One of my favorite things to order at a Japanese restaurant, or in general, is Sunomono salad. Sunomono salad simply refers to food in vinegar, so it can be just about anything. In Canada it typically has noodles in the broth, but when we lived in California it was never served with noodles and often without broth. We would typically receive cucumbers that had been marinated in the broth.
I adore it with noodles, and broth, personally. And recently we have been served the salad with a bunch of other vegetables on top of those noodles – which is now my favorite way of eating this salad. Spoiled, for sure. So I wanted to recreate this version of Sunomono salad at home.
I have played around with the broth recipe a bit since first publishing the basic Sunomono salad, and have updated my recipe on that version to match this one. Definitely use unseasoned rice vinegar – I was led astray recently with a suggestion I should be using seasoned vinegar. It certainly did not taste like anything I had ordered in the past.
Here’s the recipe for this easy, yet fancy, Sunomono salad:
Deluxe Sunomono Salad
Ingredients
Broth
- 1/3 cup sugar (or equivalent stevia extract) Or more, to taste. Use preferred sweetener, although needs to dissolve in water. See notes.
- 2/3 cup water Add more if you find the broth too strong to your taste.
- 13 oz rice vinegar Plain, unseasoned.
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice Include flesh if desired. To taste.
The food stuffs
- 4 cups rice noodles
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1/2 carrot
- 1/2 beet medium
- 1/2 cup romaine lettuce chopped
- 1/2 avocado
Instructions
- Boil some water, and use 2/3 cup of it to dissolve the sugar (you can skip boiling the water if using stevia extract). Chill or set aside to cool to room temperature, and then add rice vinegar and lemon juice. Chill while preparing the rest of this dish.
- Cook rice noodles according to package directions. This will usually be 7-10 minutes after water starts boiling. When finished cooking, drain and rinse noodles several times in cold water.
- Slice cucumbers and avocado, and chop the romaine. The beets and carrots can be prepared as desired – I only have a tool like this to cut them into matchsticks, or you could spiralize them.
- Add noodles to broth in bowls, and then add the other vegetable toppings as pictured. Enjoy!
Notes
For the noodles, you can use your preferred vermicelli rice noodle. I have even found a specific “sunomono salad” noodle at our local asian grocery store. However, I have used several different types of noodles and they have all worked well.
Pretty easy to make, yes? Do you have a favorite version of this versatile salad that you enjoy? How do you prefer your broth?
