I'd live in Vietnam if I could. A friend of mine actually does live in HCMC, and I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks touring the country with her last year. The main reason for my love of the place just has to be the food. It's just...amazing! Colourful, healthy, vibrant, flavourful. You can't go wrong. Plus, my favourite thing about Vietnamese food is how deceptively easy it is to prepare, but how fancy it looks once you've plated!
We spent Christmas in Nha Trang, and part of our Vietnamese Christmas lunch extravaganza was a delicious bun cha with lemongrass meatballs. We ate it on the beach and it was such an amazing day, I decided to try and replicate it when I got home. Obviously this is an 'authentic-adjacent' take on such a unique dish, but I think you'll find it quite reminiscent of the real thing.
Serves 2
Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 10 minutes
Ingredients
For the meatballs:
250g pork mince
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp caster sugar
1/4 cup finely diced spring onions
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tsp cold-pressed lemongrass paste (find it in the supermarket, usually above the herbs! Or use freshly chopped if you're feeling wealthy!)
1 tsp chili flakes (because chili is my life)
For the bowl:
100g vermicelli noodles, soaked in hot water until pliable
4 cos lettuce leaves
1 small carrot, julienned
1 small lebanese cucumber, thinly sliced
2 spring onions, very thinly sliced longways
1 long red chili, finely diced (deseed it to take some of the heat out)
Handful coriander and mint leaves
Crushed peanuts
For the nuoc cham (dressing):
1/4 cup fish sauce
3 tsp caster sugar
Juice of 1 lime (2 if it's not being overly juicy)
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp chili flakes
Method
Prepare the sauce. Mix all ingredients together. Set aside.
Prepare the meatballs. Mix everything together until combined. Use your hands to shape into small meatballs. You should get 8-10 depending on how generous you are being with your sizing.
Heat oil in a large, non-stick frying pan over high heat. Add the meatballs in a single layer (don't crowd them) and leave them to cook for around 3 minutes. Use tongs to turn them and cook the bottoms for 3 minutes. They probably won't quite be cooked through at this point, but now that the shape is set I like to gently toss them in the frying pan to get all the sides golden as well.
Assemble your bowls: start with the noodles, then add your lettuce leaves, carrot, cucumber, spring onion and herbs. Place the meatballs on top of the rice noodles. Pour the nuoc cham into a shallow dish and wedge it into the middle of your bowl (this is just me being fancy - it's completely fine to just pour it over as a dressing at this point). Finish off with peanuts and diced red chili and dig in! Hello Vietnam!
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