Bánh Tét

Name: Bánh Tét
Total time: 10 h
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 1 kg Glutinous rice, soaked 8 hours and drained; 400 g Split mung beans, soaked 4 hours; 500 g Pork belly, cut into long strips; 2 tbsp Fish sauce; 2 tsp Black pepper, coarsely ground; 4 Shallots, chopped; 2 tbsp Salt; 150 ml Pandan or spinach juice, for green rice; 12 large Banana leaves, softened over a flame; 30 m Bamboo string or kitchen string

The southern New Year cake — glutinous rice around mung bean and pork belly, rolled into a log in banana leaf, boiled for eight hours and sliced into wheels with a length of its own string.

Sumber

Resep oleh Southern Vietnamese home kitchens · 🏺 Tradisional · Saigon and Mekong Delta home cooking — sweeter, coconut-led, served with herbs by the armful

Southern Vietnam · Lunar New Year rice log — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms bánh tét as a Vietnamese savoury, sometimes sweetened, cake made primarily from glutinous rice, rolled in a banana leaf into a thick log-like cylinder. The centring rule, the boiling-water top-up warning, the pressing step and the timings are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

ChefQs Travel Recipe Chloe Vo’s Kitchen Village Mom Life

⏱ 600 mnt🍽 12 porsi🔥 420 kkal🇻🇳 Vietnam

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Langkah

Marinate the pork strips in the fish sauce, pepper and shallots for 2 hours.
Steam the mung beans 25 minutes, mash them with 1 tsp salt, and roll the mash into logs the length of your cake.
Toss the drained rice with the rest of the salt and, if you want the green version, the pandan juice.
Lay two banana leaves crosswise, spread rice in a rectangle, lay a mung bean log on it, press a pork strip into the bean, then cover with more bean and more rice.
💡 The pork must sit dead centre. Off-centre, one side of every slice is all rice and the wheel loses the ring pattern that is the whole visual point.
Roll the leaves into a tight cylinder, fold both ends in, and tie with string every 3 cm along its length.
Boil the logs fully submerged for 8 hours, topping up with boiling water and turning them at the halfway mark.
💡 Boiling water when you top up, never cold. Cold water drops the pot below the temperature and the rice at the centre stays chalky after all eight hours.
Lift out, rinse, and press under a board for 3 hours so the cake firms. Slice with a length of the string, not a knife.

💡 Tips

Bánh chưng is the northern square, bánh tét the southern cylinder, and families move one or the other across the country when they migrate. Same filling, two shapes, one holiday.
It keeps a week unopened at room temperature and is best on day two or three, sliced and pan-fried until the outside blisters and crisps.