Bánh Chưng

Name: Bánh Chưng
Total time: 15 h
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 1 kg Glutinous rice, soaked 8 hours; 400 g Split mung beans, soaked 4 hours; 500 g Pork belly, in thick strips; 16 sheets Dong leaves or banana leaves; 2 tbsp Fish sauce; 2 tsp Black pepper, cracked; 2 tbsp Salt; 8 lengths Bamboo string or kitchen twine

A square of glutinous rice packed around mung bean and fatty pork, wrapped in dong leaves and boiled for ten hours until the rice turns green and dense — northern Vietnam's Tết cake, and a family stays up to watch the pot.

Fonte

Ricetta di Hanoi kitchens and street stalls · 🏺 Tradizionale · Northern Vietnamese cooking — Hanoi households and the pavement stalls of the Old Quarter

Northern Vietnam · Tết — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms it as a traditional Vietnamese dish made from glutinous rice, mung beans, pork and other ingredients. Quantities, the fully-enclosed rule and the boiling-water warning are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

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⏱ 900 min🍽 8 porzioni🔥 520 kcal🇻🇳 Vietnam

Senza glutineSenza latticiniSenza frutta a guscio

Passaggi

Drain the rice and toss it with 1 tbsp of the salt. Steam the mung beans 20 minutes, then mash them with the rest of the salt.
Marinate the pork with the fish sauce and pepper for 30 minutes.
Lay two leaves crosswise in a square mould or on the bench. Build up: rice, mung bean, pork, mung bean, rice.
💡 The pork must be fully enclosed by bean and the bean by rice. Any meat touching a leaf will spoil the cake within days instead of the two weeks it should keep.
Fold the leaves into a tight square parcel and tie it in both directions with string.
Boil the parcels fully submerged for 8 to 10 hours, topping up with boiling water so they are never exposed.
💡 Top up with BOILING water, never cold. Cold water stops the cook, and any part left above the water goes hard and stays uncooked.
Lift them out, rinse, and press under a board with a weight for 6 hours so they set square and firm.

💡 Consigli

Square for the earth, and its southern cousin bánh tét is a cylinder. The two shapes divide the country at Tết.
It keeps two weeks unrefrigerated in a cool room. Slices past their best are pan-fried until crisp, which is half the reason people make so many.
Cut with the string, not a knife — a loop of the binding twine slices it cleanly without dragging.