Color Changing Noodles
Show stopping color changing noodles
So today's recipe was an experiment in making color changing noodles, and it turned out pretty successful. This method for making noodles can change color from a bluish color a pink color over the course of a few minutes, after you add something acidic to them, such as lime juice, or vinegar. It turns out that it is extremely easy to make these color changing noodles, you can probably find both ingredients at your local grocery store. Lastly just to give you an idea what can be made with these noodles, I will also be showing you my take on bun bo nam bo, a delicious Vietnamese noodle salad.
Detailed Instructions:
Prepping the Noodles
Ok so let's start making this. The key ingredient in everything is red cabbage, these cabbages go well in a lot of recipes, but today we are going to focus on the cool property of the pigment that gives them their unique purplish color. The goal here is to get this pigment out of the cabbage, so first off we need to cut up about a third of a large cabbage into small enough pieces so a blender can finish the job. We can add these pieces to a pot filled with about 2 liters or half a gallon of water. I then used an immersion blender to blend up the cabbage pieces into a pulp, releasing that beautiful purple pigment. Alternatively if you do not have a blender, you can also boil the leaves to get the pigment out.
Once everything is blended, up, we can now strain the cabbage pulp from the liquid using a sieve, and making sure to squeeze out as much liquid as possible. We will be left with a vibrant purple liquid, and this is what we are truly after.
The cool thing is that this purple liquid from the cabbage will change color if you add an acid or base. If you add a base it will turn green, but if you add an acid such as lime, it turns into this pinky color. So now the next step is to transfer this color changing property to our noodles. To do this, we are going to soak some thing rice noodles in our purple liquid. Any type of rice noodles will work well, since they mostly are neutral in color, the purple cabbage liquid will really show up well on them.
So now we are going to set this to the side and let it soak for at least 30 minutes, but up to 2 hours.
Making the Vietnamese Noodle Salad
In the meantime we can start getting stuff ready for our rice noodle salad. First off we need a dressing. In the dressing we want 50 mL of lime juice or approximately 2 limes, we need 50 mL or about 4 tablespoons of fish sauce, I know this isn't looking super appetizing but this dressing is amazing. Next we need 40 mL or about 3 tablespoons of vinegar, preferable rice vinegar if you have it, then we need about 4 cloves of garlic minced and a 2 inch piece of ginger minced as well as some Thai chillis if you desire, and that's that.
Next we need to marinate our beef. For this we need the middle part of 1 stalk of lemon grass, 4 minced cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of sugar and about 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. We need to cut the beef into strips, I am using a skirt steak here, but other types of beef can work. Mix all of this up together well, and set it off to the side.
After getting the meat ready, we need to get the rest of our veggies ready. We need some carrot strips, chopped lettuce, and some aromatic herbs, Feel free to use basil, persillo or coriander, but I had some mint on hand and I am going to use some of that.
Cooking the noodles
After our 30 minute noodle soak is up, you should see the noodles have taken on the vibrant purple color from the liquid, and this is exactly what we want. It's now time to cook the noodles. To do this, bring a pot up to boiling, drain off the excess liquid from the noodles and add the noodles into the boiling water. We need to let this cook for about 5 minutes, until they become flexible and chewy.
In the meantime, we can fry up our beef, I decided last minute to add an onion, but that's up to you. To fry the beef up, just heat a pan up to as hot as you can with some neutral high smoke point oil and add the mixture in. Fry it up for about 2 minutes and it's done.
After the noodles are cooked we need to dunk them into cold ice water to cool them down. Also feel free to run them under a cold tap, the goal is to bring them to a cool temperature, as quickly as possible. At which point we should be able to grab them with our hands. One thing you may have noticed is that the color has changed from a deep purple to a slightly less vibrant blue, but that is completely normal.
Now it's time to finish the salad, first we can put a some lettuce down at the bottom of our bowl, then add some of our noodles, and carrots and mint, then top with our beef, some peanuts and fried onions if you have them, and lastly just before serving add the dressing. The acid in the dressing from the vinegar and lice juice will react with the noodles changing the color over the course of about 5 minutes.
That’s it! See you all soon!
Condensed Recipe:
Ingredients:
Lettuce
Vercemelli Rice Noodles
Red Cabbage
Dressing
50 mL (3 Tablespoons) Fish Sauce
50 mL (3 Tablespoons) Rice Vinegar
Thai Chilies
3 Garlic Cloves
1 inch (2 cm) piece of ginger
Beef Marinade:
200 grams beef
1 yellow onion
1 middle part of the stalk of lemon grass
4 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
Instructions:
Cut up and blend red cabbage. Strain cabbage to obtain the cabbage juice.
Soak rice noodles in cabbage juice for 30 minutes to 2 hours.
Finely chop garlic, lemon grass and ginger, and add to a bowl along with fish sauce and sugar. Place beef in marinade while the noodles soak.
Prepare dressing ingredients.
Once noodles have taken on the color of the cabbage juice, boil a pot of water and add rice noodles. Cook for 4 minutes or until the noodles are cooked. Strain and place noodles into ice water to stop cooking.
Fry beef in pan with onions until done. Layer rice noodles, place fried beef on top and add dressing. The lime juice should start the color changing reaction. Serve warm.
Enjoy!