The Nourishing Gourmet

Nourishing. Satisfying. Gourmet.

Egg Free

Vietnamese Beef Noodle Salad

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This refreshing, gluten-free salad is full of flavor with the punch of rice vinegar, the saltiness of fish sauce, the sweetness of honey or sweetener of choice, and the herby savoriness of cilantro and/or basil. It also happens to be one of my favorite meals right now. Not only is it delicious, but it is packed with nutrients! 





While, yes, I eat this just because it’s so good, I also aimed to get a rainbow of produce in this recipe, which adds not only more flavor but also important nutrients, antioxidants, and a wide variety of fiber sources. Win-win! 





The other aspect I love about all of the added vegetables is that it helps you stay with an appropriate amount of noodles. We often want a huge plateful of pasta — with this recipe, you can have a large plate of pasta, but half of it is vegetables! 





This recipe also works for those of you who are on THM (Trim Healthy Mama) as an “E” meal. 





We’ve eaten this meal many times through the summer, and it’s perfect for hot weather, but we eat it year-round. 





I named this a Vietnamese recipe, although I do want to clarify that this isn’t a claim to being an authentic Vietnamese recipe, but rather, I’ve used some of the flavor profiles and sauce inspiration from Vietnamese cuisine. 





Notes on the recipe: 





  • Traditionally, a recipe like this would have used white rice noodles, such as rice sticks. I am using whole grain brown rice noodles. You can get something like these stir-fry Thai Kitchen brown rice noodles, though I have been using brown rice fettuccine noodles, as they are cheaper and similar in taste and texture. 
  • This will need to be served right away. If you aren’t serving it right away, you can keep the elements of the recipe separate, and toss right before serving (toss the noodles with a bit of the sauce and/or oil to keep them from sticking before storing them, however, or simply make the other elements – the sauce, the meat, and the chopped vegetables, and cook the noodles right before serving. 





Notes on THM: 





  • While technically you are supposed to use 96% lean meat for an E meal on THM, because I don’t add any fat to this recipe, I use the 93% grasssfed ground beef that I find locally and I think that works well for fat limits for an E meal. If you don’t use a lean meat here, it counts as a cross-over (XO). 
  • Honey isn’t encouraged on THM when in weight loss mode, but the ¼ a cup of honey here is pretty small per serving. I’ve tested this with both honey and xylitol, and both worked very well. Allulose should work perfectly too (and is dog-safe, unlike xylitol). 
  • Brown rice noodles are on plan on THM, but you are encouraged to watch your blood sugar when eating them, if you are sensitive, and to keep your portions small. This recipe works well, because it mixes vegetables with the noodles for a filling meal, without leaning completely on the noodles. 
  • Cassava noodles are not considered on-plan for THM, but for those grain-free, some find that they do well with occasional cassava noodles (cassava is also a wonderful prebiotic fiber!). Some other grain-free noodle options to play with are here. 










Vietnamese Beef Noodle Salad 





Serves: 6-8





Ingredients: 





Meat:





  • 1 lb ground beef (96% or up, for an E meal)
  • 1 tsp dried ginger
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1 tbsp tamari or coconut aminos or fish sauce
  • Optional: 1 tsp onion powder and 1 tsp garlic powder
  • Optional: pinch or two of red pepper flakes
  • Add more coconut aminos/tamari/fish sauce, and vinegar to taste





Sauce/Dressing





  • Scant ¼ cup honey or ¼ cup xylitol. Other options: Allulose, or of-plan organic white sugar
  • ½ cup hot or warm water
  • ½ cup rice vinegar
  • ¼ cup fish sauce
  • 3 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • Scant 1 tsp dried ginger
  • Pinch of cayenne pepper





Salad





  • 8-12 oz dried pasta *
  • 2 cucumbers
  • 3-6 green onions
  • 2 large bell peppers (red, yellow, or orange)
  • 1 bunch of cilantro
  • Optional: a few handfuls of (Thai) basil
  • 4 cups shredded or thinly sliced cabbage





*We usually use brown rice noodles, but I also tried this with 8 ounces of cassava noodles for a grain-free option. Both worked! But the cassava needs to especially be eaten right away as it will get mushy if left to sit. Cassava noodles aren’t on THM, although some use it as a personal choice option if needed.





Directions:





  1. Make the sauce by first stirring together the hot or warm water with the sweetener of choice. Add the rest of the ingredients. Set aside.
  2. Prep the vegetables: Peel the cucumbers and cut into small wedges. Seed and thinly slice the sweet bell peppers. Thinly slice cabbage, chop the green onions (removing the top two inches and discarding), and wash the cilantro, remove the stems, and chop.
  3. Cook pasta according to box directions, but make sure you salt well. While the pasta cooks make up the ground beef, adding the seasoning as it cooks, and stirring frequently.
  4. Drain the pasta once just tender, and rinse with cold water. Drain well. Add to a large bowl with the vegetables, and then toss with the dressing.
  5. Serve right away. You can also add more rice vinegar and fish sauce to add more flavor if needed. Over time, the noodles will start absorbing the sauce, so, if needed, you can add a bit more vinegar and either tamari, coconut amino acids, or fish sauce, to taste.


Instant Pot Mexican Shredded Chicken


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This easy recipe takes just a couple of ingredients and can be thrown together in mere minutes, but produces flavorful shredded chicken that’s perfect for tacos, burritos and burrito bowls, and taco salads. 





If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may have noticed that we tend to love dark meats, such as chicken thighs. But chicken breast can be delicious too! This recipe is suitable for most gluten-free, grain-free, paleo/primal diets. I most often eat this on the THM (Trim Healthy Mama) plan as part of my E meal. 





For those of us coming to THM from the traditional foods world, eating some meals that are higher in the slow carbs, but lower in fat is a real transition. However, look at how satisfying this meal is below! 










What’s in this bowl: Brown rice, pinto beans, Mexican shredded chicken, cabbage slaw tossed with a teaspoon of oil and lime juice, fresh garlic and salt, salsa, and nonfat Greek yogurt. 





If you are interested in why I decided to start combining what I had learned from other experts in the holistic world with THM, you can read my story here and learn about my coaching as well. 





For an S meal, or other Mexican-inspired recipes, check out this juicy Carnitas recipe as well as my Simple Mexican Coleslaw. Delicious! 





But regardless of your dietary lifestyle, this recipe is delicious! 





Instant Pot Shredded Chicken 





  • 2-3 Chicken Breasts
  • 1 and 1/4 cup salsa or Picante sauce
  • 1 teaspoon each chili, cumin, garlic powder





  1. In a 6 quart Instant Pot add the salsa or sauce. An IP needs at least 1 cup of liquid, so if your salsa is dry, add chicken broth. Add the chicken and spices.
  2. Secure lid, set steam release valve to closed, and program for ten minutes on high on manual.
  3. Let rest for five minutes, and then release. Check to make sure chicken is cooked all the way through.
  4. Shred chicken, then pour the sauce over it. Enjoy!


Why I’m Spatchcocking My Turkey This Year


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This method has many advantages, including a super fast cooking time, and moist, delicious meat. 





Turkey is the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving tables, yet it’s also the hardest to cook correctly. If you undercook it, food poisoning is a possibility, but if you overcook it, the breasts can be dry and unappetizing. 





My solution for the past five years or so has been trying out different forms of brining. My go to is this dry brine – I love not having to deal with a lot of liquid (as well as not having to find a large enough container for said turkey and brine). A dry brine still gives you the flavorful benefits of a brine as well as a juicy turkey. 





However, I think spatchcocking makes my recipe even better. Spatchcocking is when you remove the spine of the turkey, and roast the turkey flat. This has significant benefits, the biggest that it cooks very fast. I cooked a 16 pound turkey in a little less than an hour and a half. Wow! But it also gets the turkey’s skin delicious, crisp and brown, and even better –roasts the turkey evenly – so the legs and breasts get done at the same time. 





While you won’t be able to stuff your turkey this way (an option that many experts say not to do anyway), the benefits far outweigh that fact. 





But before I send you all scurrying to try this out yourself, I do want to honestly share our experience testing this method out. 





  1. It’s not at all hard to spatchcock a chicken with a sharp knife or kitchen shears. I had a harder time with a turkey. My husband, with his stronger hands, ended up helping me out with this part. I prefer kitchen shears, but do expect to have to use some oomph on this part. 
  2. When I pressed down on the turkey to flatten it after the backbone was removed, a large squirt of turkey juice sprayed across the kitchen floor. Oops. 
  3. Most recipes I found used a very hot oven for this method. This ended up causing a lot of smoking. For Thanksgiving, I plan on turning the oven down a bit after the first 20 minutes, and also adding water to the bottom of the pan to hopefully prevent that from reoccurring. 
  4. Our turkey was hefty at 16 pounds, so it just barely fit on our sheet pan once flattened. I would say it needs to be 16 pounds or less, so this method won’t likely work for larger birds unless you split the turkey in half and roast on two pans. 





Despite those disadvantages, our “test” turkey turned out so well cooked and delicious we all decided this was a method we simply had to do again. Paired with the salt brine? Amazing. 





I don’t want to give my own directions yet, as I still want to experiment with this method, but here are a couple of recipes showing how to spatchcock: Example one, two, and three. 





And here is my dry brine recipe! 


Roasted Frozen Broccoli


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This is not only a simple recipe, but it's delicious and kid-friendly too. Yes! Even frozen vegetables can taste good! 





We have a problem. If we don’t like how I prepare vegetables, they are pushed around on our plates and barely touched. This is no good, as I believe that vegetables are not only important for our health, but they can also be a delicious part of our daily diet as well. 





So when we made our big move to South Dakota, I faced a new problem. Back in Portland, Oregon, I had a large array of options for vegetables. Here? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of stores and some good options, but I found that I was eating less vegetables, they were costing a little more, and I wasn’t getting as good of a variety into our diets. Because of the climate here, we simply don’t have as many local options for produce. 





I needed to change my game plan, and that meant being willing to try more frozen vegetables. I have, admittedly, long eschewed frozen vegetables, and we mainly used them as a stop-gap. But I realized that there were many great frozen vegetables options here and I needed to figure out how to make them a little more delicious. I’m proud to say that we now eat them on a regular basis and all of us love them. Why? 





Can You Roast Frozen Vegetables? 





Well, it turns out that you can roast them just like you do fresh vegetables! Why does roasting make fresh and frozen vegetables so much better? For a number of reasons: It helps crisp vegetables while they cook and if you leave them in long enough they will start to caramelize and give you a savory depth of flavor. 





Steamed frozen vegetables can sometimes have a mushy texture once cooked, or be very bland in flavor. I did find that the recipe I used for my cooking like a Roman day, using a spiced wine sauce with frozen broccoli, was really delightful. So you can absolutely have good steamed frozen vegetables. 





However, roasting them is a more fail-safe way for delicious vegetables that takes very little hands-on time. 





It’s also very versatile. We’ve done frozen Brussels sprouts, a carrots, broccoli and cauliflower mix, and both cauliflower and broccoli. The only thing we haven’t really been fans of is the frozen carrots. They were far better when roasted than steamed, but we found we preferred the other vegetables. 





Basic Method for Roasting Frozen Vegetables





Basic Method: Roasting vegetables is very easy. The basis concept is to toss frozen vegetables (don’t defrost) with oil, salt and pepper and roast in a hot oven until they are browned and crispy. I often don’t even set a timer. 





Additions: You can also toss them with dried herbs, fresh garlic before they go in the oven, or toss with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs right after they come out of the oven. Or, roast with chopped bacon. This is the type of recipe where knowing the basic method is helpful, and then you can have fun trying a variety of vegetables and herbs and spices. 





But to get you started, here is a basic recipe for Roasted Frozen Broccoli










Roasted Frozen Broccoli





1 package of frozen broccoli (16 oz) 





2-3 tablespoons of oil or melted fat of your choice 





Salt and pepper 





  1. Preheat oven to 425F. I use parchment paper because I use sheet pans that are aluminum, but you can an unlined sheet pan as well. 
  2. Toss broccoli with oil/fat and salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook until browned to desired doneness. (between 15-35 minutes). 





Variation: My favorite variation is adding some sliced fresh onions to the broccoli before it cooks and then tossing with chopped fresh basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar once it’s out of the oven. Fabulous!