Vietnamese Noodles Guide

Vietnamese Noodles Guide

Noodles are popular in many countries in the world including Vietnam. Noodles in Vietnam are in many shapes, made from different ingredients, served in hundreds of great dishes from noodle soups to rolls. Here is an essential Vietnamese Noodles Guide in which written most of the information about Vietnamese Noodles as much as I know.

As you can see in the above table, most of the Vietnamese noodles are made from rice (rice flour). To make a few types of noodles tough such as noodles for Soup cake dishes, they add tapioca starch or corn starch. Some are cylindrical while the others are flat or square. Noodles for Soup cake dishes are the only short. Most of the noodles are white, only Egg Noodles and Quang Noodles are in yellow color.

The most popular Vietnamese noodles perhaps the thin, cylinder-shaped rice noodles which are the main ingredients of many popular noodle dishes including rice noodle soups and rice noodle dishes that do not contain broth.  Noodle soup dishes differ from the broth, toppings, accompaniments such as vegetables, herbs, spices, and dipping sauce. The flavorful broth can be cooked from meat such as pork, beef, chicken, crab, or fish. Toppings vary from meat, chicken, crab, fish to vegetables. Bun Rieu Cua – Crab Noodle Soup – a popular noodle soup in South Vietnam consists of the broth that is cooked from pork bone and crab, the highlight of this dish is the topping “rieu cua” made from ground freshwater crab, other toppings include tomato, fried tofu. Chau Doc Rice Noodle Soup with Fish, Long Xuyen rice noodle soup with fish, Rach Gia rice noodle soup with fish are some Mekong Delta’s noodle soups which are covered with broths are cooked from fishes (usually snakehead) and topped with fish flesh. Main ingredients of Rice Noodle Soup with Fish Pie which is very popular in many provinces in Central Vietnam are seawater fishes, its highlight is the sweet-tasty and tough fish cake topping. Rice Noodle Soup With Fermented Fish Paste impresses with the fermented fish paste which is used to make the broth uniquely flavorful and smelling, the noodle soup is topped with roasted pork, shrimp, squid, fish cake, crab ball (optional) and garnished with many Mekong Delta vegetables including water lily stems. Similar to Rice Noodle Soup With Fermented Fish Paste, Nuoc leo rice noodle soup in Soc Trang consists of many toppings including roasted pork, shrimp, and snakehead flesh and the broth cooked from fermented fish paste. Soc Trang goi da noodle soup has the special broth which is cooked from pork bones and fermented soybean paste and toppings including shrimp and pork bones, boiled pork slices. Suong rice noodle soup is topped with “suong” which  is made by forming and boiling ground shrimp mixture into thick cylinder-shaped noodles. Rice noodle soup with pepper in Soc Trang is unique thanks to its hot and very smelling broth which is cooked from duck and fresh black peppers. Besides rice noodle soups, Thin Rice Noodles are the main ingredients of some “dry dishes” such as Rice Noodle with Grilled Pork (Bun Thit Nuong) – a specialty of Saigon and Rice Noodles with Fried Tofu and Fermented Shrimp Paste. – a specialty of Hanoi. Rice Noodle with Grilled Pork’s highlights are tender, sweet-tasty grilled pork and sweet and sour dipping fish sauce. Rice Noodles with Fried Tofu and Fermented Shrimp Paste is special thanks to the fermented shrimp paste dipping sauce. Thin Rice Noodles are used in many Vietnamese Rolls. Generally, this kind of noodles is popular in most of the regions in Vietnam.

The cylinder-shaped rice noodles for Hue Beef Noodle Soup is thicker than the one used in other rice noodle dishes. This noodle soup’s broth is flavored with lemongrass and shrimp paste. Hue beef noodle soup originated from Hue in Central Vietnam. Thanks to delicious taste, it has been more and more popular in the country. It is also listed in Top 100 Asian dishes by the Asian Record Organisation.

A very popular type of rice noodles in Vietnam is soup cake noodles. There are many soup cake recipes in different regions around the country. The noodles can be cylinder-shaped or square. However, they are all thicker and shorter than other Vietnamese noodles. The cook can add some tapioca starch or corn starch to make the noodles tough. The broths are clear or glutinous. The main ingredients include meat, chicken, duck, seafood (shrimp, crab), fish, etc. While the above noodle dishes are served with many kinds of vegetables and herbs, soup cakes including Soup Cake with Duck in Mekong Delta, Ben Co soup cake in Hue, Nam Pho Soup Cake in Hue, Crab soup cake (Banh canh cua). are eaten without vegetables or herbs. However,  Trang Bang Soup Cakes in Tay Ninh, Soup cake with fish cake which is popular in Central Vietnam are garnished with some vegetables (lettuce, cabbage, bean sprouts, herbs, etc.).

Quang Style Noodle Soup is very popular in some provinces in Central Vietnam. Cao Lau Hoi An is a specialty of Hoi An City, Quang Nam province. These two kinds of noodle dishes are very special, the broth just covers enough the noodles. Both of them are flat. Quang noodle soup’s ingredients vary from duck, chicken, pork to shrimp and pork, frog. Cao Lau is topped with char siu pork and it has a very special sauce. Cao Lau noodles are made with water got from Ba Le well in Hoi An. It has been said that many people have tried to make Cao Lau noodles outside of Hoi An but all of them failed.

Clear Rice Noodles is a little different from the others of its types, the uncooked noodles are dry. The cook must punch the dry Clear Rice Noodles before serving with broth and toppings, or stir-fried with other ingredients. Clear Rice Noodle Soup and Mixed Clear Rice Noodles is a favorite food of people in South Vietnam, especially Mekong Delta. The broths and toppings are diverse. My Tho, Can Tho, Sa Dec, Dong Thap are famous for high-quality Clear Rice Noodles and dishes from the noodles. The broth of Vinh Chau Clear rice noodle soup with curry in Soc Trang is flavored with curry powder.

A distinct type of noodles in Vietnam is Silk-worm noodles which are used to make Silk-worm cake consisting the noodles topped with sliced pork, pork skin strips, vegetables, herbs and eaten with sweet and sour dipping fish sauce and coconut milk sauce. The cake can be found in Mekong Delta.

Egg Noodles are famous in the world so that I do not write so much here. Two popular dishes from Egg Noodles are Vietnamese Roasted Duck and Egg Noodle Soup and Egg Noodle Soup with Wonton

Finally, in this Vietnamese Noodles Guide we could not forget the most important Pho noodles which are the main ingredients and the soul of Pho noodle soup – the national dish of Vietnam. Similar to Quang Noodles, Pho noodles are flat. Besides the famous Pho noodle soup, Pho noodles are ingredients of many Pho dishes in Vietnam.

Noodles are used to cook hundreds of delicious dishes in Vietnam. Noodles dishes are eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. In Vietnam, they use chopsticks to eat the noodles instead of using pork like Western people. Coming to Vietnam, you can find noodle dishes are sold everywhere in the county, each region has characterized noodle dishes. For example, coastal provinces have noodle dishes made from seafood (shrimp, crab, squid), seawater fishes.

Top Rice Noodle Soups in Vietnam

How to eat Vietnamese noodle soups?