thai chicken salad with rice noodles
Thai chicken salad is a vibrant mix of fresh herbs, lime dressing, chicken and rice noodles. Perfect when you need good food fast.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
Thai lime dressing
- 1/3 cup fresh herbs mix of finely chopped cilantro, mint and Thai basil
- 1/3 cup fish sauce
- 1/2 cup lime juice fresh squeezed
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp grated ginger use a microplane
Thai chicken salad with rice noodles
- 4 chicken breasts or 8 thighs
- 6 oz rice vermicelli
- 1 cup fresh herbs cilantro, mint and Thai basil
- 1 cup arugula
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes
- 2 green onions
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Put a kettle on to boil. Light your grill. You want medium high heat. Prep your salad fixings. Stem the herbs. Cut the tomatoes in half. Thinly slice the green onion.
- Pour boiling water over the rice vermicelli. Let stand 10 minutes while you prep the sauce.
- Finely chop a mix of cilantro, mint and Thai basil. You want a total of 1/3 of a cup combined.
- Mix the chopped herbs, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and ginger. Set aside.
- Rub the chicken with oil. Season with salt and pepper.
- It's probably been about 10 minutes. The noodles are ready. Drain. Rinse with cold water. Drain again.
- Grill the chicken. This is a good time to use an instant read thermometer. You want nice colour on the chicken but you don't want to go above 165F internal temp for chicken breasts. 175F is your target for thighs.
- Remove the chicken from the grill and set aside to rest for 5 minutes. Slice the chicken into 1/2 inch wide strips. Add half the dressing and toss. If there are drippings on your cutting board add them in too. That's flavour. Let sit 10 minutes.
- While the chicken soaks up the dressing prep your salad. Toss the remaining herbs, arugula, green onion and and tomatoes with the rice noodles. This isn't as easy as it sounds. It's a fight getting it all evenly distributed. Don't worry too much if it doesn't go your way. It will taste fine.
- Combine the remaining dressing with the vegetable oil. Taste. It will probably need a bit of salt.
- Toss the salad with the dressing/oil mixture. Divide onto 4 plates. Top each plate with 1/4 of the chicken.
Notes
If you like a little spice a bit of thinly sliced fresh red chili goes very nicely here.