Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen today I've got a new and improved recipe for a classic
Thai salad and that is glass noodle salad or yum woon sen now yum is a type of Thai salad and Woon sen is
glass noodles now to me this dish is the ultimate homesickness cure because it's one of those dishes
that you know we have all the time whether we're at home or in a restaurant and because it's so
easy to make this was one of the very first dishes I made when I first left home and I missed hai
food so I'm excited to share this recipe with you let's get started all right glass noodles you can
buy glass noodles of any Asian grocery stores and they come dry like this now this is actually
made of mung bean starch 100% mung bean starch so sometimes they'll be called bean threads or
bean vermicelli or glass vermicelli there's lots of different names for it so what you want to do
is get these soaking in just room-temperature water for about 10 minutes until they become
pliable like this I want to cut them just a couple of times so they're not too long so it's easier to
eat just with scissors all right so now the next thing you want to get going is the dried shrimp so
I've got here some dried shrimp which you can find at any Chinese grocery stores in the refrigerated
section there are many sizes I go for the medium one so what I did is I soaked them in hot water
just for five 10 minutes or so until they're nice and softened and you notice that they've sort of
swollen in size a little bit and that is so that I can pound them and break them up a little bit
so they'll distribute better if you don't have a mortar and pestle like this you can just chop
them just like that that's perfect so I'm going to just set this aside for now all right now the
dressing I'm going to add some garlic for a little pungent so just a couple of cloves here you can do
more if you'd like and spicy I always say there's no such thing as a Thai salad that's not spicy but
you can make this as spicy as you like I'm also going to add cilantro stems now the leaves and
say you tossin at the end but the stems are so aromatic and they make a great salad dressing
lots of cilantro if you don't like cilantro you can just leave it out I'm going to pound all
this into a paste all right just like that just a rough paste and now some sweetness to balance
I've got some palm sugar here you can just do a light brown sugar if you want and some people do
white sugar I used to do white sugar but I do find that palm sugar does add a little more complexity
and pound that until the sugar is dissolved just like that some salty of course fish sauce can't
have a tae-young without fish sauce and finally the last thing is fresh lime juice and I want to
stress the word fresh because bottled lime juices will not do it's the main ingredient you want the
salad to be tart and refreshing all right so my blanching water for the noodles and our protein
is going let's first look at the vegetables though I've got some onions here thinly sliced
now this is actually sweet onion because I think that's better for this dish I've got some tomatoes
you can use cherry I'm using roma tomatoes it's got lower moisture content so it won't release
too much water into the salad and I have some celery now normally I would use Chinese celery
but the Chinese celery at the store was no it was ridiculously wilted so I am using instead
the inner stalks of regular celery which works just as well so you know the inside stocks at a
lot of times you can't really use it for much but the leaves and the thinner stalks are perfect for
this dish so now in this mixing bowl I'm going to throw in my dried shrimp okay I think the water is
boiling now close enough what I love about yawen scent is that the wood scent takes literally two
minutes to cook all right so that's done now I'm actually going to remove them with tongs I want
to keep the water for my protein and when I get down to like the final strands I'm going to use
one of these handy things to try to get them all right with this water I'm going to turn it back on
and we'll cook my shrimp and you can also pan sear the shrimp if you want get little you know little
browning on them get a little extra flavor but I'm just going to keep it traditional and classic
in Thai cuisine we do blanch our protein quite a lot especially for salads so I don't need to
wait for the water to come to a full boil just a simmer is fine gentle cooking prevents shrimp
from overcooking too quickly and these will take literally 30 seconds okay and that's it for the
shrimp going to put them directly in my salad bowl here just make sure you shake off all the water
now what I'm going to do I've also got ground pork which I think it's the most important protein in
this dish you can do ground chicken if you'd like but I'm going to cook it in here but there's too
much water right now so I'm just going to pour off most of it until I only have just enough to
cover the bottom and if you've seen my lab video you recognize this technique as being a little
one and that means cooking something in just a little water or sometimes little oil until it's
fully cooked at the pork in there and I'm going to break that up really quickly so I don't get
big clumps I'm also going to add just a splash of fish sauce just a little bit to season the
pork and that's it once it's fully cooked you are done use a slotted skimmer or mesh skimmer and I'm
going to move that into my salad bowl there you go and the heats from the pork and the shrimp oyster
wilt the onions and tomatoes and celery a little bit and that's a good thing now what I'm going
to do is I'm going to add some of that cooking liquid because that is like pork stock now it's
got pork flavor and shrimp flavor and I think it sort of brings everything together not too much
just about a tablespoon you don't want to you know dilute the dressing okay the noodles go in the
dressing is going to go directly on the noodles and that will help the noodle split up oh that
smells so good right now just look at that oh I'm also going to add now the cilantro leaves and use
the stem for the dressing and use the leaves for the salad there we go that looks and smells like
a party and young Winston is just one of those dishes you want to eat as soon as it's done okay
because the noodles will continue to absorb the dressing and then it'll be dry and the noodles
will be all swollen so you don't want to toss it till you're ready to rock look at that look how
pretty that is now I am not quite done yet this is only gonna get better with a little crunch I
am adding some roasted peanuts and I roasted the peanuts fresh it's going to be that nutty crunchy
element of the salad and that is what's going to make it perfect if you're allergic to nuts
you can do pumpkin seeds or or soy nuts cashews will work as well but peanuts are my favorite for
this all right so normally I like to eat this with rice but you can serve it as an appetizer
on its own I don't have any rice right now so I'm going to eat it on its own make sure it gets some
dried shrimp on theirs and peanuts on there oh my gosh oh this smell this makes me this home already
oh my Garf that's the flavor of Thailand right there when I think of Thai food this is the flavor
that comes to my a balance of sweet salty and sour but it leads with sour so refreshing the celery's
crunchy the tomato is juicy and the noodles if you haven't had glass noodles before they have the
funnest texture the peanuts really add that crunch and nuttiness oh my God if you haven't tried yet
within you have to try it and if you've tried my old recipe try this one this is even better so
the recipe as always will be out hot Thai Kitchen calm when you make it send me a photo on Facebook
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