Plant Based U

Fat-Free and Low Fat Vegan Plant Based Recipes

Vietnamese

Bun Chay (Vegetarian Vietnamese Vermicelli Herb Noodle Salad)

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I love how fresh and light vegetarian Vietnamese food is. Vietnamese dishes don’t tend to be very vegan friendly because many items have chicken stock or fish sauce in them, so you may not always be able to find something that is truly vegan at a Vietnamese restaurant. Bun Chay is a vegetarian vermicelli noodle salad seasoned with fresh herbs, bean sprouts and Nuac Chom (a fish based sauce.)

So I wanted to show you how you can make Bun Chay totally vegan at home. This is a really fun and impressive recipe to make for one, or even a dinner party. If you can slice some veggies and toss them together to make a regular salad, trust me you can make this! It’s super easy and fresh and you can customize it with your favorite vegetables or proteins like tofu or tempeh as well.

This salad also keeps well and can be taken to work for a healthy lunch (just make sure to keep the dressing separate). If you’re longing for a recipe to mix up your salad routine, this is it! It’s very low in fat, as well as filling. I hope you like it!

Bun Chay (Vegetarian Vietnamese Vermicelli Herb Salad)

Serves 4

Salad:

250 g/8.8 oz package of rice vermicelli noodles (thin)
1 carrot, peeled and shredded or spiralized
2 Persian/small seedless cucumbers, julienned
1-2 cups fresh mung bean sprouts
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped and/or 1 cup Thai basil leaves, chopped
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup peanuts, crushed *optional

Vegan Nuac Cham (Sauce for Bun Chay):

1/4 cup lime juice (1 1/2 large limes)
1/4 cup vegetarian fish sauce (see recipe here)
1/3 cup hot water
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
3 -4 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 – 1 thai chili, finely chopped *optional
2 tbsp shredded carrot *optional

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. When boiling, turn off the heat and add the noodles and stir to break up.

2. Let noodles sit for 2 minutes.

3. Drain noodles and run in cold water to shock them. Drain in a colander.

4. Prep veggies.

5. Arrange noodles in serving bowls. Garnish with carrots, cucumber, chopped herbs, mung beans and peanuts.

6. Combine ingredients for Nuac Cham sauce in a bowl and whisk until sugar dissolves. (You want it to be strong tasting as the noodles are bland and will soak up the flavor.)

7. Serve Bun Chay with a side of Nuac Cham. Pour sauce over it and toss well to combine.

Additional Tips:

Please note that Thai basil has a very different taste than regular Italian basil, so if you cannot find it, please use mint and cilantro (coriander) instead. Thai basil has green and purple tipped leaves and has a very exotic flavor.

I used a Japanese turning slicer to spiralize my carrots. I find them prettier this way instead of just shredding them. This is what I used.

If you can’t find Persian/Iranian (mini seedless cucumbers) use English cucumbers.

Make sure to put lots of herbs in this salad as it will be very mild tasting, you get most of the flavor from the Nuoc Cham sauce and the herbs. Otherwise it will mostly be rice noodles, carrots and bean sprouts.

If desired you can serve it with some hoison sauce (I tend to avoid as it has msg) or Sriracha hot sauce. You can find these at Asian stores and sometimes regular grocery stores as well.

Have you ever had Vermicelli salad or “Bun” before? What did you think of it?

Vegan Fish Sauce Recipe

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So why make vegan fish sauce? Well if you like to make your own vegan Thai or Vietnamese food, fish sauce is a very common ingredient and gives these cuisines a nice flavour. I used this vegan fish sauce recipe for using in Nuoc Cham (the sauce used for Bun Chay aka vermercelli salad bowls) and you can also use it to season fresh Thai papaya salad. (It’s made with green unripe papaya and is more like a raw squash)

I found this recipe online for vegan fish sauce and ordered some mushroom flavored soy sauce from Amazon because I wasn’t sure if I could find some at the store. If you have access to an Asian specialty store they will probably have it too.  As I hadn’t tried mushroom soy sauce before I didn’t know if it was much different than regular dark soy sauce. It actually doesn’t taste much different to me (aside from being super super salty compared to the low sodium soy sauce I normally use).  You can use regular dark soy sauce instead if that’s all you can find, as it will probably come out pretty similar. Make sure it’s dark soy sauce and not light or low sodium soy sauce for this recipe.

For my purposes I reduced the original recipe by 1/3 as I only had a small empty tamari bottle to store the sauce in. So feel free to make as much as you care for but this recipe below makes about 1 cup. I used this in my Nuoc Cham sauce for my Bun Chay recipe.

Vegan Fish Sauce Recipe

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients:

1/2 cups shredded wakame (find it at the Asian or health food store by the Nori)
2 cups filtered water
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp whole peppercorns
1/3 cup mushroom flavored dark soy sauce, regular soy sauce or GF tamari
1 tsp of genmai miso (it’s already pretty salty so this is optional)

Directions:

1. Combine wakame, garlic, peppercorns and water in a large sauce pan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer about 20 minutes. Strain and return the liquid back to the pot. Add soy sauce, bring back to a boil and cook until mixture is reduced and almost unbearable salty. Remove from heat and stir in miso.

2. Decant into a bottle and keep in the refrigerator. Use one-for-one to replace fish sauce in vegan recipes.

Additional Info: 

Wakame is the seaweed used often in seaweed salad in Japanese restaurants. It’s shredded into little strips. So if you’ve ever tried seaweed salad you’ll be familiar with it.

Have you ever had fish sauce before?