Knife cut noodles tossed with a creamy blended cottage cheese gochujang sauce and topped with crispy sesame ground beef crumbles. One serving has 40g protein with only 8g fat and 500 calories. And it takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, making it a perfect high protein meal to make on busy weeknights.
Ingredients and Substitutions
As you can see in the ingredient photo below, you can pick up everything you need from Trader Joe’s. But don’t let that deter you from making these noodles if you’re without access to a TJ’s. Everything is pretty standard fare with plenty of alternatives from any grocery store. I’ll walk you through the key points below.
Trader Joe’s Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles
This is the fourth recipe I’ve made in recent weeks using Trader Joe’s knife cut noodles. (Honey Garlic Chicken Noodles and Hoisin Beef Noodles) Feel free to use any instant noodles, but it’s worth mentioning the TJ’s noodles come with “soy and sesame” sauce packets.
Momofuku soy and scallion noodles have a similar sauce packet, and I’m sure there are others. But from what I can tell based on the ingredient list for the TJ’s noodles, adding a few teaspoons of toasted sesame oil and soy sauce to the other sauce ingredients in my recipe should get you close enough.
Creamy Gochujang Sauce
Blended cottage cheese sauces have grown on me. You just have to blend it with the right things. Like gochujang, for example.
If you want to go dairy free, both the noodle recipes I mentioned above combine a sauced protein with crisped coleslaw mix and reserved pasta water. They’re not as creamy as these gochujang noodles, but it’s an option. The reduced fat coconut milk from my TJ’s broth bowls may also be a cottage cheese alternative.
Update: Since publishing this recipe I’ve added chicken broth to the cottage cheese and gochujang to make high protein broth bowls with crispy sesame beef, steamed rice, and cucumber. I’ve also made a milder gochujang gnocchi that swaps some gochujang for white miso paste, in case you’re spice sensitive.
And I think those are the two biggest components worth covering swaps for. If you have a question about other ingredients or anything else, don’t hesitate to drop it in the comments section below.
Otherwise, I hope you love these noodles. Recipe reviews are appreciated if you do. 🙂
Hope to cook together again soon! – Mason
Creamy Gochujang Noodles
Ingredients
For the Noodles
- 3 packs Trader Joe's Knife Cut Noodles, see notes from substitutions
- 1 cup Low Fat Cottage Cheese
- ¼ cup (84g) Gochujang
- ¼ cup Water
For the Crispy Beef
- 1 pound Ground Beef, 96% lean
- 3 Sauce Packets from the Noodles
- 2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
- 1 Tablespoon Coconut Aminos or Low Sodium Soy Sauce
- 1 Tablespoon Rice Vinegar
- 4 Green Onions, thinly sliced, green and white parts separated
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil for the noodles.
- Blend the cottage cheese, gochujang, and water together until smooth. Set aside.
- Mix the sauce packets, maple syrup, coconut aminos, rice vinegar, and white parts of the sliced green onions together. Set aside.
- Brown and fully cook the ground beef in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sauce to the cooked ground beef and stir everything together. Cook for another 2-3 untouched until the sauce thickens and begins to caramelize on the bottom. (Start cooking the noodles after adding the sauce to the cooked beef.)
- Cook the noodles for 4 minutes. Reserve about ½ cup of the water and set aside before draining the rest. Add the drained noodles to the pot with the blended gochujang sauce. Toss together, using the reserved pasta water as needed to bring everything together.
- Top with the crispy beef, remaining sliced green onion, and toasted sesame seeds.
Awesome, I’ve tried your other knife cut noodle recipes and they were great! Can I do this with chicken or turkey?
Totally! Any protein should work for this one.
Trying this for dinner tonight! Question: I have organic brown rice ramen noodles at home (from Costco) but they don’t have any sauce/seasoning packets…is there an alternative? Looking forward to having this tonight!
Those should work fine. I would add an extra tablespoon or two of coconut aminos/low sodium soy sauce and 2-3 teaspoons of toasted sesame oil to the sauce for the beef. That should get you close enough without the sauce packets.
These noodles looked so good, then I tried the Gochujang/cottage cheese sauce and was severely skeptical. However, I was very pleasantly surprised with how everything came together. I only mixed in a little sauce in with the noodles because I was skeptical, but ended up going back multiple times to get more sauce. Very impressed! That’s for expanding my culinary horizons.
As a fellow cottage cheese skeptic, I feel ya. Thanks for your trust!
This was delicious! My gochujang paste is super spicy so I cut that back but I loved it.
These were easy and delicious but way more spicy than I anticipated. My daughter struggled with eating it. If I made them again I would cut the gochujang in half.
Good note I should add! Did you use TJ’s gochujang or another option? I’ve tried it with the TJ’s and Mother-in-Laws gochujang. I imagine there can be differences in spice level.
I made this for dinner tonight and it was so easy and a HUGE hit with both myself and my husband. Big fan of the macros in this dish as well. Your recipes never disappoint, Mason!
Thanks, Audrey! Glad y’all enjoyed this one.
As another CCS (cottage cheese skeptic), I am now a CCC (cottage cheese convert)! This was great and truly easy.
Wonderful recipe and will be making this again. Thanks!
Ha! Do you have a moment to talk about our high protein cream alternative?
SO YUMMY!!!! Used Costco knife cut style noodles and it was so so filling and so so good. Husband approved too!
I didn’t realize Costco had knife cut noodles. I’ll have to go check them out. Thanks for the tip!
I want to make this for meal prep. Do you think it will hold well when reheated throughout the week?
I enjoyed my leftovers the next day. I’d say the noodles hold up as well as any other leftover noodle/pasta dish. You could always store the prepared beef and sauce on their own to serve with freshly prepared noodles throughout the week. I might go that route for future batches if I decided to make a double batch.
My picky kids loved this! What a nice surprise. Next time, I’ll double the meat and the sauce. I used half of the Gochujang paste. Would love to find noodles that are higher fiber, lower carb.