Hue beef noodle soup ‘ten perfections, five achievements’

Beef noodle soup is a typical dish with the most flavor of Hue cuisine, once listed among the top ten by culinary elites. Thap toan is the perfect finishing point of a special dish of the period: delicious, fragrant, sweet, rich, pure, nutritious, eye-catching, good at choosing, good at cooking, and good at presentation. The Five Virtues are 5 elements: everyone knows it, can buy it, can eat it, can process it, and find raw materials right in their locality. Stretching across space and time, Hue beef noodle soup has times and places where only one name remains. The qualities, characteristics and flavors have also changed a lot. To find a bowl of Hue beef noodle soup, true to Hue style, you have to go to the place where this dish was born.

Experiencing many ups and downs of history, at one time Chau O and Chau Ly belonged to the kingdom of Champa, and was the capital of the Nguyen Dynasty, the last feudal dynasty of Vietnam that existed for 143 years (1802 – 1945). Hue has become an important political, economic, cultural and artistic center of the country, a cultural intersection of many different civilizations and ethnic groups: Cham people, Vietnamese, Indians, Chinese… All bring the culinary quintessence of their country, in which Hue cuisine is extremely rich and unique, accumulating all sorts of strange dishes, the most famous of which is beef noodle soup.

Until now, no one knows exactly when beef noodle soup was born? People can only determine the age of beef noodle soup through the appearance of vermicelli noodles in Hue. Residents of Van Cu village, Huong Toan Ward, Huong Tra town, Hue city, every year often offer offerings to Mrs. Bun, who gave birth to the craft village more than 500 years ago, to commemorate her merits and pray for the craft village to develop more and more.

To make fresh and delicious vermicelli noodles, people use Khang Dan rice to soak in cold water for 12 hours and then change the water. After changing the water, soak for another 12 hours until the rice grains are white and then grind them, mix with filtered flour at the ratio of 80kg of rice to 1 kg of filtered flour. This smooth, flexible dough is automatically beaten by the machine system and produces noodles about 1.8mm in diameter. The noodles are taken out and washed 3 times with cold water and are ready to eat.

To make a delicious bowl of vermicelli, broth is indispensable, because it is the soul of a bowl of beef vermicelli. It’s not simply that having beef bones in the stew makes them delicious and sweet. In the bones are blood and marrow, so when buying beef bones from the market, chefs do not wash them with cold water, because if you wash them with cold water, the sweet substances from the blood, marrow, and bones will be washed out and attracted back by an amount of cold water, which will make the bones not sweet and fragrant.

Instead, to preserve them, when buying beef bones, people use boiling water to wash them to ensure two factors; Disinfects and seals the bones to keep the marrow and sweet substance from leaking out. When stewing, put in cold water and boil, the sweet substances are released slowly. When boiling, skim off the foam and keep the heat low to avoid high heat causing the fat in the meat to boil up strongly and burst, causing the broth to become cloudy. Do not cover the pot and let it simmer. After simmering over low heat for a few hours, the beef bones and tendons soften, the nutritional components of protein and amino acids in the meat dissolve in water, emitting a passionate and attractive aroma.

The standard broth must be both clear and sweet, without fat and spices floating around. The general basic point is how to choose the ingredients to stew, the best beef is beef under 3 years old, bones for stewing, corn is the leanest part taken from the hind leg muscle of the cow, boiled until cooked and sliced ​​thinly to ensure the toughness and oiliness of the tendons and meat. Delicious pork is the bone and leg meat of grass pigs. Pork trotters are therefore both firm, fragrant and low in fat. The sausage is stewed for about 30-40 minutes to make it both crispy and firm.

Spring rolls are a pure Vietnamese dish. If you want to be delicious, you must choose tenderloin meat. After being pounded, the meat fibers will loosen, the crushed cell particles will be rearranged, and at the same time the proteins will be released to the maximum. After that, filter the tendons, pound again and again until the meat is very smooth, creating soft and crispy patties. Crab cake is to add crab to the spring roll ingredients, boil the crab, take the meat and mix well into the soft pounded roll.

The pot of Hue beef noodle soup has the flavor of the lagoon’s sea and is a highlight for the cooking skills of Hue women. The main spices of the noodle soup are lemongrass, shrimp paste, chili and fish sauce. Hue lemongrass grown in barren hilly areas has a different flavor of essential oils compared to other lands. Fresh lemongrass plants selected in the middle are both fragrant and rich in essential oils. Hue lemongrass has a rich aroma strong enough to neutralize the smell of shrimp paste, making the smell of meat mixed with pepper, onions, and fish sauce more mellow and sweet.

In the pot of vermicelli, if the lemongrass determines the flavor, then the shrimp determines the taste. Hue shrimp is a type of fish sauce made from shrimp caught in the estuary area. When making fish sauce, the shrimp is washed, roasted, fragrant, pounded, salted until it turns bright red and has a fragrant aroma, then it is ready to use. Seasoning the shrimp so that the pot of vermicelli has a rich sweet taste without being too smelly is a long-standing technique and experience of every chef.

After stewing for 5 hours, the pot of broth blends the sweetness and fat of bones and meat with the flavors of lemongrass, shrimp paste and many other spices to create a perfect pot of broth. The mouth-watering aroma of the ingredients released at high temperature makes a bowl of Hue vermicelli more special, and you won’t get bored eating it again and again.

Beef noodle soup has witnessed the migration and development of Hue people. Therefore, a bowl of beef noodle soup is like a connecting thread that reminds Hue people of taste to connect with their homeland. Hue beef noodle soup deserves to be a national culinary heritage because it is the culture, the spirit of a land that is the crystallization of nature, and a tribute to the talents of Hue women.