STEAMED RICE ROLLS - Simple and Special

Back to Hanoi Vietnam food and travel. What Hanoian specialty that I would bring to you in today's food tour? The dish, it was originated from a southern area of Hanoi that is really near the Red River. The dish name is bánh cuốn and it is in English, the steamed rice roll. Let me translate bánh cuốn like word by word in English for you. Bánh means in this case pancake and cuốn is roll. So it's simply just a roll pancake but in the foreigners usually call it steamed rice rolls. If you have been in Hanoi, you really should try this dish because it's a famous specialty of Hanoi. Especially in the autumn weather, it would be perfect to try a hot dish of steamed rice rolls. I'm standing right here at the 41 Tran Dang Linh Street and it's in front of a local diner of rice rolls in Hanoi. It's not famous as the rice rolls in the old quarter but my friend highly recommended it because it's really good in quality and in flavor. So let's get inside to try the dish with me, okay? So I'm sitting and waiting for my delicious dish of steamed rice rolls. And before I try the dish, I would introduce a bit about the origin of the dish for you. And as I've said earlier that the dish, it was originated from a southern area that is really near the Red River and that area's name is Thanh Tri. For Vietnamese people, we usually have the habit of combining the name of the dish with the name of the famous place that the dish is served and in this case, it's Banh Cuon Thanh Tri or in the previous video about Pho, it's Pho Ba Dan because the restaurant of Pho is located in Ba Dan, in Ba Dan Street. Banh Cuon Thanh Tri, it was invented for a really long time ago and the image of Banh Cuon goes with the famous image of Vietnam which is a woman with a carrying pole and the two rattan baskets like this. It's really traditional and vintage, yeah. In that time, Banh Cuon, it has no filling and it's only served with some fried shallots. It's really simple but it's famous for the whole city and its reputation is also rich for another cities through the northern to the southern Vietnam. My delicious dish of rice roll has arrived and I'm so happy at the moment. The rice roll here is almost transparent in color and it is the standard color of the rice roll. Yeah, it needs to be almost transparent so that you can see the filling inside. Nowadays, the most common filling for rice roll is minced pork with some wood ear mushrooms. It's served with a bowl of fish sauce with some roasted cinnamon pork inside. The rice roll maker, they have to be an artist because the rice batter layer, when they steam it, it's really thin and it's really easy to be broken or torn out. So they have to do it quickly and careful enough so that it can lose its texture. They also sprinkle some fried shallots above of the dish like this and the dish is served with a basket of herbs and some kumquat and chili. I'll try to see how it tastes. Okay, yeah, it's really wet. You should dip the rice roll into the bowl of fish sauce. Dip it quickly and bring it to your mouth. Yeah, I have to tell you that the rice roll is still warm and it's soft but it just melts in your mouth. It's a bit chewy. It's chewy enough so that you want to eat another bite of the rice roll and it's also like bún chả and other dishes that are served with fish sauce. The sauce is really important. When you eat with the roasted cinnamon pork, it will strengthen the flavor of the sauce as well as the rice roll. So as you can see that I left nothing in the dish. Well, mostly because the dish is too delicious, I have to thank my friend after this video for recommending me that delicious diner. As you know that the rice roll commonly has the feeling of mince pork. If you are a big fan of dried shallots like me and egg, every time I go to the rice roll diner, I also can order rice roll with dried shallot filling and egg filling. It's really good. I bet you and you can try if you want. I think that's all for today's video about rice roll. In the next videos, there will be one video that I introduce to you about a surprising food. I bet that not so many foreigners dare to try it. So if you are curious about what the dish is, please check out our channel regularly. Maybe once a week is enough. So thank you for following me today and see you next time. Goodbye.