Mung Bean Noodle Nutrition

Mung bean noodles, which are also known as bean thread, glass noodles, vermicelli or cellophane noodles, are a staple in Thai and other Asian cooking, where they are both boiled and deep fried. With their bland taste, mung bean noodles are an excellent addition to flavorful, saucy dishes because they will readily pick up the flavor of broths and sauces.

Basic Nutrition

Mung bean noodle nutrition can vary depending upon the brand and the thickness of the noodle. The nutritional content of a typical mung bean noodle is broken down on the website Temple of Thai. A 1 cup serving contains about 260 calories, with no fat and no protein. The noodles contain a high amount of carbohydrates, with 65g. Of these carbs, only 2g are fiber. Mung bean noodles contain a small amount of calcium, selenium and iron as well.

Ingredients

Most mung bean noodles contain only one ingredient---mung bean flour, or starch, plus water to create the noodle dough. Some mung bean noodles also contain salt, and some are enriched with additional vitamins and minerals. Once formed, the dough is dried into very thin and hard noodles that, WiseGeek.com notes, are often called cellophane noodles due to their similarity in appearance to that plastic. When cooked, however, they become tender and transparent, and may pick up the color of the dish they are cooked in.

Preparation

To get the full nutritional benefit of mung bean noodles, you need to prepare them correctly. In the book "Classic Asian Noodles," Lee Geok Boi outlines two basic modes of preparation: boiling and frying. When you're making a soup or especially saucy dish, the best method of cooking mung bean noodles is to cook them directly in the broth in the last five minutes of cooking. This way, you retain their mineral content. If you're making a drier dish, you can boil them separately for about three minutes before mixing them with the other ingredients. Alternately, you can fry mung bean noodles in a wok with oil, soy sauce and seasonings, adding additional liquid if they dry out, or deep fry them in hot oil for crispy noodles.

Recipes

Healthy recipes for mung bean noodles abound. They can be stirred into any soup---Asian or not---in the last few minutes of cooking as a way to bulk up the soup and add additional texture. You can serve them boiled and chilled as the base of any dressed Asian salad, such as a light cucumber and carrot salad with a rice vinegar-based dressing, or serve them warm, boiled or fried, as the base of a saucy stir-fry. You can also roll chilled mung beans into spring rolls, a traditional practice.

Tips

You should store unprepared mung beans in an airtight container. After you cook them, mung bean noodles can keep for up five days in the refrigerator. Some cooks, notes Lee Geok Boi, prefer to soak mung bean noodles for 15 minutes before cooking them with other dishes. This can be a useful technique when you want to add mung bean noodles to dishes that do not contain much liquid, but the noodles will lose a small amount of their minerals in the soaking process.

References

• Temple of Thai
• Wise Geek
• Classic Asian Noodles; Lee Geok Boi; 2007