Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad, the Best Recipe for Summer

Filled with fresh herbs and an umami rich dressing, this Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad hits all the checkboxes for flavor! With chicken, shrimp, of tofu, it's perfect as a light and filling meal, especially in the summer. Shall we?

What Ingredients You Need for Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad

Salad ingredients:

• Rice noodles, 8 ounces
• Chicken, cooked and shredded, 2 breasts, or about 3 cups
• Romaine or green leaf lettuce, 1 head, sliced into long, thin shreds
• Cilantro, 1 cup leaves
• Mint, 1 cup leaves
• Thai basil, 1 cup leaves
• Persian cucumbers, 2
• Carrot, 1 large, finely julienned
• Green onion, 1 stalk, thin slice on bias

optional: coarsely chopped roasted peanuts, 1 cup mung bean sprouts

Fish Sauce Vinaigrette aka "Nuoc Cham" Dressing ingredients:

• Garlic, 2 cloves minced
• Ginger, 1-inch piece grated
• Lime, 1-2 or enough to make ¼ cup (4 tablespoons) juice
• Apple cider or rice vinegar, ¼ cup
• Fish sauce, 2 tablespoons
• Maple syrup, 1 tablespoon plus more to taste (can sub any equivalent amount of sugar or sweetener)
• Jalapeño, serrano, or Thai bird chile pepper (in order of spiciness!), seeded and sliced, 1 tablespoon - leave this out if you prefer no spice

What to Do with Fish Sauce

For reference, pho is served with rice noodles called bánh phở, which are wider and flatter, similar in shape to fettuccine or tagliatelle. They are available both fresh and dried. Rice noodles labeled for pad thai are also in this category.

However, any type of rice noodle works for this recipe, whether round or flat, thin and narrow or thick and wide, dried or fresh.

For reference the rice noodles that are round and cylindrical in shape are called "bun" and labeled as rice vermicelli. They are not always super thin like western style vermicelli pasta, and can range in diameter from super thin like angel hair to about as thick as spaghetti.

• This organic rice noodle is labeled as "pho."
• I use brown rice noodles when they are available, or like this.
• For thinner rice vermicelli, this well-known brand is available at Asian markets and online.

Pro (Am) Tip: The flat-shaped rice noodles are easier to pick up with chopsticks, i.e. not as slippery!

Like every condiment and seasoning, there are a lot of brands of fish sauce on the shelves at the market and they all range in quality, flavor, and saltiness. Here is what to look for:

• anchovies (or other fish) and salt as the only 2 ingredients
• if there are additional ingredients, choose the brand/bottle with the fewest ingredients, preferably without added sugar, preservatives, or coloring
• protein content at least 2 g means there is less dilution with water
• color/darkness doesn't indicate quality so you can ignore that.
• some popular, good brands are Squid (Thai) and Three Crabs (Vietnamese)

Almost every Asian cuisine has some sort of fish sauce, and even Italian cooking has one called colatura!

Additional Ingredients Notes, Substitutions, and Resources

Chicken. Store-bought rotisserie chicken is your BEST FRIEND for this recipe. I almost always use chicken breast because that's what's leftover after eating the more delicious dark meat first ha! But using the dark meat in this salad will give you a LOT more flavor and a slightly different nutrition profile.

Apple Cider Vinegar. This generic store brand of organic Apple Cider Vinegar is generally the most affordable where I shop. This is the well-known apple cider vineger brand that's available everywhere.

Rice Vinegar. I use this brand organic brown rice vinegar.

Maple Syrup. I use an organic maple syrup. You can substitute with other sweetener of choice.

Jalapeño, Serrano, or Thai Bird Chile Pepper. If you want a little bit of heat in the dressing, use a jalapeño pepper which is easy to find, even though what you usually see with fish sauce are the small, red Thai bird chiles. For medium heat, but also want the red color, use a Fresno pepper, which is about the same heat level as jalapeño. If you can stand the heat, just know that a Thai bird chile is very very very spicy at up to 100,000 Scoville units, or about 40x hotter than a jalapeño. Serrano peppers are in between, not quite as spicy as a Thai bird, but spicier than jalapeños.

Garlic, Ginger, and all other fresh herbs and produce from either the Santa Monica Farmers' Market on Wednesday, Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sunday, or Whole Foods Market when I can't find what I need at the farmers' market.

Instructions for How to Make Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad

The KEY to making this salad is slicing the lettuce into long, thin shreds, as well as the julienned carrots, cucumbers, and thin slices of green onion. Super fine shreds of the lettuce and vegetables make them easier to chew and digest, grip onto the dressing better, and easier to pick up with chopsticks.

There are a few tips and tricks along the way that will make this, or any, salad, the best salad of your life.

Pro Tips and Techniques for Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad

1. Sub in cooked shrimp or roasted tofu for the chicken!
2. Shred the lettuce and other vegetables as thin as possible. This will make for easier eating, especially with chopsticks. And what other utensil would you be using?!
3. Dress only the amount of salad you will serve and eat in one sitting. Leftover salad with dressing will be ok in the fridge for a day. After that, the dressed salad won't be bad, it will just get soggy and the noodles might start to disintegrate.

Tools and Equipment

You don't technically need any special equipment to make this Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad. You can simply use a large knife and cutting board to shred all the lettuce and julienne the carrots. However, that doesn't mean there are a couple of gadgets and tools that might make this salad even easier to throw together than it already is.

• Japanese mandoline, for faster uniform slicing
• Regular mandoline with storage container
• Salad spinner is absolutely necessary for a house that eats a lot of salads because wet, soggy greens are the enemy of good salads.
• Glass mixing bowls that can also double as the serving bowl
• Chef's knife, my personal workhorse
• Wooden cutting board, oversized for all those radish cubes
• Vegetable peeler once I switched to this from the old-school swivel style, I never looked back

For the dressing, these tools are also helpful

• Citrus squeezer. You can squeeze citrus by hand, but my cheap frugal value-driven heart likes to squeeze out EVERY last nano-drop of juice
• Garlic press. You can mince by hand, but why? Take the help whenever you can!
• 2-ounce (4 tablespoons) liquid measuring cup
• Mini stainless steel whisk
• Small glass mason jars (8 ounces), get rid of those annoying 2-piece metal lids and use these air-tight lids

Best Chilled Noodle Salads You Must Try

• Soba Noodle Salad
• Soba Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce
• Bibim Naeng Myun, Korean Spicy Buckwheat Noodles
• Jap Chae, Korean Glass Noodle Salad
• Spicy Jap Chae, Korean Glass Noodle Salad with Spicy Sauce
• Summer Roll Salad