Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Salad

So, ever since I went to the Vietnamese restaurant, Salvation in Noodles, I have had an urge to make this dish I had there. It was a noodle salad, which was so refreshing yet simple to make. So with this whole weekend to myself, I thought hey why not try it now, if it turns out nice, I've got my pack lunch sorted for the rest of the week! 

Ingredients

Chicken thighs. 

Pho Noodles. 

4 Tablespoons of Soy Sauce.

1 Tablespoon of Sesame oil. 

2 Cloves of Garlic.

Salt. 

Carrots. 

Cucumber. 

Mint.

Coriander. 

Fish Sauce. 

Water. 

Castor Sugar. 

Chilli Pepper.

Lime. 

Directions

1. I used 600g of boneless and skinless thighs, marinated with a pinch of salt, 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil and 2 crushed garlic cloves. I marinated them for around 3 hours. I don't know exactly how much of the marinated chicken I would be using but this kind of stuff always comes in handy for a quick snack and a nibble :).

 2. After marinating. Heat a wok to medium heat and add around 2 tablespoons of olive oil in. Add the chicken thighs. Heat on one side for around 4 minutes, turn over and do the other side. Make sure the chicken is cooked before taking the chicken off the heat.

3. Once the chicken is done, cut into strips. 

 4. In a pot, boil some water and add in your pho noodles, I used half of the packet below. 

Boil until tender (around 5 minutes).

 5. Take the noodles off the heat and strain out the water, run the noodles under cold water and set aside. 

6. Cut into strips, cucumber, carrots and chilli. Take the ends off the bean sprouts. Pull the leaves off the mint and coriander. It took me ages to do this step! Chopping veggies especially carrots is no joke! You will appreciate fully the job of a chef once you have done this step!

7. You want to set out your dish like the picture below, so not all the ingredients you have prepared will go into this single bowl! You will have plenty left over to make more!

 8. For the sauce topping you want to mix the fish sauce, caster sugar, water and squeezed lime juice together. This sauce is called nouc mam and it is to your taste, so play around with the ingredients till you find your nouc spot!

I found that a table spoon of fish sauce to almost 10 times more water worked for me! Sugar wise i think i added 5 teaspons. 

Again you won't need all of your mixture to top your noodles, it is plenty to save for the next helping and more.

9. Mix together and enjoy!