What to use instead of rice noodles
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Wide flat noodles taking a hard sear in a wok
Rice and water with no gluten, so they go slack and slippery in a hot pan and pick up char on the surface. They also tear if you stir them more than a few times.
Dried wide rice noodles, soaked rather than boiledGluten-free
8 oz dried per 1 lb fresh, soaked in warm water 30 to 40 min until bendy
Never quite as soft as fresh and they snap more in the wok. Finish the cooking in the pan with a splash of the sauce.
Fresh or frozen udonRan out
1:1 by weight
Springy and chewy with wheat bite. They survive hard stirring, so the pan is far more forgiving, and they take less char.
Sweet potato starch noodlesGluten-free
1:1 by weight, boiled 6 to 7 min then rinsed
Bouncy and translucent, and they grip sauce harder than rice noodles do. They go gummy if the plate sits.
Pappardelle or wide egg noodlesRan out
1:1 by weight, boiled 1 min under the box time
Firm and eggy with no slippery chew at all. The sauce clings rather than slides, so cut it back by a third.
What doesn't work: Boiling fresh rice noodles to loosen the block. They dissolve into paste in about a minute. Microwave them 30 seconds or run hot tap water over them and pull the strands apart with your fingers.
Soft strands sitting in a hot broth
They are cooked and rinsed separately then dropped into the bowl, so the broth stays clear. The noodle soaks up soup without leaking starch back into it.
Rice vermicelli, bunGluten-free
1:1 by weight, boiled 3 to 4 min and rinsed cold
Much finer, so the bowl eats lighter and goes soft faster. They clump into a brick if you skip the cold rinse.
Fresh or frozen udonRan out
1:1 by weight
Chewier by a long way and the wheat starch clouds a clear pho broth within a few minutes.
Glass noodles, mung beanGluten-free
1:1 by weight, soaked 10 min in hot water
Slippery and clear with no flavour of their own. They keep drinking the broth, so the bowl runs dry if it stands.
Dried banh pho of a different widthGluten-free
1:1 by weight
Narrow strands go soft two minutes sooner and turn to mush if the bowl sits. Wide ones stay chewy longer.
What doesn't work: Cooking the noodles in the broth to save a pot. Rice noodles shed a lot of starch, and a pho broth you spent hours keeping clear goes cloudy and slightly gluey within minutes.