Food

Food for gay men: Sweetcorn Hiyashi

Super-healthy and super Vegan-friendly.

Gareth Johnson

24 Aug 2025 • 3 min read

Hiyashi is a Japanese dish of cold noodles.

You top the noodles with delicious things - keeping it all fairly clean and restrained so it's a bowl full of fresh flavours and interesting textures.

This version uses sweetcorn as the main flavour, but if you're not crazy about sweetcorn you can adapt the principles of the dish to whatever takes your fancy.

Prepare the noodles

Ingredients:

a packet of noodles - you'll need about 300g to serve 3-4 people. Good options are ramen or soba but go with the best option you can find.
8 spring onions
4 tbsp Rapeseed oil (or similar)
2 1/2 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp white-wine vinegar

Method:

Finely chop the onions and marinate them in the oil, soy sauce, and vinegar.
Cook the noodles as per the instructions on the packet. Rinse them in cold water to cool them down.
Stir the onions and marinade through the noodles.

Prepare the sweetcorn sauce

Ingredients:

200g sweetcorn kernels - you'll get best results if you cook fresh cobs of corn (you'll probably need two) but this will also work if you're using tinned or frozen corn.
4 tbsp Rapeseed oil (or similar)
1 1/2 tbsp white miso
1 garlic clove, peeled
a knob of fresh ginger

Method:

Put the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
You might need to add a bit of extra water to get a smooth consistency.

Plate the dish and add your toppings

You're going to build this dish on a bowl or on a plate.
Focus on your presentation - channel your Japanese minimalist aesthetic - it needs to look as beautiful as it tastes.
Start with a serve of noodles as your base.
You could stir your sweetcorn sauce through the noodles before plating but that looks a bit messy and then loses the subtlety of the noodles. It works better if you put a dollop of the sweetcorn sauce on the side of the noodles.
Add your protein. If you're being vegan-friendly, smoked tofu works really well - the flavours balance nicely. But you can go with any protein that you fancy but think light and clean flavours such as poached chicken, steamed salmon, or grilled prawns.
Cucumber batons add some good crunch.
Fresh herbs such as basil bring some brightness to the palate.
Top with some extra corn kernels for colour and texture.

Prepare the noodles

Plate the dish and add your toppings

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