How to make easy Yum Woon Sen, a spicy and tangy Thai glass noodle salad.

Yum Woon Sen, or Glass Noodle Salad is a Thai cuisine staple. Glass noodles and your favourite proteins, tossed with a savoury, umami, spicy and sour sauce – this is one of my favourite Thai dishes ever.

Why you will LOVE this recipe

This is a shortcut way of making Yum Woon Sen! I skip a

This is EASY – I shortcut my way to make the final dish! No flavour was discounted here.

This is CUSTOMISABLE – The only constant here is the sauce. Add whatever you like to your salad!

This is a VERSATILE salad – Yum Woon Sen is one of those salad dishes that bode well served warm, or cold! I love having it cold on those extra hot days. Make a big batch, have some now, pop the rest in the fridge.

This is FULL OF FLAVOUR! – I used the same boiling liquid to cook the meat and chicken, so all of the flavours are contained. Finally, I boiled the glass noodles in the same liquid, soaking up all of the meaty flavours.

What are Glass Noodles?

Glass Noodles are also known as tang hoon, clear noodles, bean thread noodles or cellophane noodles. In its dry form, they are opaque white, but once soaked or cooked in water, they turn clear, hence its name, glass noodles!

They are not to be confused with rice vermicelli, which looks quite similar to it dry.

Glass noodles typically require some soaking, but I skipped it here and add it straight to the boiling water to cook and soften. Soaking will ensure your glass noodles are fully cooked through to the middle, but simply let it boil for longer.

What Proteins to Use for Yum Woon Sen?

In Bangkok, Thailand, the typical proteins are minced meat, boiled in seasoned (fish sauce) water and seafood. However, in the street stalls, you can pick and choose what you actually want in your salad! These are usually a selection of sausages, crabsticks, fishballs, shrimp, enoki mushrooms, amongst others. Basically whatever you like! You get charged based on what you choose.

How to boil the minced protein?

This is traditional Thai technique of shallow boiling the minced meat in water seasoned with fish sauce. Less water is used so that the fish sauce is not diluted.

Typically you would use a lot of water to boil the seafood first. Then drain away the water, until you have a shallow amount. Add fish sauce, and then add the minced meat.

In this recipe, I used a shallow frying pan to boil everything! I prefer boiling my minced meat first, to get the bulk of the flavour in the water first.

What you need to make the BEST Yum Woon Sen Sauce

Good Yum Woon Sen is all about the sauce! The sauce is incredibly easy to put together. You can use a pestle and mortar, or blitz everything with less effort in a food processor.

The most important ingredients here would be fish sauce, lime juice and sugar for the perfect balance of salty, sweet and tangy. In fact, you can make a decent sauce with just these three ingredients!

Dried Shrimps: These add a nice gritty texture and umami to the sauce! You can omit this to keep this vegan.

Fish Sauce: The main salting agent here. For a vegan version, you can replace with light soy sauce. It won’t be quite the same, but it can deliver the umami.

Lime Juice

Palm Sugar

Thai Bird’s Eye Chillies: Is it really Thai food if it’s not spicy? To me this is essential, but you can omit for a spice-free salad.

Garlic

Cilantro or Coriander Root (optional): This is optional, but it adds a gorgeous herby flavour to the sauce! I’m lucky enough that cilantro here is sold with the roots attached, so this is an easy addition. If yours don’t come with the roots, use the stems.

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