Have to be real with you people, this recipe took me awhile to get to the table. My poor husband didn’t get dinner until an embarrassingly late hour. Partly because I grossly underestimated the amount of extra time it takes to chop veggies into teeny tiny pieces and partly because I started late thanks to an entire days worth of Instagram feed that sucked me in when I finished work. Oops! Whatever, the point here is that even though it took time this Vietnamese Spring Roll Salad was one of the best dishes I have made in a really long time. It is fresh and healthy and bursting with flavor and beautiful and different than my usual menu….the list goes on, the point is I fell head over heels in LOVE with this dish. There may have even been some mouth full cheering and fist pumping in the air because it was so good. Bottom line: hella chopping, hella worth it.

Vietnamese Summer Roll Salad, recipe from Closet Cooking

A few things I did different: added more lettuce and herbs, skipped the sprouts, used a different hot pepper, added seasoning to the shrimp and opted for the nuoc cham dressing (recipe here). Next time I will chop a bunch of stuff ahead of time and use the extra veggies as snacks for the week.

• 8 ounces vermicelli rice noodles, cooked as directed on package
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 8 ounces shrimp, shelled and deviened
• 2 cups lettuce, torn
• 1 cup cucumber, sliced
• 1 cup carrot, julienned
• 1 cup bean sprouts (I skipped the sprouts)
• 1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 green onions, sliced
• 1/4 cup basil, torn
• 1/4 cup cilantro, torn
• 1/4 cup mint, torn
• 1/4 cup peanuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
• 2 birds eye chilies, sliced (I couldn’t find birds eye so I used a serrano pepper but only a tiny bit, these suckers are hot!)
• 1/4 cup peanut dressing or nuoc cham (LOVED the nuoc cham, also used a tiny bit of serrano pepper here)

1. Cook shallot in oil until golden brown, set aside
2. In same pan cook shrimp until pink and set aside
3. Combine all ingredients and enjoy!

Cooked until dark, bad picture, sorry friends