Easy Chili Crisp Yuba Noodles
A repurpose-able keeper inspired by Walmart. Seriously.
Forget “One Night in Bangkok” — that catchy, silly 1980s song and video that’s full of cultural misrepresentations. We spent a nearly a week in the metropolis checking out its food with chef and restaurateur Pim Techamuanvivit. Along with two market trips and way too many exciting meals and snacks, we spent time in her kitchen at Nahm, one of her Michelin-starred restaurants (the other two are in San Francisco). The ingredients in Thailand along with the culinary intuition in the hands of professional cooks there, just like that in Vietnam, make a difference in the food. It’s more nuanced and layered. Thai food can be spicy but it’s not hot all the time. The heat often slowly blooms and creeps up on you. Here’s a bit of what I experienced at Nahm:
Just incredible thought and care. You can’t do all of this in America but one can dream! Actually, Pim makes a delicious crab curry when she’s home in San Francisco. She promised to share the recipe.
The tofu train’s final stop is a recipe that gets you thinking out of the box about tofu. Also to make a tofu dish with infinite uses that never bore. A cook’s dream, right? Is it possible? Yes, because the little soybean and the tofu it produces are super versatile.
Cue this recipe for chili crisp yuba noodles. Imagine spicy, sweet, savory noodles that are incredibly satisfying yet light. That describes these handsome and extremely useful chile crisp yuba ribbons. I developed the recipe in the midst of getting ready for my trip to Thailand and Vietnam.
That’s not me showing off. It’s me telling you how easy it is to make this recipe! (And, despite my comment in the tofu skin 101 post, “tofu skin noodles” sounded odd so I went with the “yuba” nomenclature.)
These yuba noodles were inspired by a similar preparation that I sampled at Walmart in Beijing. I wanted to see tofu in a metropolitan situation so when I was in China’s capital researching tofu, Walmart was on my hit list.
The prepared food section was enormous — much bigger than what you encounter at H-Mart. Along with prepared tofu dishes, there was fermented tofu sold in bulk. That was tofu in the dou fu motherland back in 2010. Lucky for me, they had samples of a spicy tofu skin ribbons preparation that impressed me and my travel buddy, the food stylist Karen Shinto.
Coincidentally, at that time in the U.S. Hodo Soy had a very popular spicy yuba noodle grab-and-go product. Owner Minh Tsai told me they put a teriyaki-ish sauce on the noodles. The Chinese Walmart rendition was punchier.
Years later, recalling what I sampled at Walmart, I created this recipe. I add veggies to up the fiber, flavor, color, and texture factors.
The end result is fabulous for a quick snack and I first thought of topping a salad with it for an easy lunch. But I think you’ll like these yuba noodle a lot so along with topping a salad (swap it for the regular tofu in this feisty salad) or grain bowl (obvious crowd pleasers), also know that these noodles are good for:
Lettuce wraps or herb wraps (I have giant Viet shiso/tía tô plants in the garden)
Low-carb, high protein rice paper rolls; the yuba noodles’ lithe quality make them perfect for rolling up.
Banh mi. The noodles are pre-sliced as thin pieces! Just add all the basic banh mi fixings.
The yuba noodles keep well in the fridge for up to 3 to 4 days, so they’re good for picnics and road trips too. I added steamed broccoli to the noodles, tossed them with a little extra seasoning sauce and packed that for our airport lunch.
Here’s a summary video of how the recipe goes down, followed by ingredients sourcing tips, a text recipe and downloadable pdf. Go for it!