"Gummy" should be used to describe gum and gummy bears. It should never be used to describe noodles. But if you don't know how to cook rice noodles, chances are that they're going to fall into the gummy category far too often, leaving you with a giant starchy clump instead of a glorious tangle of slippery strands. It should be noodles, plural—not noodle.
So how do we avoid the gummy? How do we get rice noodles not to stick together? How do we cook them properly for dishes like pad thai or green shrimp curry? You're asking the right questions, and the answers are actually pretty simple. Here are a couple of tricks for working with flat, medium-sized rice noodles (think pad thai noodles).
This might seem obvious, but the most important thing you can do is to follow the instructions on the package that the noodles came in. The biggest pitfall when cooking rice noodle recipes is in not following the suggested cook times to get them to that pleasant chewiness (much like al dente pasta). There are usually two sets of directions on the package: one for cold noodles and one for hot noodles. The cook time for cold noodles will generally be a little longer, since the noodles will firm up a bit when they cool, and also because they won't get cooked a second time the way they would if you were stir frying them.
If you’re planning on eating the noodles hot, like in a stir fry situation, you should remove the noodles from the water and dump them into a colander to remove as much water as possible. Then, as quickly as possible, transfer the noodles to your skillet with whatever else you're cooking them with and get them coated in sauce or oil. The starch hanging out on the exterior of the noodles is what makes them clump, and getting them in sauce will keep the starches on each noodle from coming into contact with each other.
