Rice Noodles in Thai Peanut Sauce

I discovered this dish in the early to mid 1990’s. It was a cold dish I found in various grocery store deli counters. Their version more than likely used standard wheat noodles. This is the dish that led to my love of Thai peanut sauce and satay sauce. It has usually been spicy and served cold. Originally when I made this I bought pre-made sauces and various Asian wheat noodles found in the refrigerated sections of the grocery store next to the tofu.

I have to be honest; I have a peanut butter addiction. As a kid I loved peanut butter sandwiches. I am not talking about peanut butter and jelly or jam, but straight on just peanut butter sandwiches. I grew up on all natural peanut butters that meant peanuts and salt. The typical peanut butters like Skippy and Jif are too sweet in my opinion. Mind you, I used to eat peanut butter and honey. I controlled how sweet it was. My love of peanut butter extends to sweets, specifically candy bars. My biggest weaknesses are Hershey’s 5^th Avenues and Hershey’s Whatchamacallits. I do not care for Butterfingers; they taste like artificial peanut butter to me.

Rice Noodles in Thai Peanut Sauce  

I have always wanted to make my own and I decided to do so in December 2105. I looked around at various recipes. I found one I wanted to try online. On December 11, 2015, I did my first batch. I used all natural peanut butter, but not the unsalted variety. This recipe had two salty elements, soy sauce and fish sauce. It was a little too salty, due to the salted peanut butter with the fish sauce and soy sauce. It was less salty when mixed with the rice noodles. That was the other thing I did, I used rice noodle sticks. I am still trying to trim down my wheat use. Another issue was the ginger was a bit too prominent in this version.

In January 2016, I wanted to make another attempt. This batch used a peanut sauce recipe with fewer ingredients. It called for red curry paste. This dish was at my ceiling of heat tolerance. Two tablespoons of red curry paste per recipe was too much and I doubled the batch so I used four tablespoons. That was a little strong. I used an unsalted peanut butter this time. I am developing my own recipe, using both previous recipes and a satay recipe I found. We will see where this takes me.

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