Thursday, January 19, 2012

Experimental Cooking: Easy Rice Noodles

Seattle is in the throes of another Snowpocalypse (the third one since I've lived here, and I've only been here five years!), so we're doing a lot of cooking with what we have on hand. I've pretty much determined that getting my car out of the subterranean garage it's currently parked in isn't going to happen until the snow on the parking lot thaws at least a little bit. I don't look forward to driving up the hill that leads out of the garage until my car can have some traction!

Last night, looking for a starch to add to our meal, I grabbed a bag of gluten-free brown rice pasta that I had bought for a writer's retreat. We don't usually eat that sort of pasta, and I wasn't entirely sure how it would cook up in small quantities (I made a whole bag the first time I made it and it was a sticky mess!). And thus, Easy Rice Noodles were born. My hubbie liked them so much that I made them again tonight!

Easy Rice Noodles (serves 2)
2 servings of brown rice pasta
about 3 tablespoons of Trader Joe's Soyaki Sauce

I started out by breaking the noodles into thirds. This is partially because I was brought up always breaking spaghetti noodles in half before you cook them. But especially with brown rice pasta, you want to make sure the whole noodle is underwater all the time. So unless you have a monster pasta pot, break the noodles.

Then you just cook them up according to the directions on the package. My experience thus far has been: longer is better. 7 minutes left us with noodles that were still a little solid in the center, and 9 minutes was much better.

Drain the water off the noodles, and then pour about 3 tablespoons (give or take, I didn't measure it) over them. Stir it all up, and serve.

Commentary: So the very act of pouring the Soyaki on the noodles renders them not gluten-free (wheat is involved in most soy sauces). If you're wanting to make this a gluten-free dish, I recommend replacing the Soyaki with some sort of gluten-free teriyaki sauce.

So far, this has gone great with coconut shrimp and gyoza (hey, we can't go grocery shopping in the Snowpocalypse!). It would probably also make a nice addition to a sweet stir fry.

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