Udon are thick, chewy Japanese noodles made from soft wheat flour, water and salt — among the fattest of all noodles, round or square in cross-section and typically two to four millimetres across. Boiled, they are pale, glossy, slippery and famously bouncy, with a smooth surface and a soft, springy, deeply satisfying chew the Japanese prize under the word koshi. Plain they are mild and clean, barely sweet with a soft wheaty smell; like pasta and rice noodles their real job is texture and a neutral canvas, sitting in a light dashi-based broth or tossed with sauce that they carry rather than compete with — which is why the exact springiness of the noodle and its slippery bite matter as much as anything in the bowl.