Vietnamese rice noodle salad with sauteed beef. This is a rice noodle salad served with sauteed beef, an assortment of salad, herbs and condiment, and a sauce or I guess you could call it a dressing that is vinegar based. I call this a noodle salad because essentially you don’t cook the noodle or put a broth over it.
This recipe will yield 03 servings.
You will need:
For the beef:
Beef: 500 gram – thinly sliced
Teriyaki sauce: 3 tbsp
Oyster sauce: 3 tbsp
If you don’t have teriyaki sauce or oyster sauce, by all means just marinate the beef with some salt, pepper and a tiny bit of sugar. Try to avoid using MSG (monosodium glutamate). Actually, the oyster sauce I use has this content so I’m not really proud. I will not use it next time and just stick to salt, pepper, fish sauce or teriyaki.
For the sauce/dressing:
Rice vinegar: 6 tbsp
Fish sauce: 6 tbsp
Water: 3 cups
Sugar: 3 tbsp
Garlic: 5 cloves, peeled and diced
Black pepper: 1 tsp
Condiments:
Butter lettuce – 2 small heads or 1 big head (You can substitute with Boston bibb)
Cilantro: 1 bunch
Sweet basil: 1 bunch (If you go to a Vietnamese market, it’s best to ask by its Vietnamese name, which is either “rau thơm” or “húng láng”)
DSC02739
Peanuts: 200 gram
Shallot: 100 gram
Cooking oil
For the noodle:
Rice noodle (bún): 500 gramThere are two different kinds of Vietnamese rice noodles: “bún” and “phở”. Just like the Italian pasta that come in different forms and sizes, and for each variation they are named differently such as Spaghetti, Linguini, Fettuccine… Vietnamese rice noodles are named differently according to their shapes as well.Below is the kind of rice noodle you want for this dish. It is called “bún” and has a cylindrical shape:
Both these kinds of noodles can be bought fresh in Vietnam in the farmer’s market, but if you are not in Vietnam, chances are they will be for sale in an Asian supermarket or more specifically, a Vietnamese supermarket. However, it is likely that they will be sold in dry package like a packet of dry spaghetti, and you will just need to boil them up and drain out the water if you buy them dry. Follow the instructions on the package so as to not undercook or overcook the noodles.
The method:
1.Marinate the beef in a big bowl with the teriyaki sauce and oyster sauce. Let it sit.
2. Now we will roast the peanuts. Put a skillet on top of medium high heat. Once the skillet has been heated up, put the peanuts in and stir continuously to kind of roast the peanuts.
3. Once the peanuts are roasted, and you can tell by seeing that some of the peanuts’ skin has been peeled off by the heat and some black spots have appeared on the peanuts, lift the skillet off the heat.
4. Put the roasted peanuts in a bowl lined with 2 layers of newspaper and wrap them up. Let the peanuts stay warm in there and we will get rid of the skin later.
5. Now, let’s make the golden shallots! They are used as a condiment to a lot of Vietnamese dishes! First, peel and slice the shallots.
6. Heat up a saucepan on high heat. Once the saucepan is hot, put in the cooking oil so that the oils fills the pan about 2 centimeters. Let the oil get hot. Once the oil is hot, let’s put in our shallots.
7. Stir continuously over high heat. Once the shallots have turned to a bright yellow, you can reduce the heat to a low-medium heat to better control the color of the shallots.
8. Once the shallots are yellow and crispy like the image below, lift the saucepan off the heat.
9. Put the whole thing through a sieve over a large bowl to keep the golden shallots and let the hot oil run down to the bowl. Let the shallots dry in the sieve.
10. If you don’t use the whole batch, you can store the golden shallots in a small container lined with parchment paper like so to keep them crunchy. I love these little things. They’re so sweet and crunchy and wonderful.
11. Let’s rinse to clean our lettuce and herbs.
12. Done? We can sautée the beef now. ^^. Let’s put a skillet on medium high heat and once the skillet is hot, put some cooking oil in there to heat it up as well. Then, we can put in our marinated beef:
13. Stir the beef and cook to just done. I really cannot tolerate overcooked meat :(, unless it’s slow cooked or pressure cooked to the point of shreddable to make a pull pork or pulled beef sandwich or something.
14. Now we can go back to get rid of the peanuts skin. The best way to do it is to use a colander and rub the peanuts against it so the skin is detached and fall through the holes or cracks of the colander.
If you don’t have a colander, you can keep the roasted peanuts inside the newspaper, rub them against each other and every 20 seconds or so, open it up to blow air through the peanuts so the detached skin is blown off. And yes, please do this out side in a garden or something :P, unless you want your kitchen to have peanut skin everywhere.
This is what it should look like after:
15. Then, you want to put these peanuts in a mortar and crush them with a pestle. They are better for the dish crushed. If you don’t have a mortar/pestle set, you can put the peanuts in a thick plastic bag (zip lock for example), close it and use a heavy, hard-to-break item to crush the peanut-filled plastic bag.
I did not do this part because I was running out of time to put the dish together to make it to a rendezvous, which was eventually canceled due to heavy and sudden rain.
If it is difficult to you. You can learn to cook Bún Bò Huế with me.
16. Let’s make the sauce now. First, you want to put a saucepan with 3 cups of water in it on medium heat.
17. Then, add in the fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, and pepper, and garlic. Just bring it to a boil for 5 seconds then take the saucepan off the heat. A lot of people don’t heat the sauce this way and just put everything together at room temperature, but for me that way of doing gives it an incompleteness, seemingly because the ingredients aren’t completely incorporated.
Note: This sauce is made according to the diner’s appetite. It is easy to fix if you want to have it a little saltier, or more sour, or sweeter… since the ingredients represent very clear flavors:
Fish sauce: salty
Vinegar: sour
Sugar: sweet
Black pepper: spicy
Garlic: tangy
So if you want it to be more sour, increase the vinegar amount; if you want it to be sweeter, put more sugar. It is up to you.
18. Sooooooo. Finally everything is cooked! We can put the dish together now! Yay! So take out a big bowl and line it with the lettuce like so. I really need to know how to better use this camera.
19. Let’s put the noodle in. Then the beef. The peanuts and the golden shallots. The herbs and then about 5 tbps of sauce! Aaaaand, we’re done! Before you eat, just mix everything up and enjoy!
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