Garlic Lime Shrimp Rice Noodles

Tangy, spicy, a little sweet, crunchy and refreshing – this Garlic Lime Shrimp Rice Noodles recipe is a flavor-packed lunch or dinner meal that’s also super easy, fast and versatile! 

Shrimp is such an easy, fast, versatile and delicious option for flavor-packed lunches and dinners. It’s a great seafood canvas on which to build flavors and textures, and this is why I always keep some shrimp in the freezer as a contingency plan.

This Garlic Lime Shrimp Rice Noodles dish is no different. An easy, versatile, flavor-packed lunch/dinner option, I love eating it as a cold shrimp noodle salad in the summer, and eat it warm during the cold winter months.

You can make this dish in two different ways.

1. Marinate the shrimp in the garlic lime marinade and cook the marinated shrimp.
2. Skip the marinade, and cook the shrimp with just a little salt and toss it in the marinade afterwards.

I prefer to cook the shrimp without marinating, because then the pan fried shrimp can be mixed with other sauces for a variety of recipes and flavors. That’s where the shrimp works its magic as a great culinary canvas!

The garlic and lime sauce is super easy to make too. It’s a simple nuoc cham sauce (a Vietnamese sauce), which I thicken with cornstarch, so it’s great to toss things with. 🙂 Whether it’s shrimp, fish, cooked meat like chicken, beef or pork, or even tofu and other veggie options are great when tossed in this sauce. It’s also a fantastic dipping sauce!

I like to make the garlic lime sauce ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. This way I can simply pour it over the shrimp noodle salad when that’s done, or use it on other salads that I make for lunch.

I also like to cook the shrimp ahead of time and portion it out for our meals. Then on the day, I simply toss the shrimp in the garlic lime sauce and rice noodles, and enjoy the dish in all its glory!

While the noodles and shrimp with the garlic lime sauce is just about perfect, I love serving this with shredded lettuce, carrots and cucumber. This is especially delicious when you’re having this as a cold shrimp rice noodles salad. The garlic lime sauce acts as a dressing for the veggies too.

This shrimp rice noodles dish is perfect as a lunch box meal as well. It’s,

• tangy
• spicy
• a little sweet
• crunchy
• filling
• refreshing
• and an altogether great pick me up lunch for those busy week days!

Plus, it’s so versatile. You can customize the meal to your taste. We love adding plenty of spice and heat obviously, with lots of sliced Thai red chili pepper. But you’re welcome to reduce the amount of chili pepper or leave it out completely.

I also sprinkled some chopped roasted peanuts over this shrimp rice noodle salad too. It ties everything together with a nutty flavor and texture that complements the tangy sweetness of the rice noodle salad.

Don’t like shrimp?

Substitute with extra firm tofu, or leftover cooked meat like chicken. Or if you happen to end up with some leftover shrimp from this garlic lime shrimp rice noodles recipe, I’ll be sharing another recipe next week that uses the same pan fried shrimp for another flavor-packed lunch or dinner meal!

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