You Couldn’t Pay Me to Eat Angel Hair
Every Wednesday night, Bon Appétit food director Carla Lalli Music takes over our newsletter with a sleeper-hit recipe from the Test Kitchen vault. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.
There are many wonderful pasta shapes in the world, but angel hair isn’t one of them. The joy of pasta-eating is in the al dente texture. Angel hair, being too thin, is never al dente. The joy of a long pasta–eating is in the twirling. Angel hair, being spineless, clumps up in a disappointing tangle. With spaghetti, you can pinch your lips together and vacuum up a long strand till it recoils and smacks you on the underside of your nose on the way to your mouth. Angel hair just lands on your chin like the strands of a wet mop. Simply put: Angel hair is the devil.
Before you fire off a volley of horrified tweets at me, know this: There is love in my heart for a spindly little noodle after all. Rice vermicelli! Rice vermicelli (bun) are common in Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, and Signaporean dishes. I love them equally when tucked inside Vietnamese rice paper rolls, in brothy noodle soups and stir-fries, and even when they’re deep-fried. Part of rice vermicelli’s charm is its bouncy, fluffy, ultra-thin texture, qualities that angel hair can never achieve. And while I have never craved angel hair—not even when I was a baby!—I am craving the heck out of these cold noodles with chicken and nuoc cham right now.
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The recipe starts with some grilled chicken, but as you and I both know, I’m not grilling chicken on a Wednesday night. I’m grabbing a supermarket rotisserie bird, and I suggest you do the same. That way, you can jump right into the crispy shallot preparation as soon as you get home, a technique that you will master easily and cherish forever since you get both crunchy shallot toppers and delicious infused oil out of the deal.
Cooking the noodles might mean soaking them in just-boiled water, or simmering them until tender. Check the package for instructions. In the meantime, make the nuoc cham, which (if you don’t already know), is an iconic Vietnamese dipping sauce built on fresh lime juice, fish sauce, chiles, and sugar. Oh my god I’m salivating. Okay! Then you thinly slice some crunchy vegetables—radishes and turnips are specified but you could use cucumbers and carrots, or fennel and daikon, or literally any other crisp, dense thing you like. Tear some herbs, then toss the noodles with the chicken and the sauce and the veggies, and top with the fried shallots. Soon, you will be dining like a cool-headed angel on a hot summer’s night. Heaven, indeed.
Get the recipe:
Rice Vermicelli with Chicken and Nuoc Cham
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
