24 Hours Over Fire — The Story of a 60 Year Old Vietnamese Man

Vietnamese street food has been getting a lot of attention around the world. Foods that seem simple and ordinary, like Pho, Banh Mi and Vietnamese coffee, have appeared many times on famous food lists and rankings around the world. But I started wondering, do the things we often hear in the media really show how special Vietnamese food can be? Today, I want to take you on a very different journey. This is not just a story about a dish that you might find on the dinner table in many Vietnamese homes. Behind this dish is an entire traditional village, located in the Vietnamese countryside. And making this food takes a lot of time and effort. There are many different steps. And the most surprising part is, from start to finish, it can take almost 24 hours. So what is this dish? And why do people here spend an entire day making it? Let's begin the journey. Hi, I'm Jer. I live alone in Hanoi. Today, I'm traveling to a rural area about 100 kilometers from Hanoi. There is a traditional village here that has been making this food for almost 50 years. It took me about a month to plan this trip. I spent time learning about the village, planning my route and getting in touch with local family. In the end, I decided to take a shared car. This is a pretty common way to travel in Vietnam. Instead of taking a bus with many other passengers, I would travel in a small car with a few other people. The car picks me up wherever I want and takes me directly to my destination. Of course, this convenience also costs more than taking a bus. This is Mr. Tu. I had contacted his family before the trip. And today, I'm here to learn more about this traditional village. I arrived quite early, before the sun was fully up. The whole village was still quiet. It felt like the day had only just begun. Mr. Tu invited me to sit down and poured me a cup of hot tea. In Vietnam, this is a very common way to welcome a guest. Nothing fancy, just a cup of tea and a few stories. Sometimes, that's all you need to start a conversation. Mr. Tu started his morning in a very familiar way too. A cup of hot tea and then a local tobacco cigarette. I had a feeling these simple things had been part of his mornings for many years. And for many older people in the Vietnamese countryside, it's more than just a habit. It's almost a part of their morning routine. As I sat there drinking tea with him, I started to realize that this trip was probably going to be about more than just food. It was also going to be a story about the people who have spent many years working in this traditional fish braising business. After the fish is cut into pieces, it is cleaned with salt and lime. People here believe this helps clean the fish and reduce its strong smell. Then the fish is placed into a traditional clay pot. Clay pots like these were once very common in Vietnamese homes, especially in the countryside. They are made from clay and fired at high temperatures. And when used to braise fish, they help keep the heat for a long time. But what really caught my attention were the ingredients. Galangal, onions, chili, fish sauce. These are all familiar ingredients in a Vietnamese kitchen. But there were a few things I never expected to see in a fish dish like this. The first one was fresh lime juice. The second was a special kind of fermented sauce made from small freshwater crabs, not sea crabs. These are tiny crabs that live in rice fields, ponds, and other freshwater areas. In Vietnam, we call them khoa chung or field crabs to distinguish them from saltwater crabs. Maybe this unusual crab sauce is one of the things that give this village's braised fish its unique flavor. And there was another interesting detail. Pork is also used in the dish, but it isn't added at the beginning. Only when the fish is almost done do they add pieces of pork to the pot. Now that the fish is done, I'm going to add the fish sauce. This is the fish sauce that we bought from Nha Trang and Phu Quoc. At home, we use traditional fermented fish sauce. We don't use any traditional fermented fish sauce. So when we eat a fish that is bad, we know right away that the fish sauce is not good. We have to change it right away. Color and consistency. Take a look. Look at the color. Isn't it beautiful? The price of this pot is 3 kilograms of fish. Let's calculate the weight. Let's calculate the weight of 3 kilograms of fish. 3 kilograms of fish cost me 800,000 VND for this pot. It's about half a kilogram of lemon. Why do I say half a kilogram of lemon? It's because this season, the lemon has less water. This season, the lemon has less water. So if we measure it in milliliters, it's about 200 milliliters of lemon water. If a person does it for a long time, he can make 10 pots in the morning and 10 pots in the evening. That's when it's ready. It's not cooked yet. Let's measure the seeds. The seeds are bitter. We will add some ginger. Now I will bring the fish to the kitchen, then I will introduce you to how to cook fish. Yes. I will bring the fish to the kitchen, then I will introduce you to how to cook fish. Then everything continues cooking together until all the flavors come together. And this is when the dish starts to become even more interesting. Mr. Thu then showed me the coating on the outside of the clay pot. At first, I thought it was simply there to make the pot look better and stronger. But after he explained it to me, I realized it has another important purpose. The coating seals the tiny pores in the clay. They are so small that you can barely see them with your eyes. It sounds simple. But I think this is the kind of thing you only learn after many years of experience. Not everything can be learned from a book. Some knowledge comes from doing the same work for years and then passing that experience from one generation to the next. The more I listened to Mr. Thu, the more I realized something behind a dish that looks so ordinary. There is actually a whole world of interesting details. This is the kitchen where the fish pots are cooked every day. Dozens of clay pots are lined up in perfect rows across the kitchen. Smoke is constantly rising from the fire. It fills the whole space and slowly escapes through the roof. If you are not used to it, you might start tearing up after just a few minutes in here. But for Mr. Thu, this is simply part of his everyday work. The fish is cooked over a strong fire using firewood from longan trees. Each batch is cooked continuously for about 12 to 15 hours. According to Mr. Thu, longan wood is almost essential for this process because it produces a lot of heat and keeps the fire burning for a long time. Every day, Mr. Thu sells around 30 pots of braised fish. Each pot sells for about 30 dollars. From the outside, this work might look quite simple. But standing here, surrounded by smoke and heat, I began to understand how much time and effort goes into making a single pot of good braised fish. Years of working beside the fire have left their mark on Mr. Thu's face. His face looks weathered. But to me, there is something beautiful about it. It's the kind of beauty that comes from honest work. The beauty of an ordinary working man who quietly does his job day after day, making something that other people can enjoy. Around lunchtime, Mr. Thu's family invited me to stay and have lunch with them. And this gave me a chance to experience a real home-cooked meal in a Vietnamese countryside family. There was nothing fancy, just a few familiar dishes placed in the middle of the table. Everyone sat together, ate, talked and laughed. And of course, Mr. Thu served me a pot of his family's braised fish. After 12 to 15 hours over the fire, the fish had turned a beautiful dark brown color. The bones had become so soft that you could eat them. But the meat itself had become firm and tender. What I liked most was that even after being cooked for so many hours, the natural flavor of the fish was still there, and there was almost no fishy smell at all. Everyone kept eating, talking and laughing together. For me, this felt like more than just lunch. Because sometimes, what makes a meal special isn't how many dishes are on the table. It's simply having people sit together and share a story. After lunch, I visited an old house just a short distance from Mr. Thu's home. This house has been here for a very long time, and it is connected to a famous work of Vietnamese literature. What I found interesting was that this place doesn't just preserve an old house. It also gives us a glimpse into what life in the Vietnamese countryside was like many years ago. After seeing how people here make their traditional braised fish, and after sitting down and sharing a meal with Mr. Thu's family, I now had the chance to step into a place that carries a story from the past. And that was how my journey came to an end, not just with a traditional dish, but with a small piece of Vietnamese culture, history and rural life. I'm Stair, and I'll keep sharing real, simple and interesting stories from life in Vietnam.