Spicy Thai Ramen Noodle Salad Recipe

Here’s a recipe for a great spicy Thai ‘salad’ dish that’s quickly whipped up using Ramen style yellow noodles as the base of the dish. This is a totally authentic dish here in Thailand, known as Yum MAMA.

Thai Spicy Yellow Noodle Salad (Yum MAMA)

Serves 4 as a side dish

• 2 packages of dried Ramen style egg noodles (sold as MAMA noodles in Thailand) (each roughly 90 grams)
• 1 cup of clouds ear mushrooms, sliced (see picture below for an illustration of this mushroom if you’re not sure. If you can’t find it, omit.)
• 1 cup of cooked ground pork (just mix the ground pork with a ¼ cup of water and heat to boiling in a frying pan. Cook until cooked through, about 1 minute)
• 1 sliced plum tomato
• 1 medium onion, sliced very thinly
• 1 stalk of celery, sliced finely
• A little iceberg or leaf lettuce
• 5 Tbls of lime juice
• 5 Tbls of fish sauce
• 10 cloves of garlic
• 5 to 10 Thai bird chilies, or to taste (the little spicy ones)
  
• 2 tsps of sugar
• 1 tsp of MSG (if desired – mostly it would be added in Thailand)
• ½ cup of water or chicken stock

Instructions

1. Drop the noodles in boiling water and cook until softened, about 2 minutes (you don’t want to overcook)
2. Transfer the cooked noodles to a mixing bowl
3. Cook the mushrooms in a high fry pan with about ¼ cup of water, just as you did for the ground pork. The mushroom slices will take about 2 minutes to cook through
4. In a mortar and pestle, crush the chilies and garlic together until they are almost paste like. You could use a small food processor as an alternative to a mortar and pestle, or you could just finely chop the garlic and chilies.
5. Add the mushrooms and all remaining ingredients (except for the lettuce leaves) to the mixing bowl with the noodles.
6. Taste to check seasoning and add more lime juice, fish sauce, sugar or chili as needed.
7. Arrange lettuce leaves on your serving bowl or plate and then pour the noodle salad on the leaves for service.