Coco-Lemongrass Vermicelli Shrimp Bowl is a light and easy dish for the summertime, filled with a rainbow of crunchy veggies and coco-lemongrass shrimp on a small bed of vermicelli rice noodles.
Summertime is sometimes painful… especially when you don’t have AC and live in Spain… It’s too hot for any long cooking sessions… Solution: the Wok! I love my wok; I like to work with it, especially in the summertime, to sauté food in no time. It’s so fast to cook with it; it won’t have time to warm up the house. This Vermicelli Shrimp Bowl is the perfect quick recipe for the summer!
A Quick Heat
The main idea here is to make a protein, whether shrimp, chicken or tofu and sauté it rapidly in oil and lemongrass, then let it simmer for an extra minute in coconut milk for an ultra-rapid and ultra-aromatic protein! The rest (veggies toppings) are up to you; take your favourites and keep them raw, and you’ll get a nice crunch and many more vitamins from it. Too hot to eat warm stuff anyway…
More Details
The video I’ve made contains a few elements you might wonder about… I can not fit in all the explanations about each action I do in there, so… here it is:
- Defrosting Shrimps in cold water, some might already know it, but a perfectly safe and fast way to unfreeze shrimps is under running cold water for about 10 minutes… the exact time it’s going to take you to prepare the veggies…. no time lost here!
- While the shrimps drain their excess water in a strainer, add a touch of “Nước chấm” or “Vietnamese Fish Sauce”; this is equivalent to salt, and it will give the shrimps ultra lots of sea flavour and get rid of that sometimes “fishy” note from unfrozen shrimps (*I would like to point out “make sure to buy the Vietnamese Fish sauce… not the others” because it’s done with actual fish and the others are often a mix of squids).
- Cooking the shrimp in peanut oil or coconut oil and adding the lemongrass and the optional Makrut lime leaves to the sauté helps to bring out the aroma rapidly. Because it won’t be cooking long, break the lemongrass and curry leaves to help them release all their flavour in no time.
- For most… Vermicelli rice noodles are done following the pack’s instructions… but I personally always do them the same way… leaving them in warm water until soft, draining, and rinse in cold water… this way it helps them get bouncy. I also add a tad of sesame oil and fish sauce (a few drops only) to give it extra flavour and gloss. But this step is optional.
Vietnamese Fish Sauce
Oh! and an extra note: Fish Sauce is your new salt when cooking South Eastern Asian dishes… I personally use it instead of salt, it gives an extra “sea” flavour to everything and no worries… it doesn’t taste “fishy” although it’s called “Fish Sauce”. It’s truly the “secret” ingredient to Vietnamese cuisine!
Other Bowls that might interest you
So let’s make this summer bowl!
Coco-Lemongrass Vermicelli Shrimp Bowl
Ingredients
The shrimps
- 250 ml coconut milk
- 200 g shrimps
- 2 tbsp Fish sauce
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 2 lemongrass sticks (broken into 2)
- 2 kaffir leaves (optional)
Sides
- 125 g rice vermicelli
- 2 carrots (cut into thin sticks)
- 1/4 red pepper (cut into thin sticks)
- 50 g bean sprouts
- 50 g salted peanuts
- 3 scallions (finely chopped)
- 2 hands fresh cilantro
- 1 lime
Instructions
- Unfreeze the shrimp under running cold water for 10 minutes.
- During that time, cut all the veggies and crush the peanuts, reserve.
- Bring the water to a boil for the noodles, stop the fire and let the vermicelli soak in there for 5 minutes or until tender; drain and rinse under cold water.
- Add a few drops of fish sauce to the vermicelli, mix and reserve.
- In a wok, on high heat, add the peanut oil, shrimp, and lemongrass broken into two, the kaffir leaves and sauté for 2 minutes.
- Add the coconut milk and lower the heat to simmer for another 2 minutes (add the fish sauce for more salt).
- Assemble the bowls and vermicelli first, then add the shrimp and coconut broth and fill with the veggies, peanuts, lime wedge and cilantro.
4 Comments
Delicious recipe! 🙂
Thanks;)
Very yummy recipe with good pictures 🙂
Thanks!