Soup Cake with Duck in Mekong Delta

Soup Cake with Duck or Banh Canh Vit is a favorite food in Mekong Delta.  With gelatinous broth and thick rice noodles, Soup Cake with Duck is different from others such as Pho (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup), Hu Tieu (Clear Rice Noodle Soup), Bun Ca (Rice Noodle Soup with Fish) with clear broth and thin rice noodles. Because Banh Canh Vit’s noodles are shorter than Pho noodles or Hu Tieu noodles, Vietnamese people eat Soup Cake with Duck with a spoon while they must use both spoon and chopsticks to eat other kinds of rice noodle soup.

Rice noodles are made from rice flour, it’s about 10 cm long and 1 cm thick. Rice must be high quality so that the noodles are sticky and tender enough. Mekong Delta people soak rice at least 10 hours before grinding with water into a mix of rice flour and water. Then they put the mix into a cloth bag, tie it and put a heavy thing on it for a few hours so that water is leaked and the mix turns into rice flour dough. After that they mold the dough into sheets and cut the sheets into noodles which are boiled, then soaked in cold water for 5 minutes. It’s the traditional way to make rice noodles for Soup Cake. In recent days, many Vietnamese cooks use mixer and noodle maker to save time. However, the traditional way is the best way to make Soup Cake’s rice noodles.

The broth is cooked from whole duck, duck guts and duck blood pudding so that it’s very rich and has special smell of duck meat and bone. The cook put rice noodles into the broth and cook until rice noodles tender enough and the broth turns gelatinous enough. To serve, they cut whole duck, duck guts, duck blood pudding into pieces and top on bowl of rice noodles covered with broth. Other toppings such as chopped green onions and ground black pepper make the dish more smelling and tastier. Dinners can dip duck meat, duck guts and duck blood pudding into a very delicious special sauce made from ginger, fish sauce, sugar, chili (optional) and lemon juice (optional).

Soup Cake

Dough before molding into rice noodles of Soup Cake

Soup Cake

Rice noodles of Soup Cake is about 10 cm long and 1 cm thick

Cooks mold rice noodles at a party in Mekong Delta

Soup Cake

Duck blood pudding

Soup Cake

A bowl of Soup Cake with Duck with rice noodles, broth, duck meat, chopped green onion and ground black pepper – what a perfect mix

Ho Chi Minh city (or Saigon) is a non-sleeping city. While they may not be as bright and shiny as the city is covered by a new coat. It becomes more and more splendid and elegant with twinkle street lights and traffic lines. Why not experience the buzz of Saigon’s nightlife on the back of a Scooter with our Saigon Street Food Tour By Night on Motorbike?

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