rice noodles
Also known as: Medium 4mm Rice Noodles
Noodles made from rice flour and water, translucent and chewy once cooked, a staple of Southeast Asian and Chinese cooking sold dried in widths ranging from thin vermicelli to wide, flat noodles. Because they're made from rice rather than wheat, they're naturally gluten-free and have a distinctly slippery, springy bite that wheat noodles don't.
Buying guidance
Match the width printed on the package to what's actually needed -- thin and wide rice noodles aren't interchangeable, since width changes both cooking time and how well a noodle holds sauce or broth. Most dried rice noodles need soaking in hot, not boiling, water rather than a full boil; boiling them like pasta often turns them mushy or breaks them apart.
Substitutions
- A different width of rice noodle -- adjust soaking time down for thinner, up for wider.
- Rice vermicelli for wider rice noodles or vice versa -- workable if a specific width isn't available, though the noodle's sauce-holding changes.
- Thin wheat noodles like spaghetti -- not gluten-free, springier and less slippery, but usable in many stir-fries.
Tips & common mistakes
Cooked rice noodles clump into a solid mass within minutes of draining, more aggressively than wheat noodles do, because of the starch on their surface -- toss them with a little oil right away if they won't be used immediately, and add them to a hot dish at the last moment rather than letting them sit.
Storage
Dried rice noodles keep for a long time sealed in the pantry, much like dried pasta. Cooked ones are best eaten right away, since refrigerating them causes the starch to firm up and turn the noodles hard and brittle rather than soft, and they don't loosen back up well with reheating the way wheat pasta does.