Bánh Bèo

Name: Bánh Bèo
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Vietnamese (Huế / Central)
Ingredients: 200 g Rice flour; 30 g Tapioca starch; 600 ml Water; 0.5 tsp Salt; 80 g Dried shrimp; 150 g Pork skin or fatty pork belly; 6 Spring onions, finely sliced; 5 tbsp Neutral oil; 4 tbsp Fish sauce (nước mắm); 3 tbsp Sugar; 1 tbsp Lime juice; 2 cloves Garlic, minced; 1 Bird's eye chilli, sliced

Huế's afternoon snack, served fifteen saucers at a time: a soft dimpled disc of steamed rice batter, each one topped with fluffy dried shrimp, a crackle of pork skin and a slick of scallion oil.

Sumber

Resep oleh Huế kitchens · 🏺 Tradisional · Central Vietnamese cooking from the old imperial capital — smaller plates, sharper chilli, fermented shrimp paste

Central Vietnamese snack · Huế — An ownerless Huế snack with no documented creator. The reference confirms the origin in Huế, the name meaning fern-shaped cake, the batter of rice flour with tapioca starch poured into small saucers and steamed, the toppings of crumbled dried shrimp, crisp fried pork skin and scallion oil, the fish sauce thinned with sugar, water, garlic and chilli, the teatime serving from around 3pm with tea or Vietnamese iced coffee, and the Quảng Ngãi and southern mung-bean variants. Quantities are ordinary home proportions written for this book.

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Quang Tran cindy phan Vietnamese Home Cooking

⏱ 75 mnt🍽 4 porsi🔥 300 kkal🇻🇳 Vietnam🌶️

Bebas susu

Langkah

Whisk the rice flour, tapioca starch and salt with 300 ml boiling water, working fast so no lumps form, then beat in 300 ml cold water. Rest the batter 30 minutes and stir it again before pouring.
💡 The boiling water partly cooks the starch, which is what makes the surface set with that soft dimple instead of drying flat.
Drain the soaked shrimp, dry-fry them in a pan over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes until completely dry, then pound or blitz them into a light floss.
💡 It must be bone dry before you pound it. Any moisture left and you get a paste, not a floss.
Render the pork skin in a dry pan over low heat until the fat runs out and the pieces are hard and golden — 15 minutes or so. Lift them onto paper and keep 2 tbsp of the fat.
Put the sliced spring onion in a small heatproof bowl with a pinch of salt. Heat 3 tbsp oil until it shimmers and pour it straight over — the green will flare and turn glossy in about two seconds.
Mix the dipping sauce: fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, garlic, chilli and 200 ml warm water. It should be sweeter and lighter than the dipping bowl for bún chả.
Set small saucers or shallow ramekins in a steamer over rolling water and let them get hot. Pour batter into each to a depth of about 5 mm, cover, and steam 4 to 5 minutes until they turn from white to translucent.
💡 Heat the saucers before the batter goes in. Cold dishes make the middle sink unevenly and the discs stick.
Serve them in their saucers on a tray. Top each with shrimp floss, a few pork crisps and a little scallion oil, and spoon the sauce over just before eating.
💡 Sauce them at the table, not in the kitchen. Poured early, the discs drink it up and go soggy within minutes.

💡 Tips

In Huế these are teatime food, sold from about 3pm and eaten with tea or iced coffee. They come by the tray, and counting the empty saucers at the end is half the fun.
The regional versions differ: Quảng Ngãi tops them with a shrimp-and-pork paste, and southern Vietnam sweetens them with mashed mung bean.
No small saucers? A shallow tray steamed in one sheet, then cut into rounds with a glass, is a workable cheat — you lose the dimple but keep the texture.