Bún Riêu Cua

Name: Bún Riêu Cua
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 500 g Rice vermicelli (bún); 250 g Crab meat, picked; 3 Eggs; 150 g Minced pork; 5 Tomatoes, in wedges; 200 g Fried tofu puffs, halved; 1 tbsp Fermented shrimp paste (mắm tôm); 2 tbsp Tamarind paste; 2 tbsp Annatto oil; 3 Shallots, sliced; 3 tbsp Fish sauce; 2 L Pork stock or water; 3 handfuls Perilla, spring onion, banana blossom

Rice vermicelli in a clear tomato broth with clouds of crab-and-egg curd floating on top, sharpened with fermented shrimp paste and a spoon of annatto oil — the sour, savoury noodle soup Hanoi eats at midday.

Source

Recipe by Hanoi kitchens and street stalls · 🏺 Traditional · Northern Vietnamese cooking — Hanoi households and the pavement stalls of the Old Quarter

Vietnam · crab noodle soup — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms it as a traditional Vietnamese soup of clear stock and rice vermicelli, with several varieties including bún riêu cua. Quantities, the bare-simmer instruction and the crab shortcut are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

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Boriville Mamafoods Ang Cooks

⏱ 70 min🍽 4 servings🔥 430 kcal🇻🇳 Vietnam🌶️

Dairy-freeNut-free

Steps

Mix the crab meat, minced pork and eggs with a pinch of salt into a loose paste.
Fry the shallots in the annatto oil, add the tomatoes and cook 5 minutes until they slump.
Pour in the stock, bring to a bare simmer, then drop the crab mixture in by the spoonful.
💡 A bare simmer, and do not stir for five minutes. Stirring or boiling breaks the curd into shreds, and the floating clouds are the whole visual signature of bún riêu.
Once the curd has set and risen, add the tofu puffs, tamarind, fish sauce and shrimp paste. Simmer 10 minutes.
Taste — it should be sour first, salty second. Adjust with tamarind, not vinegar.
Serve over the noodles with the herbs and banana blossom piled on the side.

💡 Tips

Bún riêu cua is the crab one. Bún riêu cá (fish) and bún riêu ốc (snail) are the same broth with a different centre.
It is a lunch dish. Stalls that sell it in the morning have usually sold out by two.