blood sugar in people with diabetes. Buckwheat has also been found to improve your blood lipid profile. A poor profile is a well-known risk factor for heart disease.
A study in adults linked buckwheat intake to lower blood pressure and an improved blood lipid profile, including lower levels of LDL cholesterol and higher levels of HDL cholesterol. This effect is believed to be caused by a type of protein that binds cholesterol in your digestive system, preventing its absorption into your bloodstream.
And these noodles are also a good option if you are gluten-free. These are some of the reasons you may want to incorporate buckwheat flour into your diet instead of all purpose flour. Luckily, buckwheat has found its way into a lot of recipes, and buckwheat breads and pastas are my go to thing lately. And now, these lovely vegan soba wraps have made that list.
A piece of advice
Since this recipe is super easy to make, I don’t have a lot to add in this section. What I would like to mention is something about the wrapping. If you can, try to be gentle with wet rice papers, since sometimes they tend to rip. Every time a paper is soaked enough, I like to pull it out of the water slowly, by holding it by the edges gently. This way you can prevent it from unwanted folding. That may become a problem since wet rice paper tends to be very sticky. Then you carefully place the sheet on a flat surface and continue with other steps.
Of course, the filling ingredients are not set in stone, you can play around with those. Throw in different types of veggies, experiment with the sauce, it is up to you. I just hope you will love these vegan soba wraps as much as I did.
Ingredients
250 g buckwheat (soba) noodles
4-5 sheets of rice paper
1 carrot
some cabbage (as desired)
1 tbsp of olive oil
For the sauce:
7 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp of rice vinegar
1 tsp of sesame oil
1 tsp of agave syrup
Instructions
Boil the noodles for 3 minutes. Drain the water from the pot and let them sit.
Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a separate bowl. Put olive oil into a pan and sautee carrots and cabbage for about 3-4 minutes on medium heat. Place the drained noodles in the pan. Stir quickly and add the sauce to the pan. Stir until noodles are evenly covered with sauce.
Fill a big bowl with water. Soak each rice paper sheet in water, remove when it becomes very soft and transparent. Hold it up for a few seconds so the excess water can fall back into the bowl. The amount of time that it takes for the paper to become soft and see-through depends on the brand that you are using.
Place the rice paper sheet on a flat surface. Put the noodles and vegetables in the lower middle part of the rice paper. Fold the paper from the sides inward (so it covers a few centimeters of the filling), and then roll it down the middle.
Serve with some soy sauce, wok sauce or chili oil. You can also top it off with some sesame seeds.
If you liked this recipe, make sure you check out my other recipes like:
Feel free to tell me what you think about this in the comments below, or send me the pictures of your own vegan soba wraps. If you did something differently, I would also like to hear that, I’d love to see the things you come up with.
P.S. for more recipes like this and bunch of other stuff, follow me on instagram, @margo_drobi.
Also, I recently started a Patreon page, where you can subscribe and help me create more/better content. In return, you will get an exclusive piece of content (recipe) each month. My plan is to increase the amount of that content if I gain a few subscribers. If you are interested and you want to find out more, I will leave the link to my Patreon right – here.