Cold Thai Noodle Salad

8 Servings
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes

Cold Thai Noodle Salad made with rice noodles and fresh veggies is the best cold pasta salad you’ll serve this summer and it’s perfect for your back to school lunches!

Cold Thai Noodle Salad made with rice noodles and fresh veggies is the best cold pasta salad you'll serve this summer and it's perfect for your back to school lunches!Cold Thai Noodle Salad is one of those recipes I hesitated trying as a private chef. For years and years I’ve cooked for families with dietary restrictions. Whether it is a caloric restriction, gluten, allergy or otherwise I started having an adverse reaction to cooking diet specific foods in my personal life There are only so many times you can make vegan pulled pork before banishing pulled veggie meats from your own kitchen! I’m looking at you Shosh!

Because of that aversion, I used to make this noodle salad for us with linguine noodles. Let me just tell you, it is 100 times better with the rice noodles.

We loved this Thai Noodle Salad, it was a breeze to make!

Want to swap out some ingredients in this Cold Thai Noodle Salad?

  • Add some green onions or scallions.
  • If you’re not a fan of cilantro, swap it for parsley or basil to suit your tastes.
  • If you don’t want to use sugar, a small amount of honey would be a wonderful swap as well.
  • Sesame oil adds quite a lot of flavor, but if you don’t like the taste of it, leave it out altogether.
  • If you like peanut noodles, peanut butter would be an easy addition to this salad.

Looking for more Asian noodles?

This Thai Noodle Salad is the perfect summer salad, perfect for your lunch box and even kids love it. It’s full of vegetables that bring a brightness and colorful presentation to the salad, but they’re also deliciously crunchy and healthy. Yes, I know the person who brought you bacon cheeseburger meatloaf last week just said healthy. It’s all about balance. So make this dish and serve it along side some Crispy Mongolian Beef… balance!

In just 20 minutes you can be enjoying this Cold Thai Noodle Salad! It's perfect for back to school!

Looking for more Thai recipes?

Tools Used in the making of this Cold Thai Noodle Salad:
Rice Noodles: These rice noodles are amazing and make this dish what it is. Worth the extra effort to buy these online or in your local Asian grocery store. Plus, hey if you use tamari sauce in place of soy sauce, this dish is gluten free!
Rice Vinegar: Readily available in almost all grocers these days, this is a great vinegar to keep on hand. It does have a hint of sweetness to it, so don’t replace with any other vinegar except perhaps a red wine vinegar if you absolutely need to.
Soy Sauce: Nothing much to say here except Kikkoman has the best flavor overall and I always recommend reduced sodium.
Sesame Oil: The flavor of sesame oil in this dish is unmistakeable and not really able to be substituted. Some Asian grocery stores will try and sell less expensive options that aren’t actually sesame oil, so just be sure the one you’re buying is authentic sesame oil.

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Cold Thai Noodle Salad

Cold Thai Noodle Salad made with rice noodles and fresh veggies is the best cold pasta salad you'll serve this summer and it's perfect for your back to school lunches!
Yield 8 Servings
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Salad
Cuisine Thai
Author Sabrina Snyder

Ingredients
 

  • 14 ounces dried rice noodles
  • 1 red bell pepper sliced
  • 1 yellow bell pepper sliced
  • 1 red onion sliced
  • 1 carrot julienned
  • 1/2 cucumber peeled and sliced into crescents with seeds scooped out
  • 4 ounces bamboo shoots julienned
  • 1/4 cup cilantro chopped
  • white and black sesame seeds for garnish

DRESSING:

  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon ginger minced
  • 3 cloves garlic minced
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/3 cup rice vinegar
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon white sugar
  • 1 lime juiced
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Instructions

  • Cook the rice noodles according to the directions on the package and drain.
  • Let cool for a few minutes.
  • Add the rest of the salad ingredients to the bowl.
  • In a small bowl add the dressing ingredients and whisk.
  • Add the dressing to the bowl of pasta and vegetables and toss.
  • Garnish with white and black sesame seeds.

Nutrition

Calories: 314kcal | Carbohydrates: 49g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 11g | Saturated Fat: 8g | Sodium: 795mg | Potassium: 188mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 4g | Vitamin A: 1815IU | Vitamin C: 51.4mg | Calcium: 25mg | Iron: 0.8mg
Keyword: Cold Thai Noodle Salad
In just 20 minutes you can be enjoying this Cold Thai Noodle Salad! It's perfect for back to school!
We loved this Thai Noodle Salad, it was a breeze to make!
Cold Thai Noodle Salad made with rice noodles and fresh veggies is the best cold pasta salad you'll serve this summer and it's perfect for your back to school lunches!

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

    1. I haven’t tried them so I couldn’t say, but I would think it couldn’t be bad. I wouldn’t hesitate to try them.

  1. This is amazing. Made it this morning. Mind blown. It was soooo easy! I did cut the noodles, since it’s a picnic. I didn’t have sesame seeds or bamboo shoots. Used a lemon, no lime. My daughter will not believe I made this because it’s sooo not Mom. Fabulous

  2. I tried this and the noodles went all chalky and gross in the fridge overnight.

    It was awful! I used the thinner stir fry rice noodles. Are there different types cause I think I used the wrong one!

  3. Very good! I’d wanted to do this for a while but when a group get together needed sides the next day I decided to try it. Appreciate that all ingredients were on hand or easy to get!

    Prep notes– was able to get the veggies chopped & the dressing mixed together in a bottle the night before. Before the meal, prepared noodles & mixed everything together. After 1st taste test I only added a sprinkle of sugar. Recipe worked well & had very good flavor!

  4. I haven’t made a cold noodle salad in SO LONG because of an aversion from eating too many of ’em as a kid. Clearly, I need to hop back on board because this looks and sounds fantastic, and I’m lovin’ all the veggies and swaps you have listed!

  5. This is a new salad for me. I can’t wait to add it into my salad rotation!

  6. I am all about this Cold Thai Noodle Salad – holy yum! The colors and flavors are out of this world!