Stir-fried rice noodles with scrambled tofu and veggies (pretty much a pad thai)

This ressembles a pad thai, and it is genuinely delicious - though it diverges from the original recipe in the ingredients it requires. This recipe will content anyone craving for a vegan pad thai.

Serves: 2

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 10 minutes

The final dish, with the peanuts as topping. I don’t have a picture of the food in a plate: it went fast from the wok to the stomach! - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Like the famous pad thai recipe, this is a stir-fried rice noodles dish. It changes from both wheat-based noodles, and dishes served with rice (although I never get bored with either). Rice noodles aren’t great when it comes to counting carbohydrates, though once in a while I indulge myself with such a pleasure. I like Thai and Thai-inspired dishes because they mix salty, sour, and savory tastes at once. This recipe has a slightly sweet taste due to the sugar present in the mushroom sauce, though it’s barely noticeable as other tastes largely take over.

This recipe shares a lot of ingredients with traditional pad thai, like bean sprouts, spring onions, roasted peanuts, and scrambled tofu. My recipe diverges in that I don’t include shallot, egg, shrimp, chicken pieces, nor fish sauce; instead, I add onion, carrot, cabbage, and mushroom sauce. I also swapped the tamarind juice for lime juice; at the time of cooking, I was running out of the former, and the latter is easier to find.

About mushroom sauce

Mushroom sauce and a soup spoon in a handleless mug - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This condiment is mostly water, sugar, soy sauce, and a ridiculously small part of dried shiitake mushrooms. It is thicker than soy sauce due to the addition of modified corn starch, and yeast extract. Reading the ingredient list or the nutrition information label, this is far from being the healthier condiment available around. Still, it’s a suggested vegan alternative to oyster and fish sauces, because it brings the famous umami taste. If you can find it, mushroom sauce will give a specific taste to your dishes — I use a bit of it from time to time. Otherwise, you can shop for vegan Worcestershire sauce (so without anchovies); there’s a Portuguese brand which makes a very convincing product, called molho inglês (litterally “English sauce”). On the other end, I don’t recommend using teriyaki sauce, as its taste is sweeter (due to its ingredients) and less umami.

Ingredients

Main ingredients for the recipe - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

• 120 g dried 2 mm rice noodles

• 200 g firm tofu¹

• Cabbage ~ 200 g (I like flat cabbage, though you can use white cabbage or Chinese cabbage as well)

• 1 carrot ~ 140 g

• Mung bean sprouts ~ 150 g

• 1 small yellow onion ~ 70 g

• 4 garlic cloves

• 3 spring onions

• 30 g peanuts (or more if you fancy them)²

• Soy sauce (at least 4 soup spoons)³

• 1 soup spoon of lime juice

• 1 soup soon of mushroom sauce⁴, or vegan Worstershire sauce, or soy sauce

• Lightly spicy oil, or regular peanut oil⁵

Preparation

Recipes recommending to cook with a wok most of the times means the dish will cook fast. Read: you’ll have no time in-between adding two sets of ingredients. Same goes if you rely on a deep pan, the pace is a property of the dish, not of the ustensil. My friendly advice: be sure to have completed all preparation steps before even heating your wok or deep pan.

1. Put the dried rice noodles in a large bowl, add boiled water to cover; soak for 5-6 minutes until they're nearly, still not yet cooked; drain water, run through cold water, add oil to the bowl, return the noodles to the bowl, mix so the oil will prevent them from sticking to each others

2. Peel the onion, cut it in two, then in slices, then again each sliced half in two

3. Peel the carrot, chop into 5 cm long matchsticks

4. Cut the cabbage in very thin long slices; the idea is that they'll cook from the beginning and somehow replace the texture of eggs

5. Grate the tofu block with a fork, so you turn it into scrambled tofu; in the end, it’s normal you crush and squeeze the last bits of the tofu with the fork to finish its preparation

6. Peel the garlic cloves and chop them finely

7. Wash the spring onions, remove both ends, then slice in 5 mm wide sections

8. Wash the soybean sprouts

9. Crush the peanuts in a mortar, or with the bottom of a glass (a strong one, don't use a wine glass or any featuring a stem and a foot...); you don’t need to finely crush them, it’s even okay if some survive the process

10. In a mug or a glass, combine 4 soup spoons of soy sauce, 1 soup spoon of lime juice, and 1 soup spoon of mushroom sauce; mix well

Prepared ingredients for the recipe - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cooking

I recommend using a carbon steel wok for this recipe, though you can use a stainless steel deep pan as well. A non-stick wok will work as well, however it won’t have this special taste of sauté. Remember you’ll chain the cooking steps; be sure to have completed all instructions in section Preparation beforehand.

1. Heat your wok on high flame/power; wait for it to reach the desired temperature

2. Add the oil from the edge, making a circle; doing so, the oil will cover all the surface of the wok as gravity pushes it down to the center (gravity is a mandatory force, beside ingredients and ustensils, for all of my recipes)

3. Immediately afterward (the oil will get hot in a matter of seconds), add the carrot, cabbage, and onion

4. Stir well until the cabbage starts to be squishy; you'll notice it releases a bit of water and shrinks slowly

5. Add the grated tofu, the spring onions and the garlic

6. Stir well for 1-2 minutes, not longer — these ingredients are expected to finish cooking with the rest

7. Lower the heat to medium flame/power

8. Add the rice noodles, mix them as you can with the other ingredients (you'll see, it's not straight-forward)

9. Add the prepared liquid (soy sauce, lime juice, and mushroom sauce)

10. Stir continuously to mix the ingredients until the liquid starts to evaporate

11. Add the mung bean sprouts

12. Stir for 30-40 seconds, then stop heating the wok

13. Add the crushed peanuts on top; you're ready to present the dish; give a final stir before serving so everybody gets a share of peanuts; alternatively, you can add the peanuts after serving

Cooking in progress, having added rice noodles (step 8) - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

You can serve immediately, and I recommended you do so. Beware it will cool down fast if you wait before serving. You can also refrigerate and re-heat later in a micro-wave oven. Or you can freeze it for a tasty future meal. Don't re-heat it too much, too fast, or too strong, as the rice noodles will tend to stick together. You risk eating rice noodles balls, and vegetables on the side. Be sure to let it return to room temperature before re-heating the dish, or do it for a longer time (10-15 minutes) on low power/flame in the micro-wave oven, non-stick pan, or wok.

The dish, finished cooking, while still in the wok - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Enjoy!

If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment - whether you loved it, or hated it - please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.

---

Here’s a tip before you go

You don’t have to limit grated tofu to this recipe only. Tofu has this ability to absorb the flavors of other ingredients and spices it cooks with. So, you can use grated tofu to thicken a sauce (and bring proteins). One of my favorite use is to make scrambled tofu like scrambled eggs: this is versatile as it can be of Mexican, Thai, or Italian inspiration depending on the other ingredients, oil, and spices you throw in your pan.

---

Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, you can share it to your audience — it’s public, and free!

1. Be cautious: tofu is made of soy, which is a known allergen

2. Be cautious: peanut (and nuts in general) is a known allergen

3. Be cautious: soy sauce is made of soy and wheat; both are know allergens

4. Be cautious: mushroom sauce contains soy sauce, which is made of soy and wheat; both are known allergens

5. Be cautious: peanut oil is made of peanut, which is a known allergen