Bún Thịt Nướng | Thuy Pham | Gozney Dome

Hi guys, I'm Thuy Pham from The Little Viet Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make this gorgeous dish here, Cua Bun Thit Nuong. Now, Bun Thit Nuong is basically grilled meat on top and then I've got a great bowl of salad at the bottom filled with rice noodles. Now, Bun Thit Nuong originated from South of Vietnam, which is where I'm from. Normally, if you go to the South of Vietnam, your food would be filled with herbs in abundance and that's what we're going to show you today. I'm first going to show you how to marinate the meat. I've chosen to use belly pork because it's a great cut for the barbecue. You've got the right layers of fat and meat, nice, good, healthy balance there, and it melts and that's where all the juice comes out from. So I've chosen pork as my meat today, but you can also use chicken, you can use fish, that's completely up to you. They all taste really good. We're going to slice these as thin as you can really, but make sure it's consistent. When it is, it means the cooking time is the same. Not too thin because when you're skewing it, you don't want the meat to break. That's just enough. You want to create the same texture on every bite. So this might take a while, but I promise you it's worth it on the bite. To make this slicing easier, chuck it in the freezer for 30 minutes and then it should come firmer. It should be easier to slice. So now we're going to start on the marinating. I've got sesame oil here. It gives that nutty sort of flavour. When you're marinating meat, then it's not truly Vietnamese unless it's got fish sauce. Now don't put too much. I like a lot of it because I like that pungent sort of flavour. It acts almost like a replacement for salt. Fish sauce and sesame oil is great because it tenderises the meat. A dish like this, you would leave it overnight. That would be fantastic. If not, leave it for at least three hours in the fridge. We've got a very Vietnamese ingredient, chilli and garlic. I like it spicy, so I've got lots there. You don't have to put in that much. Lemongrass, finely chopped. When the lemongrass is a bit burnt, my goodness, the crunch, the texture is amazing. Brown sugar, it gives it a better colour. You can use white if you want. Chicken powder, a little bit of that. Oyster sauce, I love oyster sauce. It makes it quite thick and it gives it that deep flavour. And if you have the meat on high heat, it gives it that crusty sort of burnt flavour on the skin. Peppercorn, crushed. And then a teeny tiny bit of soy sauce. There you go, that's it. Mix it well, and then you can put it in the fridge. This is the easy part. Gonna have to skew all these into a stick in a bit. I suggest you find a friend, someone you really want to talk to, so the job is more fun. I've got that here, so now I'm gonna go and put this in the fridge for three hours. Now we're gonna start making the skewers. Before you start, soak your sticks into water for about half an hour. Now this is so it wouldn't burn in the fire. You want to go into the meaty part, then turn it like that so it sits nicely. You don't want to do it too tight because you don't want it to be uncooked in the middle. They're quite small and fiddly, but if you find a small piece, just stick it in, and that's fine. If you find a big piece, go in, then weave it, then get it down. You can do this in front of the TV. It's fine, I do it all the time. You can see all the flavours soaked in. I've got pieces of lemongrass and chilli coming off. You're gonna taste all of that later. You actually want the pieces of fat hanging out like that because when it's on the fire, that's the part that melts. I like my skewers a bit messy. I think the drama it creates when it's on the noodle bowl is great. And the sizzling, I think the fatty parts really help the sizzling. There you go, something like that. So I've made some earlier, and this one here has been in the fridge for 24 hours. So you can see the difference. When it's in the fridge, the meat would tighten up like that. It's absorbed all the flavours. But if you haven't got time and you want to cook that straight away, that's still delicious too, so that's fine. So I'm doing one portion today. I know there's five here. I can have easily about 12, easily. I'm gonna squeeze this one on. So I've got six here. Don't layer them. Just do one layer so you can cook them evenly, but it doesn't take long. It's literally about three minutes. The meat part of this dish is great, but in my opinion, the key element of the dish is the dipping sauce. Vietnamese nuoc cham is wonderful. It's got a combination of the chilli and the garlic and the fish sauce, balanced really well with the sugar and the lime, and it makes it a perfect dressing for a noodle bowl, or if you're just having it with a salad, that's great too. So I'm gonna show you how to make that today. So I'm gonna start off with the garlic. So you want the garlic as fine as possible. It's great, but if it's too chunky and you bite on it raw, it's a bit harsh. Fish sauce without garlic is a no-no. You can blitz it, that's completely fine. I've just been taught to do it this way and I prefer it. So next I'm gonna add the chillies. I think the kick of this makes it really good. So combine them together and just keep going. And really, it's worth it. Later, when you see this floating on top, you know it's beautiful. It's therapeutic for me, I can do buckets. And you can see the difference. If you blitz it in the blender, it floats on top, it's all like really chunky and the pieces of garlic and chilli, that it's not evenly sized. But when you do this, you're guaranteed for it to be even. I think to make your food beautiful or pretty to look at, feeding your eyes before you get to eat it. There you go. Now we're gonna make the fish sauce itself. Now I've got a very simple recipe to show you. It's a rule of one, two, three. That should get you a really nice balance of the base of the sauce. In here is one fish sauce and one lime, two sugars. I'm using caster sugar because I'm not heating up the fish sauce. If you're not, then you can heat it up to melt the sugar or use warm water. Water in here is three. So one, one, two, and three. That's your combo. Mix this well and just wait for the sugar to melt in. So here's one I made earlier. In here, I've got the chilli and the garlic on top and it should look like that. Okay, this is the fun part. I'm gonna build the noodle bowl. I'm going to have a decent amount. So here I've got rice noodles, traditional Vietnamese vermicelli noodles. If you don't like the rice noodles, you can turn it into a whole salad bowl. That's completely fine too. As long as you have the fish sauce to go on top, you're good. I've got cucumber. It adds that crunchy texture, but moist at the same time. You can julienne them by hand or you can just use a grater. A lot quicker. If you're eating straight away, you can go all the way to the pip, but if you're not, I recommend not doing the pip because it gets really wet. You can just eat this later. That looks great already. And the reason you don't put too much noodles is because you want to build the salad as big as possible. And I promise you, it looks really big, but when you eat it, you feel good and it's really fresh. So no guilt. I love eating carrots raw, especially when it's thin enough so you can put sauce on it and it soaks it all in. Look at the color. Amazing. And because of the size and the way it's done, when it goes in with the noodles, you get your chopsticks and you dig in, it all works. I love it. Here, I've got red onions. Be careful when you're slicing. Make sure it's thin so it doesn't give you that harsh kick. I've got some coriander here. Now, if you love coriander like me, put a whole load in because it tastes really good with the pork. You don't have to chop it. You can roughly tear it. And keep the stems and the leaves, everything. You don't have to throw anything out. Then I've got shisho, which is perilla. And then basil. Good Vietnamese noodle bowl has basil in it. And it's ready to go. Now for the meat. So now this one here has sat in the fridge for 24 hours. The meat is nice and tight and all the skewers, they look really nice and firm. I'm going to put a thin coat of honey on it. Not too much because you don't want to burn it. And then later, you want to do another coat. Look at that. I get carried away when I do this. Don't do it. It will burn and it's your fault. No, it's my fault. Just a thin layer. And turn it. So you can do this starting with a cold pan. But if you want to heat it first, that's great too. The reason I'm using a cold pan is I don't want to burn the honey. This looks great. You can see it's all glistening. This is a veg oil. I'm just doing a thin one to get the crispiness. And we're good to go. Okay. So today we're using a wood fire. This gets really hot. So do make sure you keep an eye on it. So this is half time. You want to turn the skewers over. Look at this. It smells so good. The lemongrass is coming through, the garlic, the chilies. You don't want to miss this turning point. Make sure it's halfway. You don't want the meat to sort of all melt away. I'm going to layer it with some honey. And don't worry about the sweet honey coming on because with the marinade, it's already quite salty. This should balance it out. Now you just have to picture you're on the streets of Vietnam. Really hungry. The best. Okay, I'm going to put this back and I'm going to watch it really carefully. The danger of it burning is a lot higher. Look at this. That's all the honey doing its work. It feels really tender. You can do half-half. Why don't you do half shoulder and half belly pork? But completely 100% belly pork. Okay, so now to the exciting part. We're going to start plating and then eating. So this is the noodle bowl that we made earlier. You've got your carrots, your cucumber, onions, you've got coriander, the basil, the perilla, and rice noodles underneath. Now think about the combination here. You want it to be cold because the contrast of the cold and hot really works. That's what Vietnamese food is all about. Everything here acts as like a sponge. It's now going to soak with the fish sauce in and then your meat is like a bonus on top. So this is a portion for one. You know it's filling, but in a good way. But if you want to share, that's okay. If someone's really nice to you and you want to share with them, that's fine. But you have to be really nice to me for me to share this. My goodness. The fatty part here is actually great. I take that, I put it on top, and that combines with the fish sauce. It's wonderful. Be careful, don't burn yourself. This is all the good stuff. It's not Vietnamese until it gets this stuff on it. This is the drama. You can put as much as you like. I like to drench mine. If you balance your sauce enough, it should be good enough to drink from. I like lots, so I'm going to do that. Give it a taste. It's so good. Really good, if I must say so. Okay guys, so that's my Vietnamese bún thịt nướng, grilled pork with rice noodles and salad. You can find the recipe on the Gosney website and do go and make it. I would love to hear from you. Enjoy.