Gluten Free Sesame Noodle Salad- Vegan, Easy, and Delicious

I want to apologize for not having posted recently- life has been a bit hectic here for a variety of reasons. Part of it was that I hosted a lunch time family reunion for 21 family members, first time hosting a crowd in our new house. It was a crazy day, and while people offered to contribute dishes to the meal, because of dietary restrictions, I offered to make all the food for the entire get together. Which, you can imagine, was quite a lot of food.

When trying to figure out the menu plan, part of my thought process was to divide up the food into different categories. Some would be a little more time consuming to prepare, but those dishes needed to be completely freezer friendly (I made dairy free beef moussaka, and gluten free dairy free enchiladas in advance, and then froze them), and the rest of the foods needed to be quick to prepare because I didn't have room to store so much ready food in my fridge at one go, so everything needed to be cooked the morning of. But I also had a lot of other preparations I needed to do that morning, including cleaning the house top to bottom, and finish arranging the rooms that hadn't been fully finished since we moved in, since that was the first time most of the family members had seen the house, and the first time that any of the family members saw it when it wasn't in the middle of the unpacking-just-moved-into-the-house frenzy, and we wanted to impress.

I decided that sesame noodle salad would appear on the menu, since it has always been a crowd-pleaser, and it is super easy to make. The fact that it is low cost and gluten free and allergy friendly is just an added bonus. I highly highly recommend this dish. (Though I have a sesame noodle salad on my blog already, I much prefer this recipe to the old one.)

Gluten Free Sesame Noodle Salad- Vegan, Easy, and Delicious

Ingredients:
1 package of rice vermicelli or 1 package of spaghetti, gluten free or regular
4-6 tablespoons sweetener of choice (white sugar is cheapest, coconut sugar or honey or jaggery syrup are healthier but more pricey)
1-2 teaspoons garlic powder or 3-6 cloves fresh garlic, or to taste
6 tablespoons mildly flavored oil of choice- I used sunflower for this since I didn't want an oil that solidified in the fridge, but any nut oil or soy or canola oils also work
5-6 tablespoons white vinegar, rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar
6 tablespoons soy sauce (use gluten free soy sauce to keep this gluten free)
1-2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1-2 tablespoons hot pepper flakes (optional)
1-3 scallions or equivalent amount of onion greens (the sprouting tops of onions)
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
Salt if needed

Instructions:
1. Cook your noodles until al dente. If using the thin rice vermicelli, I find just soaking them in boiling water for 20 minutes to be enough, no cooking needed. Strain.

2. In a spill proof container (I usually use a screw top glass jar) place the sweetener, soy sauce, vinegar, oil, sesame oil, sesame flakes, and garlic. If using fresh garlic, mince it very finely. Shake it up very well until all the sweetener is dissolved into the mixture. If needed add salt. I'd suggest adding the smaller amount listed to the sauce, and then if you want the flavor stronger, add more of the ingredients to taste.

3. Mix the sauce with your noodles, and then add scallions/onion greens and sesame seeds. Mix well.
Garnish with more scallions and sesame seeds if desired.

4. Serve cold.

5. While this salad can be served immediately, it tastes absolutely delicious after marinating a couple of hours, so any leftovers are even tastier than they were the first time around.

Enjoy!

Do you ever make sesame noodle salad? What do you put in it? 
Does this look like a recipe you'd try?
When you're cooking for a crowd, what are your go-to crowd pleaser, ideally not too much work or too-expensive dishes?