Yum Wun Sen (ยำวุ้นเส้น)

What is Yum Wun Sen?

Yum Wun Sen is the Thai salad built around glass noodles — slippery, springy mung bean threads that drink up a hot-sour dressing like nothing else. Minced pork and prawns are poached quickly, tossed with shallots, tomato and celery, and everything is lifted by the classic yum balance: fish sauce, lime and chilli, with no oil to dull it.

It is the lightest of the yum family — Wongnai's Janeojane sums the spirit up: "focus on the toppings, not the noodles." Served cold or room temperature, it doubles as a dinner salad and a drinking snack. Kapook's version, with 1.6 million reads, is the most popular on the Thai web.

Ingredients

• 80–100 g glass noodles (woon sen), soaked and cut short
• 100 g minced pork
• 6–8 prawns, peeled
• 70 g squid, sliced (optional)
• ½ onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tomato, sliced
• 2 stalks celery, cut into lengths
• 1 spring onion, cut into lengths
• 2–3 bird's eye chillies, plus jinda chillies to taste
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 2–3 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp pickled garlic brine (or 1 tsp sugar)
• 1 tbsp roasted peanuts (optional)
• Coriander leaves, to garnish

Method

1. Blanch the soaked glass noodles in boiling water. As soon as the water returns to the boil, stir in a cup of room-temperature water to stop the cooking — this keeps the noodles springy instead of bloated. Drain and set aside.
2. Blanch the minced pork and prawns in the same pot until just cooked. Lift out and drain.
3. Make the dressing: stir together the fish sauce, lime juice and pickled garlic brine, then add the chopped chillies. Taste — it should hit hot, sour and salty at once.
4. Toss the noodles, pork and prawns with the dressing, then fold in the onion, tomato, celery and spring onion.
5. Scatter over the peanuts and coriander and serve immediately.

Where Thai Sources Disagree

• The sweetener. Kapook's famous version sweetens with pickled garlic brine instead of sugar — the brine's tang rounds the dressing without granular sweetness. Wongnai and TrueID use plain sugar.
• Suki sauce. TrueID's easy version bulks the dressing with 3 tbsp of suki sauce for instant depth. Every other source sticks to fish sauce and lime alone.
• The protein. Kapook uses minced pork only. Aroifin loads prawns, squid and pork. Wongnai's Janeojane deliberately goes heavy on pork and prawns and light on noodles.
• Crunch. TrueID adds roasted peanuts and dried shrimp; Wongnai adds cucumber. Kapook keeps it to celery, tomato and onion.
• The noodle trick. Kapook is the only source that shocks the blanched noodles with room-temperature water — its stated secret for noodles that stay firm instead of going soggy (เส้นไม่อืด).

Notes & Sources

The dressing is everything — make it first and taste it before the noodles go in, because the noodles will mute the heat slightly. Work quickly after dressing: glass noodles keep absorbing liquid, so this salad is at its best within the hour.

• Kapook — ยำวุ้นเส้นหมูสับ (1.6M reads; pickled-garlic-brine dressing and noodle shock trick)
• Wongnai — ยำวุ้นเส้น หมูสับกุ้ง by Janeojane (85.6k reads)
• Aroifin — ยำวุ้นเส้น with prawns and squid
• TrueID — ยำวุ้นเส้นกุ้งสด (EasyCooking; suki-sauce version with peanuts)
• Cookpad — ยำวุ้นเส้นหมูสับกุ้งสด by Thaiphat P.