Singapore noodles. They didn’t originate in Singapore (theory is they’re Cantonese) and they were popularized by Chinese restaurants in Europe. How is that for a hodgepodge history?
Well, I’m going to blame this one on Anthony Bourdain too. I’ve been streaming No Reservations on Netflix lately and the other night I watched the Singapore episode. My mouth started to water when I saw him slurping a soup bowl full of rice vermicelli and a searingly hot pepper sauce. YUM. I’m in love with both rice vermicelli and hot sauce. So, I started Googling recipes.
Most of the recipes I found featured curry powder, which honestly, I could take or leave. I used it today because I had some but also price checked it at the store and saw that it was selling for about $5 a bottle. That’s wayyyyy too much. If you have a decently stocked spice cabinet, you can probably just make your own. Here is a good basic recipe although there are many variations (google it). My curry powder is a mild version so I just added some cayenne to make it hot. If you don’t want to use curry, this dish would be equally as delicious seasoned with just the soy sauce blend that is added at the end.
To make this recipe economical, use whatever vegetables you can purchase at a good price. The best buys at the store today were bok choy, bean sprouts, carrots and green onions. Other possibilities include: nappa or regular cabbage, bell peppers, yellow onion, mushrooms or jalapenos. You can also add fish, pork or chicken for added protein.
Special Note: This recipe makes a TON. The photos below are of a half batch that I made because I am going out of town and didn’t want a lot sitting in my fridge. The recipe is written for a full batch. I plan on making a fresh half batch in a few days to use up the rest of the ingredients.
Singapore Noodles
Servings 6Ingredients
- 8 oz rice vermicelli noodles ($2.39)
- 1 Tbsp hot curry powder ($0.25)
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.11)
- 1 inch fresh ginger ($0.09)
- 3 Tbsp vegetable oil ($0.11)
- 1 bunch bok choy ($2.55)
- 4 medium carrots ($0.25)
- 12 oz bag bean sprouts ($1.49)
- 1 bunch green onions ($0.25)
- 1/4 cup soy sauce ($0.24)
- 1 tsp sesame oil ($0.12)
- 1 tsp chili garlic sauce, optional ($0.05)
Instructions
- Place the dry rice noodles in a bowl and cover with room temperature water. Let soak for 15 minutes. Drain in a colander after they have soaked and are softened. Return the noodles to the bowl, cut the noodles into pieces (approximately 6 inches in length) to facilitate stir frying later. Sprinkle the noodles with curry powder and toss to coat. Set noodles aside.
- While the noodles are soaking/draining/marinating in curry powder, prepare all of your vegetables. Peel and mince the garlic and ginger, julienne the carrots, wash and thinly slice the bok choy, rinse the bean sprouts and slice the green onion.
- Heat vegetable oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. When the pan is very hot, add the garlic and ginger. Stir fry very briefly (1 minute or less) then add all of the vegetables, reserving some green onion for garnish. Stir fry the vegetables until they just begin to soften.
- Add the noodles to the hot pan and stir fry briefly (1-2 minutes). Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the soy sauce, sesame oil and chili garlic sauce. You can either add them to the pan individually or mix them all together in a bowl then stir into the dish. Taste the noodles and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
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Step By Step Photos
These are the rice noodles I used. I bought them at a regular grocery store in the Asian section. They could probably be bought for half the price at an Asian grocer.
Soak the rice noodles in water for about 15 minutes or until they have softened.
Drain the rice noodles well.
Put the noodles back in the bowl and cut into pieces about 6 inches long (or on a cutting board). If you don’t cut the noodles, you’ll never be able to stir fry them or mix them in with the veggies later. Sprinkle with the curry powder and toss to coat. Set the noodles aside.
While the noodles are soaking, draining and marinating with curry powder, prepare the vegetables. I have green onion, garlic, ginger, bok choy, carrot and bean sprouts. Cut everything thinly so they cook quickly.
Heat a large skillet or wok over high heat with vegetable oil. When it is very hot, add the ginger and garlic and stir fry for one minute or 30 seconds (this was so quick I couldn’t take a picture). Then add the rest of your vegetables.
Stir fry the veggies just until they begin to soften. Do not over cook them at this point, they will continue to cook as you go.
Add your softened, seasoned and cut noodles.
Stir fry the noodles for another 1-2 minutes then remove from the heat.
Mix together some soy sauce, chili garlic sauce and sesame oil.
Add the soy sauce mixture and stir in. Taste the noodles to see if you want to add more heat (chili garlic sauce), salt (soy sauce) or sesame oil.
Despite the curry powder and chili garlic sauce, I still like to top my noodles with Sriracha!!
I have made many times your recipe, and is great!. I impress my friends who congratulate me a lot, LOL!. Two comments anyway:
1. I think 4 medium carrots is a lot.
2. What is a ‘bunch’ of green onions? What is a bunch on weight or quantity?
Quantity, it’s usually around 8 green onions or so. It’s really flexible so you don’t have to worry about adding an exact amount. :)
This recipe was strange, it came out pretty dry and flavorless aside from the hot curry. I even used less of the hot curry because I was worried about it overpowering. I want to try this again, and maybe add chicken stock to moisten up the noodles and add some other spices as this was really lacking in flavor.
I love this site and its recipes, but my boyfriend and I really did not like this. We ended up going to a restaurant after making it. It was bland–it didn’t taste like much oof anything besides the curry from the noodles. It was not pleasant at all, and a rare miss for this site.
Thank you very much for the recipe. It came out great, was longing to make Singapore noodles.🌻
I made this recipe for my husband and it was absolutely incredible. It is absolutely true I can never ever bike and again. Thank you so much.
Can I use regular curry powder. Hot is a no no with my littles.
Yes you could.
Yeah! Michelle to the rescue, thank you and God Bless.
Haven’t tried the recipe yet, but I just wanted to say thank you! My husband is 1/2 Japanese and loves his Asian dishes. As a SAHM I’m charged with cooking, but honestly I suck at it. Your dishes are always so easy, so good and there are so many Asian options. Thank you for helping to keep my family fed and my wonderful husband’s belly happy 😊
I added meat to this recipe, and it was perfect!!
So easy and delicious! I’m so glad I found this recipe!
I have 10 packages of vermicelli in my pantry and I had no idea what to do with them. This is on the menu tonight!!
Thanks for the super easy, super delicious looking dinner idea!
Oh so delicious! So happy to add this to my weekly recipe. My Family loved it and best of all I didn’t even have to go shopping I had everything at home! So awesome. One hour eight minutes after seeing this recipe i was calling my family to gather around the kitchen table for lunch.
I am expanding my cooking horizons. This should be very tasty and fun to make. Thank you for posting this!
Very good, a little dry, so I added chicken stock. Looking forward to making it again, next time I won’t stir the noodles so much because they broke down too much.
Just made these for dinner and they were DELICIOUS! I made them exactly as written. Thanks so much for posting the recipe.
This is will be a new weekly staple for our family! I made a batch and a half since I can only find the glass noodles in 6.25oz packages, omitted the bean sprouts and used shredded carrots instead of julliened. I don’t have a wok so I stir fried them in a huge soup pot and let me tell you, what an arm workout! Tomorrow will definitly be a sleeveless shirt day for this lady! :)
This time I did not have any bok choy and bean sprouts but I put a red pepper diced.instead.
We loved it !
Thank you for this great recipe ! Will do it again and again : )
What’s a ‘bunch’ of bok choy…. here we buy it by the pound…. and what’s with cutting the noodles once they are back in the bowl …. recipe really sounds good, but instructions are a bit Strange!
You forgot the curry powder. That’s what makes it different from meifun, which is actually what you made.
nvm I didn’t see the curry powder.
It is on the Noodles ding bat!
No need to call people names. Why can’t we just be nice? This is a recipe page, not a mean girl’s club. This is supposed to be enjoyable, not miserable. Why ruin it and be a cyber bully?
Agree
Deeeelicious! I’m a baby, so I can’t handle spicy, so I did do without the curry. And it was still absolutely wonderful!
I was given a big packet of vermicelli noodles and wasn’t sure what to make with them until I tried your recipe. Thank you so much, we all loved it. I made half the quantity and we all loved it!
I have to say that I’m not in love with the recipe as is. Tossing the noodles in dry curry powder (especially a tablespoon of it!) left a powdery coating on the noodles, which we inhaled and lead to coughing fits. Next time I do this I’ll mix the curry powder in some water/sesame oil and toss the noodles in that to coat. I think I’ll also sub in some smoked paprika to part of the curry powder to add a little more interest since the curry became too dominant and flat tasting.
This is the first vegetarian version I have ever heard of. I have always seen it with bbq pork and shrimp. I have made it from a package but never from scartch. I am going to try this.
I made these today, refrigerated them, and served cold for dinner tonight with some fresh limes to squeeze over. Perfect cool dish for a summer meal. All three of the kids liked them (a rarity)!
Made this tonight and loved it! Pretty easy; just some prep work. I think this will go into my regular rotation.
This is our favorite dish but it’s so expensive when ordering takeout! I just made this and my noodles were a little firm still, but it tasted delicious.
I think this is my new go-to dish. Thanks so much!!
I made this last night! Regardless whether or not it’s a true Singapore Noodles dish, it was doggone yummy.
I added shiitake mushrooms to mine. Love those.
I didn’t have fresh ginger so I added pre-minced ginger from a jar (found in the Asian food isle) along with the garlic to the hot oil. MISTAKE! Because of the wetness of the ginger, I had grease spattered everywhere AND a temporary fire on my glass-top range. So be careful when adding wet ingredients to hot oil. I obviously wasn’t thinking about anything but the timing of adding ingredients.
I also forgot to cut my noodles. LOL. I just bird-nested them in the center of the vegetables and flipped/stirred with tongs.
Won’t forget lessons learned for the next time. This was a VERY tasty dish. I have leftovers for tonight. :-)
What you’d find in Singapore is fried bee hoon (without a hint of curry) served in a lot of cooked food centre or food hawkers. it’s fast, cheap, and filling (and often eaten as breakfast). The curry version is an iconic Hong Kong dish, and can be found in any cha chaan tengs.
I love me some Singapore rice vermicelli with Sriracha! :D
This was amazing last night! Have always been intimidated by any Asian cuisine. Thanks so much for your help! By the way all 3 of my little boys gobbled it up!
Hi Beth, thank you so much for the simple recipe. It tastes fantastic. Although it wasn’t quite the Singapore fried vermicelli I had in Malaysia, oh well, this tastes really yum! So who cares?
I’m new to your blog and so far I have loved every single recipe I’ve tried (plus they are really easy to make!). I made this dish tonight with brown rice vermicelli and it was delicious!
Awesome dish. I made a half-batch for myself, not expecting my meat-loving husband to be interested in partaking. He tried some of it, then asked if he could finish off the rest of it. Well then!
P.S. I added possibly too much sriracha, since I’m a new-found fan of the stuff. It was delicious, but left my mouth burning. I smiled through the tears. :’)
I mad this tonight. It was a huge hit. I made some changes. I’m not a fan of curry, so I just sprinkled a little over the noodles, maybe 1/2 tsp. I sliced some thin pork chops and added a few mushrooms, zucchini, and sweet peppers and about 5 stalks of bok choy. I don’t like carrots or sprouts and forgot to get onions. The noodles were only a 5.2 oz package and I kept the sauce the same. I’ll be making this a lot. My husband thought it would be good with shrimp
Tasty and versatile. I added 1 cup of cooked shredded chicken.
Made a version of this a while ago. This is also very similar to the Hmong version of eggrolls, which are incredibly delicious! You basically just need to replace the bok choy with cabbage and shred the carrots instead of chopping and tweak the seasoning a bit and wrap them up! I suggest you try finding a recipe online because I can’t remember off the top of my head but you won’t be disappointed!
@ Everybody Eats Well in Flanders – yay!! No curry powder!
I can’t say I followed your recipe, as I just worked with what I had on hand. But if it weren’t for you I’d still not know to fix the noodles themselves. This dish was SO easy and tasty (and yes, of COURSE I used sriracha sauce!). Thank you very much for the inspiration to attempt this fantastic dish!
Made this for lunch w/ onion, red pepper and jalapeno. SOOO good! Perfect greasy take-out at home for a fraction of the price. :)
Made this for lunch w/ onion, red pepper and jalapeno. SOOO good! Perfect greasy take-out at home for a fraction of the price. :)
Made this tonight and it was delicious. I added mushrooms and shrimp. It will become a go to meal for my house. Thank you for the recipe!
Made this for supper tonight. Excellent all around – quick, easy, tasty and ‘budget friendly’! Thanks!
This was really good! But I think I made enough to last a week! Lol thanks for the recipie :)
About to go try this out, I’m excited. And I have to say your print options, and ability to delete stuff is the best thing I’ve ever seen on a cooking site!
This was SO good, made a ton! Went a little crazy with the chili sauce. Thanks for the share.
This was a very good facsimile of the Singapore Rice Noodles that my husband loves from our local Chinese restaurant. I made a whole batch, and I am glad I did. I thought a half batch would be enough for the 2 of us. But DH ended up eating 3/4 of the whole batch I made because he loved it so much:) This recipe is definitely a keeper! It was very easy to make. The hardest part is the prep. I hate to chop veggies;) But it was so worth it. Thanks!
Joanna – Sorry to hear that!! If you have the gumption to try again, start with half the soy sauce and then if you need more you can always sprinkle some on top after everything is done. Also, check your curry powder, does it contain salt? Mine didn’t but I’m wondering if some do…
I just made this recipe as written (I thought…) and it was way too salty. I am not sure what I did wrong, but my husband and I had to dump the whole pot :-( I may try again, but not sure yet…
I love noodles and this one is right up my alley! :D
AND I love your blog!!!
i just made this and it’s delicious. thanks!! i love this blog. :)
Look for an Indian grocery store for curry powder. The one I frequent has 12oz of garam masala, or chana powder for $3.
Made this with bok choi, carrots, and leeks. It was wonderful! (It was actually my first time eating leeks, as a side note, as we received them in the CSA box, and I am convinced of their worth.) Next time, we’re going to put shrimp in, too, I think, but it was definitely a keeper of a recipe. I just wish I would have done a better job cutting up the rice noodles–I made a big mess trying to mix them in with the veggies!
I love Singapore noodles and your recipes looks amazingly simple too..I think I’ll try this on Saturday since I’ll be home alone
Oh my god Beth, I just made this recipe and it is FANTASTIC! I halved the batch size but used the same amount of chili/sesame oil/soy/tamari and it is just to die for. And it was ridiculously easy to make. I absolutely will make this again!
Yummy! Even my 6 and 7 year old boys loved this recipe! Which is rare, usually they eat nothing but potatoes and chicken, maybe a cheeseburger if you are lucky.
Thanks for the great recipe! I whipped this up last night and it was awesome. I had some pho-style rice noodles in my pantry left over from another dish, so I used those instead of vermicelli; it worked out pretty well. Also, we had some blanched collard greens and half an onion in the fridge that we threw in – this dish eats up leftovers very nicely! Oh, and I added a couple of eggs too for some extra proteiny goodness (mixed with soy sauce and quickly fried at the beginning, then sliced up and added back in at the end). I think I may have been a little heavy-handed with the curry powder, but otherwise it was very yummy.
Oh, wow, you’re the best! It looks really delicious in your pictures! I can’t wait to try it :D
Hi Beth
I just learnt how to make char siew myself the other day. If you wish, you can refer to my post, I have got 2 recipes which I selected out of many char siew recipes. Both are singaporean/malaysian chinese bloggers whom I often referred to for baking and cooking ideas. Its very easy, but you must choose the right cut of meat, preferably pork shoulder. I didn’t use the right cut of meat, so my homemade char siew didn’t look authentic though it did taste quite well…
http://everybodyeatswell.blogspot.com/2010/09/honey-char-siew-experimenting-with-2.html
Have fun :)
Yeah, I think the whole “Singapore Noodle” thing is similar to “football” issue. Football in America is far different than what football is in the rest of the world… Singapore Noodles from restaurants in Europe and America often have curry but, as you pointed out, in Singapore it doesn’t! Oh well, like I said, I would have been just as satisfied with the dish had I left out the curry ;)
Oh, and I would have LOVED to have had some char siew to go in it! That is on my “learn how to make” list!
Thanks for this! I think I will never eat this at the restaurant ever again! So easy to make!
Sophie
Hi
Forgot to mention that your Singapore Noodles does look like the real thing, the ingredients are mostly correct except for the curry powder ;p You could throw in some char siew (roast pork) though, I remember eating Singapore Noodles with them.
Great work :)
Hi
I was born and bred in Singapore and now living in Europe. There is indeed a dish called “Singapore Noodles” in Singapore, we call it “XinZhou MiFen” which in chinese means rice vermicelli from Singapore (XinZhou was the old chinese name for Singapore). Singapore Noodles, for your info, does not contain CURRY POWDER. Fullstop. Never ever.
I dunno why the chinese restaurants in Europe cook it with curry powder. It is utterly wrong. I would like to correct this widespread perception that noodles with curry powder is “Singapore Noodles”, it is not. You can call it curry noodles though. :)
Thank you.
Ooh can’t wait to try this one. I get Singapore Noodles for take-out and they are so good.
I really love your blog! So much variety, so many great ideas and I love the fact that it is all broken down economically! I have made a few of the recipes and they are fantastic…simple yet nourishing. Good Work!
This looks easy and amazing, thank you! Just what I needed to get me out of my cooking rut.