This is a dish that I ate a lot in my childhood, and your recipe looks like about what my grandmother uses. Except that she uses a lot of pepper. In my recent recipe work with her, I realized that she basically uses equal amounts of salt and pepper --

I have finally figured out that "fideo" can mean a lot of things - and people have have varying opinions on how brothy this dish should be. Ours ends up dry like yours.

Thanks for posting this!

fideo is spanish for noodles and that is what you'd call it.

my father-in-law who is lebanese raised in cuba, makes a dish prepared similar called arroz con fideo. or rice with noodles in which the noodles are fried before they are boiled

Wow! I love your dish and your blog!

Here’s anr eccentric comfort food style dish that I love a little bit like yours. It’s called Platillo, and I think it hails from Cuba. I don’t know how authentically Cuban it is, but my mother used to prepare it for me when I was a child and she states that it was eaten in the long lost idyllic Cuba of her past – B.C. – before Castro. It's a poor person's dish she said. The first time I ate this dish was in the mid 1970s and my mom prepared it as a late night supper dish.
I think this dish has Iberian origins where it was cooked with pieces of ham or with seafood. Actually there is a Spanish dish which is called Fideua and it resembles a seafood paella with noodles sans the rice.

Take some thin egg noodles. They usually come dried in little bundles the size of a palm and they are used in Spanish and Latin American cooking to put in soups. You can buy these in the supermarket and they are usually called fideos in Spanish. Drop the noodles in some boiling water that you have placed a bullion cube, beef or chicken. I prefer to use some good homemade or commercial stock rather than the bullion cube. The noodles cook very fast. When the noodles are done drain them. The noodles should not be too dry – and you should just leave enough stock to keep them moist. Into the noodles add a couple of tablespoons of butter which will melt and start top create a sauce. Finally add a several tablespoons of tomato puree and mix with the noodles, stock, and butter. Garnish with chopped parsley.

You can also add pieces of crispy bacon or Prosciutto and a grating of parmesan or manchego cheese for an interesting combination. This last part is purely my invention, and it doesn’t really reflect the dish I used to eat as a child.

There are so many wonderful family recipes from long ago which were never written down and no longer exist. My grandmother was from Jamaica and used to make something very much like this which she called Mock Chicken. She was a vegetarian and called the dish by this name, as the flavor was similar to a chicken casserole. But I think somewhere in the process the fideo may have been dipped in beaten egg and/or flour. I would love to recreate this one. Does it sound familiar to you?

Thank you so much! My abuelita makes this for me because I love it so much! She lives 300 miles away from me so I don't get it very often but now I can make it! Thanks again!

I was looking for simple recipes with few ingredients and this vermicelli was perfect. This one must be impossible to mess up, because I substituted almost everything on the list with whatever I already had on hand, and it was still delicious! (college doesn't leave much time for grocery-shopping) I used: straight vermicelli, dried minced onion, 1 can italian-style diced tomatoes, and 1 can vegetable broth (I live with a vegan). Even though this is by no means the authentic way of preparing it, I still enjoyed every bite. Thanks!

I made this recipe this week, with only one small alteration: I added boneless chopped chicken breast meat so it would have some protein. It was comfort food at its finest. Even the bubbling broth, prior to adding the noodles back in, was delicious, clean tasting and fresh. I'll use it as a soup base or over pasta, for sure. But this was really really tasty, and so comforting to look at, on a big platter on a cold, cold rainy night in Sacramento. Thank you!

Hello Sacramento neighbor, again. Not to be intentionally macabre, but, I have to thank your mother for this recipe. My father died last week, and several days later we realized we really needed to stop and make something to eat. We needed comfort food, fast and easy. I thought of this recipe which I made on a rainy night in January, and came to get it again. It was perfect, just as it is. Even adding meat would have been too heavy. So from my family to yours, thanks again for the recipe, it was incredibly comforting during a horrible week.

Hey, I love vermi-sell-i. That is how I grew up saying it! I speak spanish and my favorite mexican restaurant growing up had the best vermicelli.(they pronounced it like that too) Well thanks for the recipee!!

Thank you for this recipe. My mother made something very similar (with the noodles fried) and I loved it. I haven't had it since I was in middle school and since my mother passed away before I became interested in cooking, I never had a recipe.

My mother was Tejana (Mexican-Texan) and we called this dish "fideos" or "fideitos" which, I think, was a kid-type nickname (like saying "sghetti" for "spaghetti").

I love your site...thank you!

The proper word for vermicelli in Spanish is probably 'fideo' (singular) or 'fideos' (plural). (We) Hispanics tend to pronounce foreign names exactly as they are written using our own set of phonemes, so it is likely that Hispanics will pronounce this 'ver-mee-sell-ee'.

Spaniards also tend to create a Spanish version of each foreign word, and this becomes the only correct, official term. For example, the Royal Spanish Academy only accepts 'espagueti' as the correct Spanish word for the Italian 'spaghetti'. For this reason, I tend to believe that most Hispanics would call them 'fideos' rather than 'vermicelli'.

I made this recipe for dinner tonight, and it was a Hit!! with my husband and my 6 year old (she is a very picky eater). She loved it as much as her daddy.
I made it with regular vermicelli not the bird's nest. My mother use to make it when I was younger, but she would make it very soupy and added potatoes to it. I wasn't a big fan but it was ok. Until I made it tonight, I will be making it again.I made it as a side dish for chicken tacos.

Wow, looks delicious!!
I don't know how the rest of the Spanish people would call vermicelli, I say it just like Italians do. What we know as "fideo" is much shorter than vermicelli.
Anyway, I think I've never eaten it this way but looks really great!
*"Sopa de fideos" is made with that short pasta I mentioned and chicken, ham or vegetable broth, at least that's how I've always eaten it here in Spain ;)
Cheers!

Your recipe looks close to my mom's except, she uses bacon fat instead of olive oil. I am also Spanish, I'm from New Mexico, my mother ponounces it like the Italians do so that is what I call it. I agree "fideo " is a smaller noodle and you can mix it with rice for a Spanish rice kinda dish.

My mom used canned tomato sauce and a tad of garlic when cooking the onion, however she took the onion out because my brother hate them! I love this dish, and plan on making it tonight with some garlic bread and cucumbers!! I'm also from new mexico and we call this dish verm-i-sell-ee also...

Here in Canada, I've only ever heard it pronounced "verm-i-chell-ee". This is the first time I've heard differently!

Spain-Spaniards pronounce the soft "c" like "th": so "vermicelli" would be "verm-i-thell-ee". ("Princessa" would be "prin-thes-ah", etc.)

Mexico-Spaniards pronounce it the same way we do. ("Princessa" is "prin-ses-ah".)

Does the dish hail from Spain or Mexico? That would give us an idea of how it was originally pronounced.

Where do you find the vermicelli in the US? I cannot find them anywhere... Vermicelli are supposed to be made of soy, and the ones I have found have potato starch, which I cannot have.

If the broth dries out then I am not sure why anyone would call it "sopa de fideos" (noodle soup), but language does these weird things and if you and your family have been calling that all your life why change now :)

As soon as I find the vermicelli I will try the recipe.

Look for "angel hair pasta". Never heard of vermicelli being made of soy. It's just another wheat-based pasta. Regarding the sopa bit, weird eh? It's not something particular to our family. This is just the name of the dish. It's considered a dry soup. ~Elise