Travel & Food - How to make authentic Vietnamese Banh Mi

Banh Mi is called the best sandwich in the world for a reason. We'll start off by making our bread. Banh Mi actually translates to bread, and it's the only sandwich named after its bread, which should tell you how important the bread is here. I've started by combining yeast and sugar with some warm water, and once that yeast is activated, we'll add in our flour, lime juice, and salt, hook this up to our mixer with the dough hook attachment, and mix over medium speed for about 10 minutes until the dough pulls together like this. Now grease a large bowl and shape your dough into a ball, then drop it in and cover it up with plastic wrap, and let it rise for two hours at room temperature until it's doubled in size. Then very lightly flour our work surface before laying it down. Once again, shape it back up into a ball and then divide into four even pieces. If you wanna be really accurate, you should probably use a scale here. And then one ball at a time, shape them by rolling them around until they create tension and shape up nicely like this. To prepare them for baking, add a bit more flour, then flip each ball upside down and press it down into an oval about this size. Then fold one side about 2 3rds of the way up like this, fold the other side over that piece there, and then pinch hard all the way down to create a seam on the bottom. It's okay if this part here doesn't look pretty, because we're gonna flip it over into our baguette tray for baking. Before covering them with plastic wrap, we'll give them one more light spray with oil, and after resting for one hour at room temperature, they'll now have doubled in size. Carefully remove that plastic wrap, and then, using a razor blade, create three small slits on the top of each loaf of bread. Add a light misting of water. This is what gives the iconic thin, crisp banh mi crust. And don't forget, before you put this into the oven to bake, We need to create our own steam oven by adding some boiling water to a preheated cast-iron pan That's sitting on the bottom rack of our oven after eight minutes We'll remove the steam and let that bake about five more minutes or until they look like this Like I said banh mi doesn't happen without great bread If you listen carefully It should sound almost hollow on the inside and that crust should be shatteringly thin and crispy almost like an eggshell And I'm willing to sacrifice this one just so you can hear the crunch now that we've made our bread We're gonna make a Vietnamese liver pate liver pate and banh mi is a must if you skip it all you have is a pork sandwich. These are chicken livers, one of my absolute favorites. In fact, I have them at least once a week for breakfast. To clean the livers, we'll cover them with milk, then cover them up with plastic wrap and place them in the fridge for at least two hours. And after straining them, we'll move over to the stovetop and over medium heat, we'll add a bit of butter along with a few sliced shallots and a couple cloves of crushed garlic. Stir for just a couple minutes until softened and push them off to the side and add in the livers, spreading them around to try to leave space between them so they can hopefully get some kind of caramelization. When I cook them at home for breakfast, I almost cook them like a steak, where I try to get a really hard sear on either side. But here, we're just looking for a little color and caramelization. We don't want to overdo it. Once we've gotten that initial color, we can mix everything together. And now, the goal is to cook them most of the way through. Deglaze with Shaoxing wine and scrape off all the flavor from the bottom of the pan. Then turn off the heat and bring in your blender. Add in the liver and onions, along with some fish sauce, sugar, Chinese five spice, white pepper, salt, and softened butter, and blend. adding a few splashes of water as needed to bring it all together into a smooth paste. I know this crazy looking liver puree may not look like something that should come from the number one rated sandwich in the world, but if you look it up online, banh mi is rated by most experts as the number one sandwich. Once you've let it fully cool down, cover it up and place it in the fridge until you're ready to use it. We're going to make the pork in the most incredible way. I'm starting in a pot with some sugar over medium high, because the first step is to make caramel. Once it reaches this beautiful color, we'll add in our pork, shallots fish sauce soy sauce coconut water and a few aromatics and once this comes to a simmer we'll turn down the heat and let this braise for one and a half hours or until the pork is nice and tender i have a hard time looking at these without drooling at this stage so i'm just gonna let you look at them for a moment now we're gonna use a few forks to shred everything apart and yes we're keeping all that pork skin in there because it's turned into this beautiful gelatinous sticky texture oh oh this sandwich is gonna be crazy that's probably the best pork i've ever tasted And with that, our pork is done, which means we can move over to the final step, pickling our radish and carrot. In Vietnam, this is called Do Chua, and it's a mix of pickled carrot and daikon radish. They use the radish for a peppery, fresh crunch, and the carrot for sweetness and color. As you can see, both vegetables are also shredded into super thin strips. The next step is to add in some sugar and salt and start massaging it into the vegetables. Now, put them in a jar and cover them with water and rice wine vinegar, then place them in the fridge for at least a couple hours or until you're ready to use them. To build the sandwich, we'll start with our homemade baguette and find a spot slightly above the center line that we will then cut most of the way but not all the way through. Now, on the top half, we'll add a generous spread of Vietnamese mayo. It's different than normal mayo in that it only uses egg yolks instead of whole eggs and rice wine vinegar for a little kick. And then on the bottom half, we'll add our chicken liver pate. On the pate, we'll add a few ribbons of cold cucumber for freshness and crunch. Then, of course, as much of that caramelized pork as we can possibly fit. I can't stress enough how unbelievably good this is. Even if you don't make the whole recipe i'd recommend making just the pork then the pickled daikon and carrot Which i'm going to squeeze and drain in a paper towel Look how much liquid comes out of this We don't want it ruining our sandwich the acidity in those is going to be so good at balancing out the sweetness in that pork Then some cilantro only if you like it If not, you could also use parsley a few slices of bird's eye chili If you're feeling bold and last but not least a few drippings from that pork mixture This is absolutely the most excited i've ever been in my entire life to try a sandwich. I might cry. Oh, it's so good It's so, so good. It's because it's the only sandwich in the world that's in perfect, perfect balance. You've got hot versus cold with the caramel pork and the pickled vegetables. You've got rich versus sharp with the pate and the egg yolk mayonnaise. You've got soft versus shattering with the bread. Developed versus fresh with the slow braised meat against the raw cilantro and chili. You even have sweet versus salty and so much more. It's a uniquely, perfectly balanced sandwich and I never understood the hype, but now I get it. That's my new favorite sandwich. It's so good. So, so good.