Guide to Rice Noodles: 7 Varieties You Need in Your Pantry

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Guide to Rice Noodles: 7 Varieties You Need in Your Pantry | Bon Appétit

Store-bought noodles are nonnegotiable in our pantries, but homemade noodles? They are something else—earthy, chewy, and ridiculously fun. So grab an apron and let us show you how to Make Your Own Noodles. We’ve got glorious recipes, expert tips, handy guides, and so much more.

Silken. Chewy. Slippery. Tender. There are a lot of ways to make rice noodles throughout Asia, resulting in a slew of textures and appearances. Whether slurped from a steaming bowl of soup or pan-fried with a tangle of slivered vegetables, there are infinite ways to enjoy them as well. Rice noodles, as you’d expect, are made primarily from finely milled rice flour—but different types of rice grains have different flavors and textures, and some noodles have added starches.

When translated to English, all too often the name for the specific type of rice noodle gets boiled down (no pun intended) to vermicelli. But that is an Italian pasta, made with wheat rather than rice. Its round, thin strands may be similar in shape and size to some types of rice noodles but not in texture and flavor. And the analogy seems to have lost its meaning, as you can now find the word vermicelli on packages and recipes for rice noodles as thick as a pencil and flat instead of round. Rice stick is another catchall. While it might have once indicated a specific noodle type, the term has been watered down to be nearly meaningless, except to indicate that the noodles are made with rice.

One can understand the business reasons for why restaurants, manufacturers, and publications might reach for a well-known European analogue when describing their dish. But today rice noodles are widely known around the world. So it’s time to get better acquainted with some varieties of rice noodles’ actual names—here are seven popular varieties.

These very fine noodles appear in many dishes in Vietnam—stuffed inside a pliable rice noodle sheet in a gỏi cuốn, or summer roll, or served chilled as a bed for a salad. They’re predominantly called vermicelli in English. But, of course, they’re made with rice—usually glutinous rice flour. As Andrea Nguyen explains on her website Viet World Kitchen, some makers add a touch of tapioca flour to give it more chew. Dried, they appear translucent white in crinkly bundles, like a bird’s nest. Once cooked, they become opaque, soft, and pliable, with just enough stretch to bounce back when you bite into a mound of them.

The typical rice noodle swirling in a bowl of the Vietnamese noodle soup pho is flat-shaped and medium in width, around ⅛"–¼" in thickness (think fettuccine instead of vermicelli). It’s usually made from mostly glutinous rice flour and water and has a delicate, smooth texture that, once wet, you can slurp into your mouth in milliseconds. While it’s easier to find bánh pho as a dried noodle, it’s also sold fresh, as bánh pho tươi, in the refrigerated aisle of some Asian markets. But pho doesn’t have to be contingent upon this exact noodle. So add thinner or thicker rice noodles, whether for preference or convenience.

These are flat, thin rice noodle sheets that are often rolled up with something delicious. Like bún, they’re stretchy as well as sticky, so there’s no need for adhesive to seal it up. A traditional filling made with ground pork and minced mushrooms is often bundled in these fresh sheets before they’re steamed together. Not to be confused with bánh tráng, which are paper-thin and often used to roll up gỏi cuốn, bánh cuốn are more akin to large sheets of ho fun (more on this below).

This is an extra-wide, chewy rice noodle from Southern China (where it’s known as ho fun or he fen) and Southeast Asia (where it’s known as kway teow or kuaitiao). They’re often called broad noodles on menus in the US. These are the type of noodles pan-fried in beef chow fun. As Randy Lau explains on his family’s YouTube channel, Made With Lau, ho fun is especially popular in the US because most of the Chinese immigrants in the mid-20th century were from Guangdong province, where these noodles originated; these immigrants set the mold for much of the Chinese food enjoyed in America to this day. Southeast Asian dishes known as char kway teow and the Thai dish pad see ew use the same type of noodle. Look for fresh ho fun or kway teow in Asian markets. If you buy them refrigerated, or have refrigerated them yourself, they may be stuck together in hard, folded sheets. Simply cut them to your preferred size, give them a quick blanch in boiling water, stirring to separate them, then drain.

Meaning “small noodles,” the Thai rice noodles called sen lek are a popular choice for pad thai. They’re flat, medium-width, and firm enough to withstand some quick tossing in a pan while absorbing flavorful liquids like tamarind, fish sauce, and lime juice. Of course, pad thai is far from the only dish these noodles can be used in. They can be added to soups like tom yum as well. In English, this type of noodle is often referred to as rice stick on packages. You might see them called Chantaboon rice stick noodles, as Chantaboon is a nickname for the Thai city Chanthaburi, which has famous rice noodle dishes.

These rice noodles from China’s Yunnan Province are round and somewhat thick (think spaghetti or bucatini but not hollow). They’re made from non-glutinous rice flour and have a firm, slippery texture. Each strand stays separate rather than clumping together. These noodles are featured in a famous Yunnan dish called guo qiao mixian, also referred to as crossing bridge noodles, or just Yunnan Noodle Soup as on the blog The Woks of Life. In the US you might be hard-pressed to find a package of noodles called mixian, as it’s known in Yunnan. Instead, you might found packages labeled as vermicelli or Jiangxi noodles, since this style of rice noodles is also enjoyed in the Jianxi Province in China.

This is a very thin, crinkly dried rice noodle enjoyed in Taiwan. Once it’s gently cooked, it’s often pan-fried with julienned vegetables and pork as in the dish chao mifen. This variety is most often made in the city of Hsinchu, where the noodles dry faster thanks to the area’s arid climate (much of Taiwan is rather humid). As such, you can often find the place-specific name on packages, such as Hsinchu rice noodles or Hsinchu rice stick. (The romanization mifen literally translates to “rice noodle” and rarely appears on packages.) Though it doesn’t have as much chew as bún, you might use this as a substitute for those noodles and vice versa.

Guide to Rice Noodles: 7 Varieties You Need in Your Pantry | Bon Appétit