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Turmeric noodles, crispy tofu, sticky-saucy tofu and soy curls, crunchy peanuts, and more herby stuff than a Cypress Hill concert. M'dear noodle fiend (or passive broth sipper), this vegan mi quang recipe is like a turmeric inflected noodle salad on major texture and flavor bender with way more going on in the bowl. Plus, once the broth is made (and it freezes well BTW), you can whip this meal up effortlessly, and mad quick too, I say!
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Most mi quang recipes go hard with pork, shrimp, or chicken broth like any other noodle soup, but we're here to reroute the heck out of that fiendish nonsense. Don't get it twisted. these vegan mi quang noodles still slap, but without forcing some poor creature to live its whole life out in a cage just for your dinner. No animals, just warm, soft noodles, which is a cause you can get behind with 100% of the love-juice in your heart sanctum.
It's that wild combo of brothy goodness and salad-style toppings that flips every switch in your brain: hot, cold, soft, crispy, fresh, savory. No pork belly needed, just like with my other vegan food recipes like ca ri chay, my soul-hugging vegan pho, and my ridiculously flexible mi xao xi dao recipe that even non-vegan Vietnamese people love.
Aight, now let's get these noods brothified and slathered with fun stuff before someone suggests booking a flight to Ho Chi Minh city for a food tour of Vietnamese dishes.
Jump to:
🥰 Why you'll adore this Vegan Mi Quang recipe
🔥 Protein That Pops Off: Tofu and soy curls go all sticky-sizzly in sweet soy sauce and sriracha, bringing the protein and flavor without any cholesterol.
📷 Looks Like You Tried Hard (Spoiler: You Didn't): Serve this bad boyo and everyone will assume you apprenticed under a Vietnamese gandma with noodle secrets passed down from 12 previous lifetimes.
✊ Vegan AF & GF: All my vegan Vietnamese recipes and gluten-free vegan recipes keep every creature out of your dinner plate.
✅ Tested and Approved Worldwide: My vegan recipes all get double-checked by hundreds of testers before I share them with the wide open world.
🙌 Learn to make restaurant-quality Vietnamese food
This guide to my most popular vegan Vietnamese recipes is 100% FREE, & you'll love the actual heck out of it 🥰
🍜 Vegan Mi Quang Ingredients
Fresh Turmeric
Fresh turmeric isn't gonna blast you with too much noticeable color right away, so the broth starts kinda mellow. The lime juice flips the switch later and suddenly the whole thing glows like your aunt's vacation T-shirt from Daytona Beach. If you're using turmeric powder instead of the fresh stuff, cut the amount in half.
Tamari
This recipe gets its saltiness mostly from tamari which keeps everything gluten-free. Soy sauce is fine too if that's what's in your kitchen and you don't care about gluten. Avoiding soy altogether? Liquid aminos can sub in, but obviously, you will need to replace the tofu and soy curls in the recipe with something else too.
Soy Curls
Soy curls are an easy way to get something meaty in here without resorting to fake meat or seitan. I toss them into my vegan pot pie, vegan tokwa't baboy, and pancit canton. You can also use rehydrated TVP chunks or torn-up seitan if that's what's available where you live.
Kecap Manis
My kecap manis recipe is gluten-free and is also more flavorful than your average store-bought one. If you're grabbing a bottle from a store instead, ABC is the brand I buy, just know it's not gluten-free if that matters to you. Worst-case scenario, mix equal parts soy sauce with brown sugar and call it a day.
Sriracha
I've got my own sriracha recipe that you can follow to make your own. If you're buying a bottle, Huy Fong, Fix, or Ninja Squirrel will treat you right. Just keep Tabasco far away please and thank you, because it's not a good sub for this.
Turmeric Noodles
Mi quang's signature yellow noodle is great when you can find it, but half the time even Asian shops don't stock them. Wide rice noodles plus a touch of turmeric in their cooking water will get you close enough.
Vegan Eggs (totally optional)
Completely optional but super-fun: vegan hard-boiled eggs. I really like the ones from WunderEgg, and they hit so well I also stuff them in my vegan sabich sandwich. No WunderEgg at your local Whole Foods? Just leave them out rather than replace them.
Black Sesame Tapioca Crackers
They start out dried, papadum-style, then instantly poof when fried. If you can't find them, you can just fry some pieces of rice paper (like the same ones you would make spring rolls from), and that's basically the same thing minus the sesame seeds.
Vietnamese Coriander
Vietnamese coriander adds some really nice freshness to the finished dish. Any extras can slide straight into other Vietnamese foods like bánh tráng trộn or my tofu larb salad. If you can't find it, add more cilantro or mint in place of it.
*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.
📖 How to make vegan mi quang noodles
Wanna cook like you've got a Vietnamese auntie from Da Nang whispering instructions in one ear and Gordon Ramsey screaming at you in the other? Follow these step-by-step instructions. Or scroll down to the printable recipe below if you're in a hurry to get Gordon Ramsey to shut up sooner.
Step One
Broth IRA:
Combine the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, turmeric, water, sugar, and tamari in a large stockpot. Bring everything to a boil over high heat and then lower the heat to maintain a steady simmer for 45 minutes.
Step Two
Pour Things:
Pour the broth through a fine-mesh sieve, removing the solids, and return the strained liquid to the pot.
Step Three
Busta Limes:
Stir the lime juice into the stock. This will activate the turmeric and shift the broth to a brighter golden color.
Step Four
Curl Me Maybe:
Place the soy curls in a heatproof bowl. Pour 1 cup of the hot broth over them and let them sit for 10 minutes. Drain well.
Step Five
Quanger Managment:
Warm the oil for the soy curls and tofu in a wide pan over medium heat. After about 90 seconds, once the oil is hot, add the torn tofu pieces.
Cook for 4 minutes over medium heat, then add the drained soy curls and continue sautéing for 4 to 5 minutes until the tofu and soy curls are lightly browned.
Step Six
Curls Just Want to Have Fun:
Add the kecap manis, sriracha, and tamari. Stir-fry for 2 minutes so the sauces absorb and caramelize on the tofu and soy curls.
Step Seven
Nood, Where's My Car?
Cook the turmeric noodles according to the package instructions. Rinse under cold water and drain thoroughly.
Step Eight
Rodney Quangerfield:
Divide the cooked noodles among serving bowls. Arrange the shredded cabbage on one side of each bowl. Ladle the broth over the noodles, then add the tofu and soy curls.
Serve with vegan hard-boiled egg halves if using, tapioca crackers, roasted peanuts, Vietnamese coriander, mint, cilantro, and sliced chilies.
💡Serving Ideas
Here are a few other recipes that go well with this kinda famous Vietnamese food you're making.
Start with either banh bao chay, or banh trang cuon for a super-refreshing first bite wrapped tight and dunked into my easy Vietnamese peanut sauce. Rau muống (stir-fried water spinach) is the dependable garlicky green that won't transform dinner into a vegans-only salad convention.
Whip up some lemongrass tofu over Vietnamese sticky rice for anyone joining you for dinner who hates noodles.
Close things out with kem chuối, basically the frozen banana-coconut-peanut bar that's been saving sweaty humans since the dawn of Southeast Asian summers. Or go for vegan bánh flan, or chè ba màu if you don't have time to wait for something to freeze.
👉 Top tips
- Tear the tofu by hand for better texture: Sure, you can cube it if you're in a rush, but tearing the tofu gives you those irregular edges that actually grab onto the sauce instead of letting it slide off. It also has a more naturally meat-like appearance this way.
- Add lime juice after straining the broth: Once the broth is strained, bring in the lime. That's the moment the turmeric finally snaps into its bright look and the whole pot shifts its color. Lemon juice does this too, but lime has a more authentic taste for mi quang.
- Layer the bowl with structure, not chaos: Don't just chuck everything in. Noodles first, then the rest layered so the herbs don't get cooked and wilted.
🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
Mì Quảng is the central Vietnam legend that started back in the 16th century, when Hoi An, a major trading port on the central East Coast of Vietnam had a ton of Chinese merchants rolling in with their wheat-based noodles. Local cooks took that idea and said, "Cool, but we're doing this our way," then built their own version with wide rice-flour noodles crafted in Quang Nam Province.
Mi, mee, and mie mean noodles in several Southeast Asian dialects. That's how you have mie goreng in Indonesian cuisine, mee rebus in Malay cooking, mi xao in Vietnam, and pad ba mee in vegan Thai cooking.
A bowl of Mì Quảng is built for customization. The noodles sit in a shallow layer of concentrated broth, then get loaded with herbs, greens, toasted rice crackers, and peanuts for contrast. Depending on who's cooking, you might see non-veg versions featuring shrimp, pork, chicken, snakehead fish, or frog, but the structure stays the same: wide, kinda-sturdy noodles, minimal broth, fresh herbs, and all the crunchy toppings that make the dish feel like a whole gosh darn situation.
It's very different from phở chay, which relies on a fully layered, aromatic broth that fills the bowl and does most of the heavy lifting. Mì Quảng flips that script by keeping the broth intentionally low and leaning harder on texture, toppings, and super-flavorful sauces and seasoning at the table.
Traditionally, wide rice noodles dyed with turmeric are used for that signature yellow color. If you can't find them, wide rice noodles with a pinch of turmeric in the cooking water will work fine.
Definitely. You can sub in thinly sliced seitan, tofu skin, yuba, or pan-seared mushrooms and still get that same saucy protein vibe. Layered beancurd, like I use in my somen salad is also killer if you can find it frozen at your local Asian grocery spot. You can learn how to make insanely good homemade seitan in my seitan masterclass.
🧊 Refrigerating:
Store the broth, noodles, toppings, and herbs in separate airtight containers in the fridge. The broth and toppings will stay OK for up to 3 days, but keep the herbs dry and loosely covered with a clean, breathable cloth to keep them from wilting.
🔥 Stovetop Reheating:
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer in a pot over medium heat. Please don't boil it to death, just heat it up to a nice warm temperature . Re-crisp the soy curls and fried tofu in a skillet with a little oil if you want that original texture back, and dunk the noodles briefly in hot water to loosen them before serving.
✌️You'll love these vegan Vietnamese recipes too:
Learn to make your fave Vietnamese street food bangers in this super-fun cooking class with Chef Adam Sobel!
Vegan Mi Quang Recipe
Equipment
- Colander optional
Ingredients
For the Broth:
For the Soy Curls and Tofu:
- 1 cup soy curls
- 1 cup hot broth from this recipe
- 4 teaspoons canola oil vegetable oil, or sunflower oil
- 7 oz. Extra firm tofu pressed, and hand torn into bite size pieces
- 2 tablespoons kecap manis
- 2 tablespoons sriracha
- 2 teaspoons tamari
For the Noodles and Toppings:
- 10 oz. turmeric noodles
- 2 cups napa cabbage shredded
- 8 vegan hard boiled eggs optional
- 2 black sesame tapioca crackers
- 3 tablespoons roasted peanuts crushed
- ¼ cup Vietnamese coriander leaves optional
- ¼ cup mint leaves
- ½ cup cilantro leaves
- Sliced chilies to taste
Instructions
- Mix together the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, turmeric, water, sugar, and tamari in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil over high heat and then decrease to a steady simmer for 45 minutes.
- Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve and return the clear broth to the pot.
- Squeeze the lime juice into the stock which will activate the turmeric, turning the stock a more bright golden color.
- Place the soy curls in a heatproof bowl. Pour 1 cup of the hot broth you just made over them and let stand for 10 minutes. Drain well.
- Warm the oil for the soy curls and tofu in a wide pan over medium heat. After 90 seconds when the oil is hot, add the drained torn tofu pieces. Stir-fry for 4 minutes over medium heat and then add the drained soy curls, continuing to sauté for 4-5 minutes until the tofu and soy curls are lightly browned all around.
- Add the kecap manis, sriracha, and tamari. Continue stir-frying for 2 minutes so that the sauce absorbs and caramelizes on the surface of the soy curls and tofu pieces.
- Cook the turmeric noodles according to package directions. Rinse under cold water and drain well.
- Distribute the cooked noodles among serving bowls. Divide the shredded cabbage into the bowls on one side of the noodles. Ladle broth over the noodles, then add the soy curls and tofu. Serve with vegan hard-boiled egg halves if using, tapioca crackers, roasted peanuts, Vietnamese coriander, mint, cilantro, and sliced chilies.
Notes
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