welcome to hot thai kitchen so today's recipe is now my number one favorite vegan dish
yes we are going to cook glass noodles in this umami loaded sauce in a clay pot and i'm going
to top it with all sorts of good stuff this is actually my vegan version of a popular shrimp
dish called "goong ob woonsen" i'll also link to that down below but trust me you're not gonna miss
the shrimp all right let's get started first the heart of the recipe the herb paste we're starting
out with white peppercorns and black peppercorns you can do one or the other but i like both
just like that and now some garlic and cilantro stems if you are in thailand or you have access to
cilantro roots, that's what you would use and this as you might recall is called our "three friends"
that's it just a rough paste doesn't have to be a fine paste and then the absolute most important
ingredient in this dish i've got some ginger which i'm just gonna put here just so i have
all my herbs together but we're not gonna pound it but now it's all ready to go and now the sauce
which involves a secret ingredient coming up but first oyster sauce which in this case is actually
vegetarian oyster sauce but it's labeled as vegetarian mushroom sauce i will talk more about
what that ingredient is and what not in the blog post so make sure you check that out soy sauce...
ah!! that's the wrong soy sauce! so that's a black soy sauce which you should only use a little bit
of so that it's not too black so a little bit of black soy sauce or dark soy sauce to give it a
little bit of color and then regular soy sauce which you can use plenty of toasted sesame oil
and some sugar and now for that secret ingredient mushroom water yes so this is dry shiitake
mushrooms that i soaked in hot water for about half an hour to rehydrate and this liquid is so
full of umami full of flavor if you're vegetarian this is your secret weapon right here it adds just
so much robustness to the dish so i'm going to remove my mushrooms first and we will use that
and just squeeze out excess water and i'm going to add about half a cup to our sauce here
and don't throw the rest away we might need this still give this a stir to dissolve the sugar
and that's it and now for the star of the show glass noodles which as always i am using
pine brand which is also the sponsor of the show today the reason i love pine brand is
because it's made from a hundred percent mung bean starch and that's really important for texture
because some brands will cut costs by adding pea starch or potato starch and i've used that
and the texture is really quite different it's not nearly as chewy and elastic as it should
be and also i really like that pine brand has the unbleached version which means that they make the
noodles out of whole mung beans with the green shell still on and so that's why you see this
beautiful green tint right here and it's super easy to use all i've done is just soak this in
room temp water for about seven to ten minutes and then it's nice and pliable and ready to go and i'm
gonna cut this down into about three inch sections because it's very long makes it very hard to eat
all right good enough and now all i'm gonna do is pour our sauce over the noodles and just give
that a quick mix okay one last thing before we cook i swear remember those mushrooms the dry
shiitake mushrooms i'm just gonna remove the stem which is quite tough and then just thinly slice
alright now we are ready to cook clay pot noodles of course we're going to need a clay pot which you
don't actually need because it makes no difference to the actual food itself but traditionally
it is served in the pot that it is cooked in so you'd want to have something nice
but you could just cook it in any pot and then transfer later but you do want a thick bottom
pot so that it won't burn because everything will sort of cook stove top here okay so now
this is a pot that i usually use for hot pot i'm gonna turn the heat on low for now
and then put in just a little bit of oil not too much because remember we've got some oil in the
sauce already all of our three friends and the ginger goes in and also the shiitake mushrooms
i'm gonna turn the heat up a little bit it's about medium and just gonna cook this
until it's nice and aromatic the annoying thing about this pot is that it gets really hot
so you make sure you have something to protect yourself with and the ginger by the way you
do not eat it's just for infusion i mean you could but it's just for infusion purposes only
getting a little bit of browning on the bottom of my pot which is my cue to go in with the sauce and
the noodles and it'll help deglaze everything i want to make sure i scrape any stock bits on the
bottom give this a good mix all the oil the garlic the flavor from the herbs are all over the noodles
i know the sauce is pooling at the bottom do not worry it will all get worked in and now close
turn the heat to as low as it could possibly go and then cook for three minutes but you
start the timer once you hear the bubbling start back up so once if you add the noodles
and it's like completely cooled the pot down wait give it a little bit more time to heat back up
hey i should set my timer
so it's been three minutes and they are not done i want to come in
and give them a toss and redistribute all that liquid now do i want this a little darker
maybe a little more of that black soy sauce and now judging by how much liquid is left and how
much the noodles still have to go i'm going to add a little bit more water because it probably
needs it if you have no experience in this don't worry when it's done you can taste it
if it's still a little chewy add more water the glass noodles are very forgiving it's very hard
to overcook them and so you can just kind of keep adding water until you're satisfied okay
i'm going to close and two more minutes two to three more minutes and it should be done wow
oh that smells so good oh and by the way in thailand glass noodles are known as sort of the
diet friendly noodles because they swell up so much more they absorb so much more
water than rice noodles so in any given portion there are actually less noodles
there so less calories and they're also lower glycemic index i'm going to close this for now
and if you're thinking that looks kind of brown and boring hey
we're not done yet it's about to get jazzed up we still have to cook our toppings which in this case
could be any sort of mushrooms and vegetables that you want i'm going to do a mix of asian mushrooms
some pressed tofu and then for crunch i'm going to do some sugar snap peas but really here you
can top it with whatever you want just make sure it's it's got a bit of a chew to them with some
crunchiness some texture to go with the noodles all i'm gonna do is sear them in a pan with a
little bit of salt and that's it because the flavors are all going to come from the noodles
now just gonna top it so just top it rustically with all of your vegetables so it looks you know
rustic and unintentional options are endless but i highly recommend mushrooms red bell pepper also
add some freshness and crunch and finally a sprinkling of green onions which makes
everything look instantly better and then when you go to the table you will close this and then
you serve it like this at the table people open it they'll go ah and then we eat just like this
never gets old now i have rice here because this is a shared dish that's usually served with rice
so even though it's carbs it's carb on carb at its best i'm going to take some of my favorite things
out of this little rice a little oh my shiitake mushrooms oh that smell
incredible like for someone who's not a vegan to think that this is all completely vegan it's
it's mind-blowing how much umami is in there and it's all the shiitake mushrooms the soy
sauce oyster sauce the oyster sauce and also the toppings right that ginger is absolutely
necessary and the glass noodles by the way you cannot use any other noodles for this it will
not work it'll turn into a completely different thing so you have to use glass noodles this is
called "ob woonsen" and woonsen is glass noodles after all so no substituting so i
hope you give this a try the recipe as always will be on hotthaikitchen.com i would like to
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thank you as always for watching and i will see you next time for your next delicious thai meal