My Version Of Bún Bò Huế Spicy Beef Noodle Soup | Ep6.2

When I visited Hue 9 years ago, I went to a restaurant called Hong Mai to learn how to make Banh Khoai, a delicious rice flour crepe and an iconic dish of Hue. Now Banh Khoai translated in Vietnamese means happy pancake right? The lady who taught me this dish has since retired and her son has taken over the restaurant but I still remember that special cooking lesson and now I'm back in Hue and I'm excited to learn and be inspired by Hue cuisine once again. So I'm up early and on the hunt for a soup dish called Bun Bo Hue. Now you can't come to Hue and not try a bowl of Bun Bo Hue, after all, it's right there in the name. Now I've asked all the locals and they've recommended this place, it's called Bun Bo Ba Keo and she's been making it or the family have been making it for the last 70 years. Can't wait to try one. I'm so happy that I've come here this early because they sell very very quickly, they sell out. So they open at 7, they could be done by 8 or sometimes 8.30. Now the story is beautiful, Ba Keo is her mother, been cooking this dish for 70, 75 years, pass it down here to this beautiful lady and they started in a food store with a bamboo yoke and they've been doing that for 60 years. They've only been in this covered house for the last 5 to 10 years. Okay, look at these beautiful puffs of pork first, crab cake, blood jelly, I can't stress it enough guys, get here early because they're selling out quick. $30,000 for one of these, like $1.50, $2 for this wonderful bowl, oh that's so good, oh man. 7 in the morning, what a breakfast, there's no way I can cook as good as this. It's so great. That was really inspiring, she was so busy there, just did not want to get in the way of her business. So Mun Bo Hue should really be called Mun Hue because Mun is vermicelli, Bo is beef. But all through this city, Mun is made with beef, is made with pork, she had crab cakes, she had pork cakes. This is going to be my Mun Hue, I've got beef bones in here, some onions that have been simmering away, I've got a whole bunch of lemongrass, I've got some pork hocks and I've also got some beef shin or beef shank there, really gorgeous. Now that's been cooking away for around 2 hours, I'm going to take my knuckle and my shins out. Now you're probably asking what's the difference between this broth and a pho broth, well this is your answer right here. It's called Ruk or Mun Ruk, it's shrimp paste, basically it's shrimp, they dry it, they grind it up, they ferment it for many, many months, very, very budget. So I've got around 4 tablespoons of that and I've mixed it with hot water and I've let it just settle down and all the sediment sinks to the bottom. I'm just going to pour, slowly pour that beautiful juice of the shrimp paste or the Ruk and I'm just going to stop at the bottom. What else goes into this broth? I have to make a beautiful satay, S-A-T-E, satay, so I'm just going to cook through some garlic, lemongrass and loads of dried chilli flakes, looking really, really good. I'm going to put in 2 spoons of this Mun Ruk, down south in Saigon they would use the fermented anchovy paste but in the centre in Hue, it's always shrimp paste, bit of chilli oil goes in as well and I'm just going to let that simmer for another 5 minutes. Now that is a bowl overflowing with flavour, spiciness and umami, these are the pillars of Hue cuisine and after seasoning the stock with some sugar, some salt and some fish sauce, it's time to bring this dish all together. Pork knuckle, thinly slice the beef shank, that goes in on the top. Another element is this wonderful ingredient, it's congealed pork's blood. Now that is my delicious bowl of Bun Hue or you can call it a spicy vermicelli beef noodle soup with pork hock. The cuisine in central Vietnam is considered some of the best in the country so I just had to discover what the locals of Hue were cooking. Now I'd heard from a friend of a husband and wife team who created a new dish where they served right from their homes and I was lucky enough to be invited to their homes and cook with them and help them a little bit as well. I'm in Bac Nho's house and he's telling me that the cuisine in Hue is very spicy and it's very salty so him and his wife have come up with a new dish, that they created this new dish and it involves vermicelli noodles because they love vermicelli noodles mixed and coloured with turmeric. Now turmeric is very medicinal, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant so he's created pork intestine or pig's intestine because he thinks it's very good for your inner body. Mix with this turmeric noodle while his wife sits there with her kilos of mint and herbs and plucks nice big large colanders of it and she chops onions and spring onion and coriander and this is their home, right? This is where they live but this is where they also make a living. So we've just set up the stall in the veranda here, there's probably 8 seats but when he gets really busy he seats people into his lounge room as well. So a little bit of a hot wok, non-stick wok, we've got some of that beautiful vermicelli turmeric noodles, some salt, he's going to put in some onions, some spring onion, coriander, it's a really clean dish, no oil was put in there at all, just lightly warmed through in the pan, straight into the bowl. The turmeric noodles are topped with Vietnamese mint, the pork intestine and more fresh turmeric and at 15,000 dong, this healthy dish costs less than a dollar. A dish that both created, what a gorgeous vermicelli salad with pig's intestine. Rất ngon, thank you.