Spicy Glass Noodle Salad
Yum Woon Sen
Glass noodles with shrimp, pork, and vegetables in a lime and fish sauce dressing
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 5 min
- Serves
- 4
- Heat
- hot
Yum Woon Sen keeps its dressing deliberately simple — just lime, fish sauce, and sugar, tasted and adjusted until the balance feels right — which leaves room for the rest of the salad to carry plenty of variety. Shrimp and ground pork both get cooked separately and cooled quickly so they stay tender, while chewy glass noodles, raw straw mushrooms, and a handful of vegetables including cherry tomato and Chinese celery round out the texture. It's a dish built for flexibility: the vegetables and proteins can shift with what's on hand, as long as that core three-ingredient dressing carries the sweet-sour-salty balance through.
Ingredients
- 2 2/3 cups Glass noodles (prepared according to package directions if dried)
- 5 Jumbo shrimp (prawn) (cleaned and deveined)
- 5.3 oz Chopped pork
- 1 1/3 cups Straw mushrooms (raw, halved)
- 2 cups Chinese celery (cut into pieces)
- 2/3 Brown or yellow onion, large (sliced)
- 2/3 cup Red shallots (sliced thin)
- 1 1/3 cups Cherry tomatoes (halved)
- 7 Thai hot chilies (to taste)
- 5 1/3 tablespoons Fresh lime juice
- 5 1/3 tablespoons Fish sauce
- 2 tablespoons Sugar
Directions
- If using dried glass noodles, prepare according to package directions. Clean and devein the shrimp. Cut the vegetables as needed.
- Boil about 3 cups of water and add the noodles. Blanch until soft and clear, then drain and rinse well. Cover with cold water until ready to use.
- Blanch the shrimp in boiling water for about a minute, until curled and pink — don't overcook. Remove immediately to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking, and keep cold until ready to mix.
- Boil the ground pork until fully cooked, then drain through a strainer.
- In a large bowl, whisk the lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar together until the sugar fully dissolves. Taste and adjust — more lime for sour, more fish sauce for salt, more sugar for sweet — until balanced.
- Toss in the drained noodles first, mixing well into the dressing, then add everything else and toss thoroughly to combine.
- Serve on a large shared plate with crisp fresh vegetables like cucumber, cabbage, or spring onion on the side. Garnish with fresh Chinese celery tops.
Notes
Cool the shrimp and noodles in cold water right after cooking rather than letting them sit warm — this keeps everything crisp and prevents the salad from turning soggy once dressed.
Substitutions
The chili is easy to leave out entirely for a milder salad without losing the dish's overall balance. Ground chicken can replace the pork.