I love bun cha. Vietnamese grilled pork and rice noodle salad. The moist and flavourful pork. The cool rice noodle and fresh herb salad.
And the nuoc cham. That magic balance of spicy, sweet, sour and salty. It’s just perfect for dinner on a warm summer night.
Bun cha makes a great dinner any time
It’s actually really good for dinner any night of the year. OK – maybe not if there’s a blizzard raging. So then most nights. You get the picture.
I have a thing for Vietnamese food. It’s just so good. And bun cha is a fine example of why I love it. Explosive flavours. Satisfying but not heavy. Summer food. Happy food.
Nuoc cham is what brings bun cha together. If you don’t know about nuoc cham it’s a dipping sauce all over Southeast Asia. You know that clear, salty sweet sauce you get with spring rolls? That’s nuoc cham.
And anything with nuoc cham and rice noodles works. It’s the power couple of Southeast Asian cuisine. Just good. It’s super easy to make. Combine the ingredients. Stir. That’s it. Doesn’t get much easier than that.
bun cha - vietnamese grilled pork with rice noodles
Ingredients
Pork balls
- 2 lbs ground fresh pork
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1/2 cup finely chopped shallots
- 2 cloves crushed garlic
- 1/4 cup toasted rice powder - see notes
- 2 tsp sambal oelek
- 1 tsp sugar
- 10 flat wooden skewers (don’t use round ones) - soaked in water for 30 minutes
Nuoc cham
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp fresh lime juice - about one lime’s worth
- 1 tsp sambal oelek
- 2/3 cup hot water
- minced red chilies - optional and to taste
Bun cha
- 10 oz dried rice noodles - the thin flat ones
- pork balls
- mint, cilantro, thai basil, baby greens and lime to garnish
- nuoc cham to serve
Instructions
Pork balls
- Soak 10 wooden skewers in water for at least 30 minutes.
- Combine the ground pork, shallots, garlic, toasted rice powder, sugar, fish sauce and sambal oelek in a mixing bowl.
- Use your hands to mix thoroughly.
- Transfer half the pork mixture to a food processor. Pulse about 10-15 times. You want a big homogenous mess.
- Repeat with the rest of the pork mixture. You don’t want to overload your food processor. It won’t mix well if you do. Let the pork mixture sit for about 30 minutes.
- While the pork sits, build an indirect charcoal fire in your grill. Bank the coals on both sides and put a drip pan in the middle. If you are using gas, turn on a burner or two but leave a cool zone in the middle. You want the grill at about 500 degrees. Hot.
- Here’s a nifty grilling tip. To approximate a Japanese grill put two fire bricks sideways with enough space between them to sit the skewers on them. Far apart enough that the meatballs don’t touch the bricks but close enough so your skewers sit on them. You don’t have to do this. You can grill them how you like. But the brick trick is what I do.
- Form the pork mixture into golf ball size balls. You should get around 24 balls.
- Thread the pork balls onto the skewers. Take care to try to get the skewers through the middle of the balls so they are balanced. This is tough. Do what you can.
- Grill the pork ball skewers until an instant read thermometer reads 160 degrees. This goes pretty fast at 500F. Under 10 minutes. Less maybe. Don’t have an instant read thermometer? Time to get one. Seriously. They start at $10. Everybody should have one. Guessing is almost always wrong. Instant read is always right. You want to nail it every time don’t you?
Nuoc cham
- Combine all the ingredients and stir to combine. Let stand as long as you can. An hour or two isn’t out of the question. 10 minutes is probably OK too.
Bun cha
- At some point along the way bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the noodles until tender. The package may or may not have instructions on it (annoying). If it doesn’t 3 minutes plus or minus about a minute is usually about right. You want tender. You don’t want mush. Rinse under cold water until cool.
- Place a good handful of noodles in the middle of a bowl. Top with the garnishes and 5-6 pork balls. Serve nuoc cham along side and let people drizzle it on themselves.
Notes
Nutrition
Nearly restaurant style Chettinad chicken curry is loaded with big South Indian flavours. Coconut. Green chilies. Curry leaves. And just the right amount of spice.
If you’ve never heard of it, that’s not a shock. It’s too bad though. You are missing out. That’s the problem with the whole Indian restaurant formula.
Chettinad chicken curry is a great Indian dish you’ve never heard of
There are about a million different Indian curries. And yet somehow pretty much every Indian restaurant features the same 10 or 15 dishes.
You would think all there was to eat in India was jalfrezi, tikka masala and vindaloo. Guess what. There’s more. Lots more.
And it’s all really good. So much diversity. So many incredible flavours. You need to get out of the Indian restaurant recipe box.
Some of my favourite curries are from the south of India. Madras is probably the most famous. If you like Madras chicken curry then this chettinad chicken curry is likely to hit all the right notes with you. It’s a bit creamier than a madras. There’s more coconut. And it’s pretty assertively spiced. Lots to love here.
This is a way to get Indian restaurant results without all the prep
This takes less prep. Way less prep. You can make this in less than an hour start to dinner. And get really close to restaurant results. Really, really close.
One thing that may seem odd to folks who don’t cook in the Indian restaurant style. It’s pretty common to pre-cook the meat or poultry. I tried this with uncooked chicken and the juices from the chicken made things a little watery.
Not bad but not that perfectly creamy sauce you get in restaurants. It’s not much more work. You can cook it in the same pan you will cook your curry in. And it makes a difference.
Nearly restaurant style Chettinad chicken curry a curry that should be on Indian restaurant menus. It’s a bit different. In a good way. Try it. And next time you are out for Indian, ask the restaurant why they don’t serve it.
