The literal translation of the word “bánh xèo” is “sizzling pastry” or more specifically, “sizzling pancake,” according to Wikipedia. Some people call it the “Vietnamese crepe”; however, I prefer to call the food by a unique name instead of using other cultures to identify my own cultural food. In Vietnamese, “bánh” means “pastry” or “bread” while the word “xèo” means “sizzling.” Translate it any way you want, but this dish is recognizable by its bright yellow color and thin circular shape.
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For my first food blog, I was going to explore phở, a traditional noodle dish swimming in a hearty, deliciously seasoned and flavored beef bone and marrow broth, the most well known dish from Vietnam. Apparently, there are TONS of websites, waaaaaaay more qualified than this girl to give you the background, history, and other finer details of the dish.
I mean just type into Google “phở origin” and the first five to seven webpages have incredibly deep and well-researched content. I didn’t even know such websites existed–one even has a half an hour phở restaurant consultation (lovingpho.com). I am friggin’ Vietnamese and I didn’t–hold up, guys, I think I might do a half hour consultation just to see how good their consultation is. My goodness!
Anyway, my food blogs will be brief, light, casual, and fun and to start off our first food blog, I would like to discuss the lovely dish bánh xèo to you guys!
Here’s my mom’s lovely attempt at trying to capture the look of our homemade bánh xèo.
The literal translation of the word is “sizzling pastry” or more specifically, “sizzling pancake,” according to Wikipedia. Some people call it the “Vietnamese crepe”; however, I prefer to call the food by a unique name instead of using other cultures to identify my own cultural food. In Vietnamese, “bánh” means “pastry” or “bread” while the word “xèo” means “sizzling.” Translate it any way you want, but this dish is recognizable by its bright yellow color and thin circular shape.
The mixture of the pancake consists of :
- coconut milk
- white rice flour
- cornstarch
- chopped green scallions
- water
- turmeric, which gives the pancake that rich, bright yellow color. Many Vietnamese people swear behind the healing and medicinal properties and benefits of turmeric, which is why it is a key ingredient to this recipe.
Generally, the dish is rolled up after you line up the pancake with whatever you want (kind of like a sushi chef when he makes the center part of a sushi roll). I don’t know how other people eat it, but I grew up filling my rolls with boiled pork belly slices, boiled shrimp, sometimes boiled beef heart and for sure, a wide variety of different Vietnamese herbs and vegetables.
Here’s the full view of this dish in my house.
Surprisingly, even though it’s a popular Vietnamese dish, many families make it differently based on personal preference. For instance, some make the pancake large, while others prefer it smaller because they’re going to tear it apart to eat later. Between my family and a friend, there are three ways to make it.
The first way is my grandmother’s, who likes to make the pancake big, thick, and soft. That way, you can roll it like a spring roll, assembling the roll the way you want it while its huge size can help you put as much as you want of anything in there.
The second way is my dad’s style. He likes making the pancake as thin as possible and have it stay on the pan long enough to produce a wonderful crisp, especially at the edges. In addition, he likes dropping about a spoonful of mung beans onto the pancake after he pours the pancake mixture onto the pan to add an extra level of flavor.
My friend’s family pours the pancake mixture into the pan and right there, they add the meat and shrimp so that the proteins are already attached to the pancake and don’t need to be added later. I think that’s an awesome, cool, and much different way of eating it. In fact, it’s actually the real and right way to eat it. But, obviously I love the way I grew up eating it because I actually can customize how much protein and veggies I want, rather than receiving what the chef put into the pan, unless they’re very generous.
There’s also different ways to eat the dish as well.
1) The most popular way is tearing it apart, which I think is usually done if the protein is already cooked into the pancake. You just tear it, put it with a lettuce leaf and use that as the actual wrap and add other vegetables and herbs to it.
2) My dad likes to cut his pancakes into a bowl of vegetables and herbs, pour the accompanying fish sauce that’s vital to the taste of the dish over it like a dressing and dig in. This allows him to keep his hands clean and oil free.
My dad’s bánh xèo salad. Looks yummy, right?
3) My grandmother’s and mother’s way is to eat it by actually sitting down and assembling the pancake to your personal preference before you roll it up and bite into it.
A funny thing I would like to talk about is the dipping sauce. Called “nước mắm” in Vietnamese and translated as “fish sauce” in English (perhaps because of the smell? Or the ingredient inside?), this sauce is the center of the Vietnamese cuisine. It is what flavors many dishes in our culture and is essential to the taste, bringing into harmony all the other different flavors of food that we put together or cook.
Usually from my experience, the sauce is more viscous if you buy it from stores with barbecued duck or pork. However, in my family, the homemade “sauce” is more liquid-like.
The reason I say “funny” when I want to discuss that sauce is because there is also different ways people dip the sauce to eat bánh xèo. Or maybe that’s just my family. One half of my family likes to put grated carrots into the roll and eat it with whatever is assembled inside the bánh xèo after they dip the roll into the fish sauce. The other half of my family enjoys soaking that grated carrot in the nước mắm and eating it at the end of the meal (which I have to say I personally don’t prefer because the nước mắm can be a bit on the salty side in large doses) or while they’re biting into their bánh xèo. And then there’s my dad who eats the nước mắm by drizzling it into his bánh xèo “salad.”
Oh, and just for clarification, the nước mắm I am talking about that is used for eating bánh xèo is not the one that comes straight out from the bottle. In our Vietnamese cuisine, or at least from what I know and have been taught by my family, there are two types of nước mắm. The first is the one from the tall, glass bottle. You’ve probably seen it in Asian supermarkets and stores.
The other is the homemade one (nước mắm pha), that’s sweeter and has a less darker color because of its added ingredients and flavors. Every Vietnamese family makes a different nước mắm that’s fit to their personal taste. In my house, to make the homemade nước mắm, you obviously have to have the bottled one from the store to make it. You add lemons, salt, lots of sugar, red chili pepper, vinegar, pepper paste, chopped garlic, and hot boiling water. I think that’s all the ingredients my dad uses to make it. I’ll update this post if I find out that I am in fact missing something.
But that aside, maybe one day I’ll write a post on how to make my family’s version of this homemade nước mắm if you guys are widely interested in it. It certainly pairs well with other Vietnamese dishes that my family makes such as egg rolls with vermicelli salad, spring rolls, and rice with boiled chicken. The possibilities are endless and homemade nước mắm is such a versatile, special, and key side dish in the Vietnamese cuisine.
Well, that’s it for this post. I hope you guys enjoyed it and that it made you curious to learn more and at least want to try this fabulous dish! There’s more to the Vietnamese cuisine than our famous phở, so I hope you guys will want to try bánh xèo out! Let me know how much you guys liked this post in the comment section or on my Twitter account and please share!
I’m thinking of starting a YouTube channel and maybe showing you guys how this dish is eaten in my family, but that’s up in the air for now!
If you’re Vietnamese and want to enlighten me on how you cook or eat this dish differently (or similarly, if you do), please feel free to share, comment, and talk to me! If you are not Vietnamese but have tried to dish before, please tell me your experience! I love learning more about this food and my roots and hearing others experience my culture! Have a happy Friday, guys!