Fry maifun in a few inches of oil. Pull it apart lengthwise in about half inch to inch wide strips, and kind of ease your fingers between the strands to loosen without breaking. Have a large draining pad ready so you can spread them out as you remove them from the oil. Have a good spider or skimmer ready. Put small amounts of maifun into the hot oil. They'll puff up fast. Snatch them right out. It should be about three to five seconds in the oil. If you leave them in longer, they'll just soak up oil and get nasty. Make sure the oil temperature rebounds before you put the next lot in. If you get a rhythm going and a well controlled pot, you can put one bit in with one hand while you're taking the last bit out with the other, but until you know what you're doing it's best to start slow.

Let it all drain and cool. Add the crisp, puffed noodles to salads, top mixed dishes with them, or season and crunch as a snack.

If you moisten them until they're bendy, you can pan fry them with vegetables, but they don't have any flavor, and when they're not puffed, sauces slide off. Try to get them to brown.

You can also soak them until they're soft and cut them up into a salad or egg scramble or something, for more of a vermicelli kind of effect but they really do look like maggots at that point, so you have to be brave. You can also use them like capellini or vermicelli, but they don't have the texture that wheat pasta has, and, again, won't hold the sauce.

The best way is fried and puffed. In Chinese chicken salad or anything else. The puffing allows them to grab the dressing/sauce and, therefore, flavor.

Pillog - thanks for answering my post. I was all wrong about how to fix it. I wanted something like rice noodles and didn't want anything that had to be fried. I don't know where I can find the kind of rice noodles that you can get in something like the Thai Spring Onion soup (although I don't like that hot additive). However, that has too much sodium for me to include it in my diet. Thanks for taking the time to answer my post becase yours was the only reply I got. Barb

Hi Barb,

I'm not familiar with the Thai soup. Maifun work fine in soup and stir fry. They're just not great for anything where you want a sauce to stick if you don't fry them. Just like you would with lasagna noodles, soak the maifun in hot tap water for 7-10 minutes until they're bendy, then boil for a couple of minutes, or simmer them in the soup. You could also do it Ramen style, and put them in a cup and pour boiling broth over them, but I haven't tried that. I just don't see why it wouldn't work if they were well softened. If you're pan frying them or stir frying, soak them first, for just a couple of minutes, to just pliable, rather than full on bendy. Experiment and you'll see how you like it.

Maifun are basically just sugar (i.e., refined white rice), so it's good to use them with a broth or dish rich in protein and some fat, as well as your vegetables. Unlike good wheat pasta, they don't have anything much to offer by way of nutrition other than simple carbs.

Okay, I did a quick search and I think you must be talking about the Thai Kitchen soup bowl, because none of the spring onion soup recipes I find are Thai. I don't know anything about this product or what kind of noodles it has, but you might look for mung bean noodles (also called glass noodles or cellophane). They don't have a nutritional advantage over rice except for some trace elements, but they might be what you're looking for, but might be the right texture. I think they're more chewy than slippery.