Made with rice flour and water, and sold fresh and dried, rice noodles are a useful food to have because of its long shelf life and the way in can turn any ordinary dish into something interesting.
The noodles can be kept in your kitchen cupboard for up to two years when stored in a cool, darkish, and dry spot. The light pasta, common in Southeast Asia, is a gluten-free food, unlike regular noodles, which have wheat flour.
It’s an attractively low calorie food, great for adding to soups and stews. Rice noodles are a delicious ingredient in almost all Asian cuisines, and you can enjoy them hot in a soup or stir-fry or in a cold salad.
Different cooking methods
Cooking rice noodles is a little bit different from cooking other pastas. Instead of boiling the noodles, which can be done, the dried rice noodles can also be soaked in hot water to soften them.
The tricky part about cooking the noodles is knowing how long to soak them. You don’t want to sit with undercooked rice noodles, but it can happen, and then you need to know how to fix them because few people can afford to just throw the noodles out.
You get different kinds of rice noodles – the very thin ones, which are known as vermicelli, the regular thin ones, which are often labeled as Pad Thai rice noodles, the medium noodles, which are known as stir-fry noodles or pad thai noodles; and then you get the wide noodles.
Let’s first understand how to cook rice noodles in the first place to avoid undercooking them –
- First, fill a bowl with warmish water and add your rice noodles, allowing them to soak for 3 minutes.
- While they are soaking, you can gently separate the noodles.
- Strain the noodles. If you’re wanting to add them to a soup, stew, or stir-fry dish, bring your food to a boil and then add the noodles to the dish, immediately turning off the heat.
There are other ways that chefs and home cooks opt to cook their rice noodles. Each person discovers their preferred method. Some people will soak the noodles for longer – for about 10 minutes until they are tender. They then drain them, and rinse them quickly under cold water.
If your noodles are undercooked the first time around, we look at ways to fix the problem. If the noodles are chewy and still fairly hard, it’s an indication that the noodles haven’t been cooked long enough. The best way to tell if your noodles are cooked through, is to simply taste one or two.
How to fix undercooked pasta
- Reboil it
Once you’ve tasted your noodles and discovered that they are still crunchy and underdone, simply return the noodles to the boiling water. Test the noodles every few seconds because you don’t want to end up overcooking them this time around.
- You can cook your noodles, sauce included
You may have already added a sauce to your undercooked rice noodles before discovering the problem. Don’t worry, because if you’ve already added sauce, simply cook the noodles in the sauce.
Cook for just a few minutes, and if the sauce thickens too much while re-cooking, simply add in some more water.
- Reheat undercooked pasta in the microwave
When used correctly, microwave cooking is alright, but some cooks avoid microwave cooking, saying that radiation causes loss of nutritional value.
Whatever your thoughts are about the use of a microwave, if you still have one in your kitchen, in an emergency, you can use it. A microwave can be quickly used to reheat your undercooked rice noodles.
Microwaving is great for anyone wanting to heat food quickly when they’re in a hurry. Place your noodles in a microwave-safe dish and cover. Reheat the noodles for a minute or two, and then check to see if the noodles are done. If you’re still not convinced, cook for another minute.
- Try other cookers to do the trick
To fix undercooked pasta, try using a steamer—a handy kitchen appliance to cook food with steam heat. For steaming, you use about half as much water as when you actually boil your noodles. Place the noodles in the steamer tray and steam for roughly 10 minutes.
Then it’s simply a case of draining your noodles, and you’re sorted. It’s much the same procedure as when you use an instant pot to cook noodles.
After cooking noodles in an Instant Pot, if the noodles are still fairly crunchy and undercooked, simply add another 1/2 cup of water to the pot, re-seal it, and cook for another minute or two.
How to Fix Undercooked Rice Noodles
So the answer to the question, “Can you fix undercooked rice noodles and how to fix it?” gets you the answer “Yes, you can”. There are various ways to do it, but it’s essentially just a case of placing the noodles in boiling water for a few minutes longer.
Once heated through using your preferred method, drain the excess water and serve. Sometimes, you can add them straight into your soup or stir-fry. You can also store any leftover rice noodles you have. In your refrigerator. The noodles can be kept for about 3 days. They can also be frozen.
No matter how skilled a chef we are in the kitchen, we all make mistakes from time to time. A common mistake is not cooking your rice noodles thoroughly. Fortunately, it’s a simple problem than can be fixed, allowing you to enjoy the noodles without having to throw them away.