Noodle Salads

This is Sarah Simmons’s completely inauthentic take on Chinese peanut noodles. Made with soba noodles and Thai pantry staples (red curry paste, coconut milk, chile and cilantro), it’s lighter, brighter and spicier than the original.

The classic flavors of Thai cuisine—sweet, salty, spicy, sour—can all be found in the dressing on this salad, a delicious tangle of chewy rice noodles, shrimp, squid and peanuts.

Roasting cherry tomatoes in a mix of miso, ginger, sesame, lime juice and honey creates a tangy, bright sauce for soba noodles; try adding shrimp for an even more substantial dish.

This sweet and savory Japanese-style cold noodle salad is an easy dish to serve to a crowd, since it’s delicious chilled or at room temperature. Use preshredded carrots in place of julienned to make it even more quickly.

An updated pasta salad—whole-wheat spaghetti served at room temperature with sautéed tofu, cucumbers, scallions, and an Asian dressing—makes a delicious warm-weather meal, reminiscent of Japanese soba-noodle dishes.

Tossed with a tangy peanut dressing, this cold noodle salad with pork tenderloin is hearty but still refreshing.

“Buckwheat and basil actually work really well together,” Bill Kim says about this unlikely match-up of Japanese and Mediterranean flavors. This chunky salad has a great mix of textures, too: velvety grilled eggplant, crunchy radishes and juicy cucumbers.

Bubbly drinks in all their forms, from sparkling wine to fizzy ginger beer, inspire an effervescent bubble party. Pair them with a cool Vietnamese-style noodle salad tossed in a bright (and fat-free) citrus dressing.

This refreshing salad combines the flavors of mint, orange, lemon, and cucumber. Tuna, hot from the pan, is cut into chunks and tossed with the room-temperature pasta salad.

This cellophane-noodle salad, with creamy avocados, crunchy peanuts and a chile-honey dressing, is an excellent showcase for Caribbean spiny lobsters. Also known as rock lobsters, they are sweet but can be slightly dense. This recipe uses Maine lobsters; they're more tender than spiny lobsters—and just as delicious.

"Lime, mint, peanuts, panko, noodles, shrimp—lots of textures collide in this dish, screaming for a white wine with some acidity," says restaurateur Peter Kasperski.

Laab—ground beef seasoned with chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, and mint—is a traditional Thai meat salad eaten warm or at room temperature. We've added thin noodles to turn it into a pasta salad, but you can always eat the meat mixture by itself; just cut down on the fish sauce, or the beef may be too salty.

Mai My Lin prepares an aromatic and pungent marinade for grilled pork with two quintessential Vietnamese ingredients—lemongrass and fish sauce. The real surprise here is Mai’s zesty Carrot and Daikon Pickles, which are amazing with the smoky grilled meat.