Add variety to your menu with Vietnamese-inspired dishes
The cuisine of Vietnam is known for its eclectic combination of traditional Southeast Asian foods with French-influenced flavors. The country’s dishes are packed with intriguing tastes built on seafood, pork, beef, chicken, tropical fruits, rice and fish sauce. Students enrolled in cooking schools online can bring variety to their repertoire by exploring beloved Vietnamese items.
Enjoy a classic bowl of beef pho
“Pho brings together rice noodles, an assortment of herbs vegetables and meat.”
Pho is a comforting soup that brings together rice noodles, an assortment of herbs vegetables and meat. Beef pho is one of the most common varieties, and Serious Eats provided a traditional-style recipe.
Begin by cutting two onions and a hand of ginger in half and placing them on a grill grate over the stovetop with the heat set on high. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally, so the onions and ginger are thoroughly charred. Then, set aside until you’re ready to add their smoky complexity to the broth.
To achieve a clear broth without needing to skim constantly, you can par-boil the meat. Place beef parts like brisket, chuck, shins and slices of oxtail in a large stockpot, covering with water. Heat to a boil for 15 minutes before emptying the stockpot into the sink and rinsing off the meat.
Return the meat to the stockpot and cover it again with water. Throw in the blackened onions and ginger, plus cinnamon, fennel, anise, cloves, coriander, fish sauce, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil, and then lower heat to simmer.
After about an hour and a half, brisket and chuck should be tender. Remove these parts from the pot, place them in a bowl with cold water and refrigerate until you’re ready to serve. Keep simmering everything else another four hours, occasionally adding more water.
Strain the broth, removing the bones and aromatics. Keep the broth hot as you adjust the level of water, skim fat off the surface and add seasoning to taste. Cut the cooked beef into slices or chunks and prepare pho noodles. Pour the broth over the noodles and serve with a selection of beef, herbs, lime and sauces.
Dig into eclectic tastes of banh mi
The spicy pork sandwich banh mi shows off the culinary heritage of Vietnam by matching ingredients native to the area with others influenced by French cuisine. A recipe from the New York Times demonstrated how to capture the classic flavor of this sandwich while focusing on meat and produce that are readily available at your local grocery store.
First, pickle vegetables by tossing cucumbers, carrots and daikon radish in vinegar, sugar and salt. Let the mixture rest for a minimum of half an hour. In the meantime, combine scallions, mayonnaise and chili sauce. Whisk together and set aside.
Heat peanut or vegetable oil in a skillet on medium-high heat and saute more scallions with garlic. After a minute, add ground pork and cook for seven to 10 minutes. When the meat is fully browned, mix in chili sauce and fish sauces, plus salt, pepper and sugar.
Take the skillet off the heat, stirring in basil, lime juice and lime zest. After the pork cools for five minutes, pour in the mayonnaise mixture. Assemble the sandwiches by placing the pork on pieces of baguette with jalapeno, mint, cilantro and the pickled vegetables.
Goi cuon is a Vietnamese spring roll packed with tasty meat, seafood and veggies.Wrap up flavor in goi cuon
Complete your Vietnamese-inspires meal with goi cuon, a type of spring roll. The directions from the Asian Food Channel call for boiling either chicken or pork belly until fully cooled while frying shrimp without oil for one to two minutes. After the shrimp cool, peel and cut in half.
Boil rice vermicelli until soft, and then drain and rinse. Assemble the roll by wrapping the vermicelli, meat and shrimp in rice paper with greens and cucumber. Serve with a dipping sauce made from sauted garlic, hoisin sauce, chicken broth, peanut butter and sugar.
