Tallarin Saltado – Easy Vegetarian Stir-Fried Noodles

This delicious, fragrant tallarin saltado, or stir-fried noodles with vegetables, is a great way to use all the leftover veggies in your fridge!

The fresh ginger makes it warming as you eat, but it is not too spicy. I made mine vegan by using pasta, which is a common way to make it, but you can also use egg noodles if you would like.

I admittedly used a lot of vegetables, so it took some time to chop them all.

If you are short on time, feel free to use a frozen stir-fry mix, pre-cut veggies from the grocery store, or a simpler combination.

Just red bell pepper, onion, and green onion would also be just fine, for example, as would tomato, onion, and green onion. Make it work for you!

What is Tallarin Saltado?

Tallarin Saltado is a Peruvian dish inspired by Chinese cooking. It is essentially a Peruvian-Cantonese chow mein.

This fusion dish uses South American ingredients with the cooking style of Cantonese food. This Peruvian and Chinese fusion cuisine is called Chifa. While Chifa originated in Peru, it has now gained popularity in the neighboring countries of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile.

Chifa came into being in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Chinese immigrants from Guangdong settled along the western coast of Peru and primarily in the capital, Lima. The name chifa, in addition to describing this culinary tradition, also describes restaurants that serve this kind of food.

The two Ls in tallarin are pronounced as a Y, and saltado (or salteado in other Spanish-speaking countries) means stir-fried. It comes from the French sautée, meaning “to jump.” Wok cooking certainly does cause your food to jump!

We, of course, will be making a vegetarian tallarin saltado, but this dish traditionally often contains chicken. Another similar dish, lomo saltado, is stir-fried beef with a similar sauce, although it is usually served with rice (another nod to its Asian heritage) and/or French fries (potatoes were first domesticated in Peru) instead of noodles.

The culinary legacy of Peru

Many people don’t know that both potatoes and tomatoes originated in Peru. (I didn’t until recently.) Spanish conquistadors brought them back to Europe, where potatoes enjoyed great popularity in Ireland, and tomatoes became important to Italian cuisine.

You can learn more about how potatoes made their way across the pond in my kartoffel klosse recipe for potato dumplings.

I go into greater detail about tomatoes and their journey in my recipe for homemade hearty marinara sauce.

Here’s an interesting article describing how the Andes mountains are one of the world’s most diverse food regions, home to numerous varieties of both potatoes and tomatoes.

What kind of noodles should I use for tallarin saltado?

• Any long pasta like spaghetti, linguine, fettuccini, or angel hair would work just fine, as would egg noodles if you don’t need this recipe to be vegan.

How to peel fresh ginger

• Fresh ginger comes in unusual shapes, so using a knife or a vegetable peeler becomes challenging. I used a spoon to peel mine, and found it quite effective.

This recipe also calls for a little pasta water reserved from cooking your pasta. If you’re not sure why you should use pasta water or what it even is, I explain it in this post.

Tallarin Saltado Ingredients

Before you begin, you will need:

• 1 pound of pasta (I used spaghetti.)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 2/3 of a yellow onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 bunch of green onions, chopped and divided into the greens and the white parts
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional)
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or you can use a garlic press
• 1 Tbsp fresh minced ginger (mine was heaping)
• 1/2 a jalapeno, with seeds removed, cut into rounds and again in half (Aji amarillo, or yellow Andean pepper, is more authentic if you can find it in your grocery store. I could not. You may be able to find these frozen or as a paste)
• 2 Tbsp pasta water reserved from cooking the pasta
• 1/4 cup liquid aminos or soy sauce
• A wok or large frying pan (I guessed my frying pan would be too small, so I used the same dutch oven I cooked the spaghetti in, which also worked just fine.)
• A pot for cooking the pasta
• Knife(s) and cutting board
• A spoon for peeling the ginger

How to make Tallarin Saltado

1. First, cook your pasta according to the instructions on the package. Boil water and add salt.
2. While the water is coming to a boil, you can start washing and chopping your vegetables.
3. Once the water is at a boil, add the pasta and cook to your preference.
4. While the pasta is cooking, continue chopping all the vegetables: onion, green onions, bell pepper, celery, tomato, jalapeno, ginger, and garlic.
5. When the pasta is ready, reserve some pasta water (at least 1/4 cup) and drain the pasta. Set it aside for now.
6. Finish chopping vegetables as needed. Peel the ginger with a spoon before mincing.
7. Place your frying pan over medium heat and add the olive oil.
8. Once it’s hot, add the onion and cook until it starts to look translucent, about five minutes or so. Stir in the whites of the green onion, bell pepper, and celery and cook for another five minutes.
9. Continue cooking, and as as those vegetables soften, stir in the tomato, salt, pepper, and greens of the green onion. Let those ingredients cook and soften for a couple minutes.
10. Add the minced garlic and sliced jalapeño and stir to combine. Continue cooking for a couple more minutes.
11. Stir in the ginger and liquid aminos/soy sauce. Let your completed veggies and sauce cook for a couple more minutes so all the flavors can meld together.
12. When you think the vegetables and sauce look about ready, start stirring in the pasta. Add the pasta water as needed as you go. Stir-fry the pasta for a few minutes.
13. Once everything is fully combined and fragrant, serve right away and garnish with green onions if you still have some!

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Variations on Tallarin Saltado

As is the case with most stir fries, you can endlessly vary the ingredients based on what vegetables you have in your fridge, frozen, or canned, or what you like to eat.

Add water chestnuts, baby corn, any peppers you have or like, etc.

Feel free to add tofu or seitan for a heartier meal.

For a quicker meal, use ground ginger and garlic. If you make it this way, you might want to add some crushed red pepper flakes to add a little extra heat.

I made this tallarin saltado as written, and the salt level was similar to what you would be served in a restaurant. You can easily omit the salt since we are using liquid aminos or soy sauce.

To reduce the sodium further, you could swap the proportions of pasta water and liquid aminos/soy sauce. So instead, use 1/4 cup of pasta water and just 2 Tbsp of liquid aminos/soy sauce for a healthier tallarin saltado.

Related Vegetarian Recipes

If you have any leftover vegetables after making this dish (half of a pepper here, extra stalks of celery there, etc.), you may wish to make my mild giardiniera to preserve them for later!

In addition, you might like this pomodorini penne with cherry tomatoes.

You may also enjoy my Gouda mac and cheese.

I hope you like this tallarin saltado!