Being Vietnamese, despite living overseas and not being able to speak
Vietnamese, we always show our Vietnamese character through our eating
habit. No Vietnamese child can dislike spring rolls, phở (rice
noodle soup) or fried rice cooked by his/her mother.
1. Culinary culture
Eating habit is a natural cultural trait which shows through
our daily activities, physically and spiritually. Through a
people’s cuisine, one can understand their culture, human values and degree of
civilization together with their social principles, rules and traditions.
1.1 Historical
and geographical influences
(Please consult:
VN-VN : History of Vietnam: a Summary http://phu-tran.blogspot.com/2017/05/history-of-vietnam-summary.html
VN-VN : Vietnam: The Country and Its People
There are a few points to know in order to understand
Vietnamese cuisine :
- Vietnam is an agricultural country, so daily living is associated with eating and rice is a basic food;
the climate is tropical so vegetables can grow throughout the year;
the country borders the sea so there is no shortage of seafood.
- Vietnam runs from North to South and through the various
Southern expeditions to expand the country territory, we have three regions with specific
characters in all aspects. On the culinary front:
o The South likes sweet and sour taste,
usually adds sugar and uses coconut juice; bean sprout is a typical vegetable.
This region has many dry seafood (mắm) and, particularly, special dishes
to eat with alcohol consumption (note that the South has fertile soils and,
relatively, the easiest living conditions).
o The Central region
has narrow lands, a dense population, arid soils, with frequent droughts and
floods, so the living is harder. The cuisine of this region is known for its
very spicy taste, with many dishes which are hotter and more salty than the
ones in the North and South, famous for sour shrimp sauces, pastes and dry
shrimp powders (mắm).
- Our country is relatively poor so vegetables are eaten more often than meat (one piece of
beef suitable for one person’s ration in Western countries will be cut in
smaller pieces in Vietnam, stir fried with vegetables and served to the whole
family) and the sharing spirit has to be high so everybody can live together.
Wasting food would be inconsiderate.
- The influence of the three main religions (Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism), based on the family,
social levels and rules and interactions between people.
A typical example is the saying: “When eating watch the pot,
when sitting watch the direction you are facing”. On the dining table, if
there is little food then one eats little, if there is abundant food then one
eats more, one respects elders, yields to lower level people, notes and
observes the host-guest differences, be aware of the setting and atmosphere of
the meal...
The vegetarian diet from Buddhism is based on the first
Precept (among the Five Precepts), in accordance with the principle of
refraining from killing living creatures and not like the Western vegetarian
diet which discourages meat consumption (but not fish) for health and
weight control reasons.
Other dictums and proverbs:
God does not strike
during a meal (i.e. meals are very important)
Food can be a bad
thing, losing a piece of food will make one very angry (i.e. do not
lose one’s temper because of food)
One small piece of
food when one is hungry is equivalent to a parcel when one is full (i.e.
when in need one should value gifts from others, this also brings up the loving
sharing experience in this case)
1.2 Characteristics
of Vietnamese cuisine
Historian Han Nguyen Nguyen Nha considers that Vietnamese
cuisine has 9 characteristics:
1. Assimilation and multi
faceted. Vietnamese people accept easily other people’s cuisines and from
these create their own. Vietnamese cuisine is very versatile; one only
has to look at the menus in the restaurants or enters a Vietnamese market to
understand this.
2. Low in fat. Dishes use
mainly vegetables, tubers and fruit so are low in fat, do not have a lot of
meat like Western dishes and also do not use a lot of oil like Chinese cuisine.
3. Multi flavors:
Vietnamese people generally use fish sauce to add flagrance to dishes and also
combine other spices so the dishes are very tasty.
4. Combination of many
ingredients and tastes. Vietnamese dishes usually include many
ingredients such as meat, prawn and crab together with various vegetables, nuts
and powders... In addition, there are combinations of many flavors such
as sour, hot, salty, sweet, fatty...
5. Tasty and healthy. These two
words summarize Vietnamese cuisine.
6. Use of chopsticks.
This is an art. Chopsticks can also be used for cooking and
sometimes for cutting soft food such as steamed rice rolls.
7. Community or group spirit
(eating from the same tray): the family meal is very important, similarly, any
feast, drinking party must include partners and friends to be complete.
8. Hospitality spirit. The
Vietnamese like to invite relatives and friends to their home to share a meal
(some other nationalities meet in restaurants or pubs and do not invite people
to their homes, everybody pays his/her share, nobody owes anybody anything).
9. Use of trays: all the dishes
are brought to the table together and eaten at the same time and not served
separately. This also shows the sharing spirit.
Other characteristics are:
- Vietnamese dishes usually require a lot of time and effort
to prepare (any vegetable or tuber has to be peeled, cut into thin pieces or
strips, dipping sauce has to be prepared separately, cooking phở has to be done
the day before...). Recipes are fairly complex because of many
ingredients and cooking methods depend on the taste of each individual.
- Combination principle is based on moderation in mixing
ingredients, not too spicy, sweet or fatty and in accordance with Ying Yang and
Five Elements principles.
For example: Sour soup (Yin) is usually eaten with fish slow cooked in fish sauce (Yang), catfish (Yin) grilled (Yang) and marinated in fish sauce and ginger (Yang)...
For example: Sour soup (Yin) is usually eaten with fish slow cooked in fish sauce (Yang), catfish (Yin) grilled (Yang) and marinated in fish sauce and ginger (Yang)...
1.3 Eating
manners
What we eat and drink depends on location and time.
Daily meals. The
Vietnamese usually eat snack food at breakfast (such as cakes, glutinous rice,
porridge, rice noodle soup, vermicelli). Main meals are typically eaten at
lunch and dinner time, usually when the whole family assembles together.
The Vietnamese’s main meal consists of a main course (rice), a savory dish
(dipping sauce) and three basic dishes (meat, vegetables and soup).
Feast. In
festivals, weddings, engagement ceremonies, parties, meals are naturally more
sumptuous, with many and more tasty dishes and dishes that can only be found in
special circumstances, such as meat in fatty gel (thịt đông) with salty pickles
(dưa muối), square glutinous rice cakes (bánh chưng), glutinous rice rolls
(bánh tét), ...on the Vietnamese New Year, baked and soft moon cakes (bánh nướng,
bánh dẻo) at the Mid Autumn Festival (Trung thu), suckling pig at wedding and
engagement ceremonies...
Snack food. Apart
from the three main meals, we often eat snack food to “keep our mouth from
getting bored” at any time. In this case, we do not eat to get full and the
food consists usually of hot (pork cake-bánh gió, rice roll-bánh cuốn...) or
cold cakes (round glutinous cake-bánh giầy, green rice cake-bánh cốm...),
steamed (sweet potato-khoai lang, taro-khoai sọ...) or roasted vegetables (corn).
Women generally like “ô mai” (salty, sweet and sour dry
apricot; people often say “ô mai age” to refer to the student days), beef jerk
(khô bò), vegetable and pork roll(bò bía), preserved and sweetened fruit (mứt),
candies...
Just drinking alcoholic beverages would get one drunk too
quickly, especially on an empty stomach, so drinking has to be accompanied by
special drink food. This could be any dry food, easily prepared or already
existing, such as roasted peanut, dry squid, dry shrimp, pickled leak... but
more tasty food consists of dishes that are cooked sophistically such as salad
of boneless duck feet, offal (giblets, liver, stomach)...
1.4 Eating
places
Eating at home is cosy and cheap but sometimes one gets some
pleasure in eating out for a change.
Apart from restaurants, common or luxurious (although the
Vietnamese prefer taste to luxury), in Vietnam, there are also food stalls on
the sidewalks or hawker stalls with their sweet spoken advertisements.
Families which can not or do not know how to cook can get
prepaid meals i.e. pay somebody or a restaurant to cook for them all year
round.
2. Vietnamese dishes
2.1 Basic dishes include
Rice (steamed rice, fried rice, broken rice, rice meals..), Sticky Rice (xôi)
made from glutinous rice, Porridge-cháo (which is cooked like steamed rice but
with a lot of water).
Rice vermicelli (bún), thin rice noodle (phở), thick and
round rice noodle (bánh canh) are made from rice flour, there are also soups
(with the soup made from chicken, beef, pork, prawn, crab...), fried dishes,
dry dishes. Rice noodle soup (phở) is most typical for foreigners,
particularly, where there is a large Vietnamese community.
Also, there is transparent noodle (Miến), made from arrowroot plant and tapioca starch. The cooking is similar to making rice vermicelli or rice noodle and there are dishes of fried transparent noodle or soup.
Also, there is transparent noodle (Miến), made from arrowroot plant and tapioca starch. The cooking is similar to making rice vermicelli or rice noodle and there are dishes of fried transparent noodle or soup.
The Chinese have given us dishes like Egg Noodles-Mì (made
from wheat flour), wonton and Chinese transparent noodle (hủ tiếu).
Hot pot (Lẫu) can be considered as a variant of noodle soup. The pot with the tasty hot soup is put on a small stove in the middle of the dining table, diners can dip various vegetables, seafood, meat in the soup and let it cook to taste (either fully or partly) and retrieve it from the pot to eat.
Hot pot (Lẫu) can be considered as a variant of noodle soup. The pot with the tasty hot soup is put on a small stove in the middle of the dining table, diners can dip various vegetables, seafood, meat in the soup and let it cook to taste (either fully or partly) and retrieve it from the pot to eat.
2.2 Appetizers
These dishes generally are entrees prior to the main dishes.
- Rolls (Cuốn) :
spring rolls (Nem or chả giò), rice rolls (gỏi cuốn)...
- Coleslaws (Gỏi). These are like western salads and are usually made from fresh vegetables, tubers, herbs, mixed with fish sauce, salt, vinegar, sugar, chilli...
2.3 Meat,
seafood dishes
Meat dishes include pork, chicken, duck, beef, veal,
goat...and special meat like dog, snake, frog...
Vietnam is a country bordering the sea and with lots of
rivers so has a great variety of fish, prawn, crab, eel...
Fish can be stir fried, deep fried, grilled, slowly boiled
in fish sauce, boiled, steamed...with vegetables, tubers...and spices.
It is difficult to describe all these dishes but we can give
a few examples: slowly boiled fish in fish sauce (cá kho), (Chả cá) Lã Vọng
grilled fish, salted fried crab (cua rang muối), fried beef cubes (bò lúc lắc),
7 beef dishes, grilled veal (bê thui), chicken slowly boiled in coconut juice
(gà rim nước dừa), herbal duck (vịt tiềm), rice with seafood (cơm hến)...
2.4 Vegetables
and soups
Vegetable dish and soup are very popular in Vietnamese
cuisine:
Vegetables can be eaten raw, dipped in boiling water,
boiled, fried, grilled, cooked...
Soup (Canh) is one of the basic dishes and cannot be
omitted. Compared to most other countries soups, Vietnamese soup is thinner and
usually eaten with rice.
2.5 Salted
dishes
- Pickled vegetables (dưa muối) are very common in
Vietnamese cuisine and have many varieties. The popularity and variety of
pickled vegetable dishes can be proudly compared to the Korean kimchi.
- Salted seafood (Mắm) can be eaten by itself as a dish in a
meal: shrimp paste, fermented fish sauce...
2.6 Cakes
– Preserved fruits – Candies
Salted cakes:
steamed bun (of Chinese origin), small round flat rice cake (bánh bèo), steamed
rice roll (bánh cuốn), fried rice pancake (bánh xèo), square glutinous rice
cake (bánh chưng), glutinous rice roll (bánh tét)...and, of course, bread
roll-bánh mì with cold meat (or roast meat) which is getting more and more
popular overseas.
Sweet cakes: soft
glutinous rice cake (bánh dẻo), moon cake (during the Mid Autumn festival),
green bean cake (bánh đậu xanh), steamed rice cake (bánh bông lan), sponge cake
(bánh bò), mung bean glutinous rice cake (bánh cốm)...
Preserved fruit
(Mứt) is usually a special gift at the Vietnamese New Year: preserved ginger,
coconut, squash, lotus seed...
Candies are
usually made with malt sugar and some fruit or tuber such as sesame peanut
candy, durian candy, coconut candy...
Salted dry fruits
(ô mai) include salted dry tamarind, salted dry apricot, salted dry
strawberry... Salted dry plums (xí muội) are also quite liked.
2.7 Fruits
In America, one would have to travel to warm regions like California, Texas, Florida to enjoy these fruits. Otherwise, eating fruits which are picked when they are not ripe or have been frozen is not really good.
2.8 Dishes
which are difficult to eat
There are so many Vietnamese food items and among these
there are things that even some Vietnamese may not know or dare not eat: herbs
like garlic chive (hẹ), heartleaf (fish mint)-diếp cá, meats like dog meat,
snake meat, bat meat..., offals (liver, stomach, intestines, kidney...),
poultry like chicken/duck partly hatched eggs (hột gà-vịt lộn) or coagulated
duck blood (tiết canh), fruit like durian of course.
3. Drinks
Wines and liquors include essentially local Vietnamese drinks (rice and glutinous rice liquors, snake marinated in alcohol ...) and, more rarely, wines (from grapes) such as Thăng Long wine and Đà Lạt wine. Imported wines are also widely consumed.
Beer is also
made in Vietnam like Hà Nội beer, Sài Gòn beer. Sài Gòn people can not forget
beer 33 (tiger beer) made by the French company BGI.
Tea is a
common drink in Vietnamese cuisine as well as in most Asian countries.
Coffee :
Vietnam exports coffee, hence, many coffee varieties are consumed more and more
every day. Coffee is usually prepared with a coffee filter. Famous overseas is
iced white coffee.
Sweet drinks (Chè)
Between traditional food and drinks, there is a special item which is sweet beverage which can be consumed cold or hot. This drink is usually consumed as a dessert or a snack.
Between traditional food and drinks, there is a special item which is sweet beverage which can be consumed cold or hot. This drink is usually consumed as a dessert or a snack.
4. Conclusion
Because this article is a summary, it has to be condensed to a few pages whereas it would need many more pages to adequately cover this topic. This shows how Vietnamese cuisine is so versatile, has so many aspects and flavors and is so delicious.
Because this article is a summary, it has to be condensed to a few pages whereas it would need many more pages to adequately cover this topic. This shows how Vietnamese cuisine is so versatile, has so many aspects and flavors and is so delicious.
Only by understanding our cuisine one can see the culture behind
each dish, each cooking method, each eating manner.
Our people, although poor, can still bring our cooking and
eating to the level of an art, can still appreciate good food, share this with
our compatriots and keep our character.
So we can still feel proud to be Vietnamese.
Translated by Khai PHAN
from VN-VN : Ẩm-thực Việt-Nam
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