Tempeh Noodle Salad with lime, ginger and sesame dressing

I love dinner-sized salads. Not only are they quick to put together, they are healthy and delicious. This Asian inspired tempeh noodle salad is fresh and  flavourful. It is a 30-minute recipe that is perfect for picnics, barbecues and busy weeknight dinners.

Switch up the recipe

Tempeh noodle salad is a great base recipe for all-sorts of different Asian-inspired salads. Here are a few ways to switch up this noodle salad:

1. Noodles: Switch out the rice noodles for buckwheat soba or edamame noodles.
2. Vegetables: Use any fresh vegetables that you have in your kitchen. Add micro greens like radish sprouts or sunflower seed sprouts. Replace part of the coloured peppers and cucumber with other firm vegetables like carrots and sweet peas.
3. Protein: Change the tempeh for stirfried tofu, cooked chicken or roasted peanuts.
4. Flavours: If you don’t have all the specialty ingredients in your larder, feel free to replace them with something similar.  For example: use cider vinegar instead of rice vinegar, vegetable oil for sesame oil, hot sauce for sriracha. Personally, I like to up my selenium intake with a 1/4 cup of soaked wakame (affiliate link.)

Tempeh Noodle Salad

★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

This pan-Asian inspired salad is a fresh and tasty meal. The recipe is easy to adjust to whatever vegetables you have in your fridge. Use tempeh, tofu or chicken for a delicious and filling meal. See the section above for more suggestions on how to adjust the recipe to suit your taste buds.

• Author: Emillie
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 15 minutes
• Total Time: 25 minutes
• Yield: Serves 4-6 1x
• Category: Salad
• Cuisine: Asian

Scale 1x2x3x

Ingredients

Dressing

• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• Juice and zest of 2 limes
• 1 tsp fresh ginger (grated)
• 2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1–2 tsp sriracha
• 3/4 tsp salt

Salad

• 1 package of rice noodles (454 g)
• 1 coloured pepper, diced
• 1 cucumber, diced
• 1 package of tempeh (about 454g)
• Cilantro leaves and toasted sesame seed

Instructions

1. Mix all of the salad dressing ingredients together in the bottom of a large bowl.
2. Dice up the vegetables and mix with the salad dressing to marinate.
3. Cook the rice noodles, and rinse with cold water. Drain the rice noodles and mix with the rest of the salad.
4. Taste the salad and adjust the salt, vinegar and sriracha as needed. The salad can be plated before you even start to cook the tempeh.
5. Dice up tempeh and saute on medium heat.
6. Serve the cold salad with warm tempeh. Finish by topping it with cilantro and sesame seeds.

Notes

• I wrote this recipe to feature homemade tempeh (white bean in the photo at the top and sunflower seed tempeh in the photo below). However, you can replace the tempeh with cubed tofu or cooked chicken breast. Just sprinkle them with a little soy sauce before cooking as they aren’t as flavourful as tempeh.
• This recipe can be altered to suit your taste (and your larder.) See the section above for some suggestions.

Keywords: vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, soy-free, nut free, dairy free, egg free, spring, summer, picnic, barbecue, potluck, 30 minutes or less