Cold Rice Noodle Bowl with Seared Mushrooms, Herbs, and Nuoc Cham
Cool rice vermicelli under hard-seared mushrooms, cucumber, carrot, and bean sprouts, with mint, cilantro, and basil by the fistful and a sharp lime and chile dressing poured over.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
This is my hot-weather lunch, the one I make when the idea of a warm plate is unbearable but a sandwich is not going to hold me. It borrows its shape from the Vietnamese noodle bowls sold out of shopfronts all over the country, where a bed of cool vermicelli sits under something hot off the grill and a small dish of dressing arrives on the side. I have swapped the grilled part for torn mushrooms seared hard in a dry pan, which is a trick worth knowing on its own, and everything else stays the way it has always been.
The whole dish turns on temperature and on the herbs, and both are easy to get wrong. Noodles need to be properly cold, rinsed under the tap until they stop feeling starchy, because warm vermicelli goes gluey and drinks the dressing before it reaches anything else. The herbs go in whole rather than chopped, so a mouthful is sometimes mint and sometimes basil and sometimes neither, and that variation is most of the pleasure. The mushrooms are the only hot thing in the bowl, and they should be dark, chewy, and just short of crisp when they come out. Dress it at the table rather than in the kitchen, because everything in the bowl starts to soften the moment the lime lands on it.
I make this for lunch on a Tuesday and again on a Thursday, and it never feels like the same bowl twice, because the proportions shift with whatever is in the drawer. It also packs well if you keep the dressing in a separate jar, which is how I send it to work. Half an hour of knife work on a Sunday gets you the vegetables and the herbs washed and ready, and after that a bowl comes together in the time the noodles take to soften in hot water. It feeds four people properly, and unlike most dressed salads the components hold their character for days as long as they stay apart until you eat.
Ingredients
- 8 oz thin rice vermicelli noodles
- 12 oz cremini mushrooms, stems trimmed and caps torn into rough halves
- 1 large English cucumber, halved lengthwise and sliced on a long angle
- 3 medium carrots, cut into fine matchsticks
- 2 cups mung bean sprouts, rinsed and drained well
- 4 scallions, sliced thin on a long angle
- 1 packed cup mint leaves, left whole
- 1 packed cup cilantro leaves and tender stems
- 1 packed cup Thai basil leaves, torn
- 1 jalapeno or 2 Thai bird chiles, sliced into thin rings
- 4 garlic cloves, grated to a paste
- 3 1/2 tbsp lime juice, from 2 to 3 limes, plus wedges for the table
- 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
- 2 tsp maple syrup
- 1 tbsp avocado oil
- 1 1/2 tsp toasted sesame oil
- 3 1/2 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted in a dry pan
- 2 1/2 tbsp sunflower seeds, toasted and roughly chopped
Instructions
- Soften the noodles: Bring a kettle of water to the boil and pour it over the rice vermicelli in a heatproof bowl. Let the noodles sit for four to six minutes, stirring once with chopsticks so they separate, until they are tender all the way through with no chalky center. Drain and rinse under cold running water for a full minute, tossing with your hands until they feel cool and slippery rather than sticky, then leave them to drain.
- Shake up the nuoc cham: Combine the lime juice, soy sauce, maple syrup, grated garlic, and half the chile rings in a jar with two tablespoons of water and shake hard until the syrup dissolves. Taste it. It should hit sour first, salty second, and sweet last, and it should be sharp enough to make you blink, because the noodles will mute it considerably.
- Sear the mushrooms: Set a 12-inch skillet over medium-high with no fat in it and add the torn mushrooms in one layer. They will squeak and then release their water. Leave them alone for four minutes, until the liquid has cooked off and the undersides are browning, then add the avocado oil and toss for three to four minutes more, until the pieces are deep brown, shrunk by half, and chewy at the edges. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the sesame oil.
- Build the bowls: Divide the drained noodles among four wide shallow bowls and loosen them with your fingers so they are not a solid clump. Arrange the cucumber, carrot matchsticks, and bean sprouts around the edges in loose piles, then scatter the scallions and drop the mint, cilantro, and Thai basil over everything in whole leaves.
- Top and dress at the table: Pile the hot mushrooms into the middle of each bowl and scatter the toasted sesame seeds, the chopped sunflower seeds, and the rest of the chile over the top. Pour the dressing over just before eating and toss each bowl with chopsticks so the noodles are coated from the bottom up. Serve with lime wedges.
Variations
- Seared tofu: Add half a block of firm tofu, cut into fingers and browned in the same pan after the mushrooms come out.
- Charred scallion: Blacken the scallions whole in the dry pan before slicing them, which gives the bowl a smoky note underneath the lime.
- Green mango: Add a firm underripe mango cut into matchsticks for a sour, crunchy layer that plays against the chile.
- Lemongrass mushrooms: Toss the mushrooms with a tablespoon of finely minced lemongrass in the last minute of searing.
- Extra crunch: Add a cup of shredded green cabbage or a handful of thinly sliced radish to the vegetables around the edge.
Storage & Leftovers
Undressed, the parts keep beautifully for three days in the refrigerator in separate containers. The noodles firm up and clump as they chill, so loosen them under a brief run of warm water and shake them dry before serving. Herbs are the one thing that will not wait, so wash and dry them the morning you plan to eat.
Dressed, the bowl is at its best inside the hour and still perfectly good for a day. The cucumber and sprouts give up water overnight and the noodles soften, which makes for a looser, milder bowl the next day. A fresh squeeze of lime and a few new herb leaves bring most of the brightness back.
The seared mushrooms keep four days and are the most useful leftover here. They reheat in a dry pan in two minutes and are just as good cold, folded into the bowl straight from the container. The dressing keeps two weeks in a sealed jar and is worth doubling while the ingredients are already out.
Notes & Tips
- Start the mushrooms in a dry pan: Oil added at the beginning traps the water the mushrooms are about to release and they simmer in it. Dry first, oil second, and you get brown edges rather than gray slices.
- Rinse the noodles until they squeak: Cold water washes off the surface starch that makes vermicelli sticky. A full minute under the tap is the difference between separate strands and a single block.
- Taste the dressing on a spoon: It should be noticeably too sharp on its own. Balanced in the jar means flat in the bowl, because the noodles and cucumber dilute it the moment they meet.
- Tear the mushrooms, do not slice them: Torn faces are rough and irregular, so they catch the pan in more places and brown in half the time a smooth cut face takes.
- Keep the herbs whole: Chopped herbs turn into a uniform green fleck and every bite tastes the same. Whole leaves give you distinct hits of mint, then basil, then cilantro.
- Toast the sesame seeds yourself: Two minutes in a dry pan over medium, shaking constantly, until they smell nutty and start to hop. The flavor is not comparable to what comes out of the jar.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Rice noodles, seared mushrooms, and a bowl full of crisp vegetables and herbs do three separate jobs here. The noodles give the bowl its body, the mushrooms give it savor and chew, and the cucumber, carrot, and sprouts keep every mouthful cold and crunchy against them.
- Mushrooms seared hard turn meaty and dense, and that deep savory taste is glutamate developing in the pan. They also carry B vitamins and, when they have seen sunlight, some vitamin D, which is unusual in a plant food.
- Sesame seeds toasted in a dry pan are the small thing that changes the bowl, nutty and slightly bitter against all that lime, and a scatter of them is a real source of calcium.
- Carrots cut into fine matchsticks stay sweet and snappy under the dressing, and their beta-carotene is the pigment your body converts into vitamin A. Cutting them thin also lets the lime get right through them within a few minutes.
- Mint, cilantro, and Thai basil are treated as a vegetable here rather than a garnish, cooling and citrusy and faintly of anise, and using them by the cupful is what makes a bowl of noodles taste alive.
- As you eat, notice how the noodles that sat under the hot mushrooms taste different from the ones at the edge of the bowl, and let the sharpness of the lime slow your chopsticks down between mouthfuls.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use a different mushroom?
Almost any will work. Shiitake caps are the best of them, with more chew and a deeper flavor, and oyster mushrooms tear into ragged strips that brown beautifully. Whatever you use, tear rather than slice, since a torn edge catches more heat and browns faster than a clean cut one.
My noodles turned into one solid lump. What went wrong?
Either they were not rinsed long enough or they sat drained for too long without being loosened. Rinse under cold water for a full minute, working them with your hands, and then toss them every few minutes while you finish the rest. A teaspoon of the sesame oil through the drained noodles also keeps them separate.
How do I pack this for work?
Noodles and vegetables in the container, herbs in a small bag on top, dressing in a jar. Assemble at your desk, which takes about a minute. Packing it dressed gives you a soft, muted bowl by noon, and the whole appeal of this lunch is the crunch.
Is this filling enough on its own?
It is a real lunch, and the noodles and the mushrooms are doing most of that work. If you want it heavier, add a cup of shelled edamame or a few cubes of seared tofu to the bowls, both of which sit naturally in this dressing.