Grilled Chicken Ramen Salad

James found the box on Wednesday. Top shelf of the bedroom closet, behind my college textbooks and a broken humidifier I keep meaning to throw away. A shoebox ╬ôçö not shoes inside, but the adoption file. The documents from Eastern Social Welfare Society, photocopied on thin paper that smells like nothing and means everything. My intake form. Baby Girl #4719. Approximate age: three days. Weight: 2.9 kilograms. Distinguishing marks: none. He didn't open it ╬ôçö James is not a man who opens things that aren't his ╬ôçö but he saw the Korean characters on the folder and set it on the bed and waited for me to come home from my run.

I sat on the bed and held the folder and told him things I've told Dr. Yoon but never told him. That I used to read the intake form every year on my birthday, looking for clues that weren't there. That I stopped reading it when I started therapy because Dr. Yoon said I was picking at a wound. That the folder has traveled with me from the Bellevue house to my UW dorm to this condo and I have never once considered throwing it away because it is the only physical proof that I existed before David and Karen. James sat beside me and didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said, "Show me." So I did.

I made kongnamul-guk that night ╬ôçö soybean sprout soup, the simplest thing in my Korean repertoire, the soup Korean mothers make when someone is sick or sad or just needs to be fed without fuss. Anchovy broth, soybean sprouts, garlic, a little sesame oil. It takes twenty minutes. It asks nothing of you. James ate two bowls and said it tasted clean, and it did ╬ôçö clean the way a room feels after you've opened the windows, after you've let the air move through the space where stale things were sitting.

Thursday I worked twelve hours on the Alexa NLP project, debugging a model that kept misinterpreting Korean-accented English, which felt like a metaphor I was too tired to examine. Friday I ran four miles along the waterfront and the city was beautiful and empty and I passed maybe six people and none of us made eye contact because that's what the pandemic has made us ╬ôçö polite ghosts sharing a sidewalk. Saturday James and I made dumplings ╬ôçö mandu, his folding technique better than mine because his mother taught him young and mine taught me never. We froze forty of them. Pandemic provisions. The freezer is full of things we've made together, labeled and dated, a small archive of this strange, suspended life.

We’d spent Saturday folding mandu until our hands smelled like sesame and pork, and the freezer was as full as I knew how to make it — forty dumplings, labeled in James’s handwriting, standing in for something neither of us had words for yet. By Sunday I wanted something that didn’t require a rolling pin or a tender emotional center, something with crunch and brightness and that particular clean-acid hit that cuts through a heavy week. This ramen salad has been in my rotation for years, and it is, like kongnamul-guk in its own way, a thing that asks almost nothing and quietly delivers: crispy toasted noodles, grilled chicken, a ginger-sesame dressing that smells like a pantry I’ve been building toward my whole life.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for grill
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 packages (3 oz each) ramen noodles, seasoning packets discarded
4 cups shredded napa cabbage
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1 cup matchstick-cut carrots
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
For the dressing:
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely grated
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Instructions

Toast the noodles. Preheat oven to 350°F. Break dry ramen noodles into rough 1-inch pieces and spread on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake 6–8 minutes, stirring once halfway, until golden and fragrant. Set aside to cool completely.
Grill the chicken. Heat a grill or grill pan over medium-high heat and brush lightly with oil. Pat chicken breasts dry, rub with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, and season with salt and pepper. Grill 6–7 minutes per side until cooked through and internal temperature reaches 165°F. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest 5 minutes, then slice thin against the grain.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, ginger, garlic, and vegetable oil until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Build the salad base. In a large bowl, combine napa cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, and green onions. Toss to mix evenly.
Dress and finish. Add sliced chicken and three-quarters of the toasted ramen noodles to the bowl. Pour dressing over and toss well to coat. Transfer to a serving platter or individual bowls. Top with remaining toasted noodles, sliced almonds, and sesame seeds. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Grilled Chicken Ramen Salad — The Week We Filled the Freezer