Easy & Addictive Asian Garlic Noodles Recipe (2024)

4.82 from 550 votes

• Half a box or 8 oz of pasta*
• Approximately 6 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 to 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

For the sauce

• 1 Tbsp oyster sauce**
• 1 tsp soy or fish sauce***
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar

For toppings

• Chopped scallions
• Parmesan cheese
• Optional: Drizzle of sesame oil, black pepper, Trader Joe’s chili onion crunch hot sauce

• Cook pasta per box instructions in lightly salted water, and set aside a little pasta water in a bowl for later. Drain the pasta, rinse under cold water to avoid clumping and set aside.

• While pasta is cooking, chop up and heat the garlic in a large pan with the olive oil and butter over low-medium heat for 5 – 10 minutes, until garlic softens and is fragrant. It’s important to cook the garlic slowly on heat that isn’t too high, to avoid burning the garlic. You can let it sit in the pan and don’t need to constantly sauté it – maybe just stir once every few minutes. The goal is to infuse the garlic flavor into the butter and oil.

• Note: if you’re including shrimp or other seafood, season it separately then simply sauté it in the garlic oil..S et your cooked seafood aside to mix in later.

• Mix up the sauce in a separate small bowl. Soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and optional fish sauce.

• Add noodles to the pan once the garlic is done sautéing, while keeping the heat on. Toss the noodles, garlic, sauce mixture and scallions. Add in a little of the saved pasta water to help everything mix smoothly.

• Top with grated parmesan cheese and an optional drizzle of sesame oil and chilis!

Personally I like these noodles lightly sauced so you can taste the garlic and cheese more, but several of you mentioned doubling the sauce recipe – never hurts to have extra on hand!

* Pasta: Now that we’ve made this several times, it worked best with thinner (DeCecco linguini fini was so good for this!) or flat noodles where the garlic flavor and sauce sticks better. In these photos, we only had bucatini which is a thicker, hollow noodle so it didn't work as well. For any box pasta I would highly recommend anything DeCecco brand though!

** Oyster sauce is in a lot of Asian cooking for adding savoriness and depth, and can be found at most Asian grocery stores or at the international aisles of regular groceries. You can substitute hoisin sauce, but since that's sweeter, I’d reduce the brown sugar by maybe half. Some have also subbed Worcestershire sauce mixed with soy sauce.

*** Soy and fish sauce will each add a different type of saltiness to the dish, so you can use whichever you prefer or a mix. I love fish sauce on noodles so add 1 tsp in addition to the soy!