Healthier Easy Pad Thai

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There are so many recipes I want to make for you guys and so many I have made, but as we know the Asian forward ones are always my favorite. This is a perfect meal to impress a date, a best friend or family member because it’s SO good and so EASY to make.

We all have those friends or family members that are afraid of healthy food *eye roll* am I right? They think it will have no flavor or all you eat is salads and coming from someone who LOVES fried everything, I’m here to tell you that you can change their minds. Mostly with these Pad Thai Ingredients. It’s gluten free, dairy free, full of vegetables and insanely delicious if I do say so myself. Whenever I make noodle dishes, I try to load them up with as much veggies as I can tolerate to make sure it has enough nutritional value. I need things to taste good but I also need to FEEL good about it.

Pad Thai Ingredients

I’ve done my do diligence to load this up with a considerable amount of veggies. I did half rice noodles, I typically use this brand and half zucchini noodles. This is basically the only way I’ll eat zucchini noodles, I like them to be mixed in with another noodle form otherwise it turns into mush FAST. I’ve added a mix of bell peppers for some nice crunch and some green beans, which seems like a weird addition but I had them on hand and they went just fine. In the sauce is some crunchy peanuts. Gotta have the peanuts! The sauce is made with peanut butter because that’s just my favorite nut butter. If you’re paleo feel free to sub-in some almond butter!

The Process

Spiralize those zoodles! I love using my Veggie Bullet for this! You don’t really want to do this too far in advance. You may be able to get away with a day before, but even if you do that, store them with some paper towels. Zucchini has SO MUCH WATER. Also, the trick here is to cook everything in the pan and then throw the zucchini noodles in at the last 5-10 minutes so they’re not mush. The rice noodles don’t even need a pot because all you do is soak them in super hot water in a bowl. So that saves you some space and time there!

Variations

You can really throw any kind of vegetable you like in here. Pad Thai ingredients are versatile because it’s all in the sauce. It doesn’t have to be only the typical ones or what I put. Use what you like because you’re the one eating it, ya know? I use coconut aminos in this sauce because I try to stay away from soy. If you like soy sauce and have it on hand, us it sister! You just might need to add a smidge of honey or something because the coconut aminos tend to be sweeter. I used peanut butter in here but feel free to use any nut or seed butter of your liking. If you’re looking for a paleo version go for almond butter. If you’re allergic to nuts go with sunflower seed butter!

At the end of the day, I want you to enjoy your meal. Use my recipes as a guide and adapt them to what you have on hand or what you can eat. I want to provide you with a healthy baseline but cooking should be fun, nothing has to be measured and things can be swapped left and right. I make recipes all the time that have tons of cilantro in them and I hate cilantro so I sub it with basil or some other green that makes sense. For example pad thai ingredients typically include cilantro, I garnished with green onion instead!

Looking for more weeknight meals? Try this Red Wine Shredded Beef Ragu with Pappardelle