Vietnam Tet Flavors

Lunar New Year is always the most important holiday in Vietnam. It is a relaxing and special occasion for everyone to think about the achievements of the past year and plan for the New Year.
Tet is also a happy time with festivals, family reunions and meetings with friends. As Tet is such an important and wonderful holiday in Vietnam, the food served on this occasion is also very special with the preparations and flavours familiar all over the country.

A long time ago Vietnamese people prepared the required ingredients for Tet cooking months before it took place. This was especially the case when food was scarce, some families bought green beans and black mushrooms all year long before Tet.

No matter whether rich or poor, on New Year’s Eve, it is also very important to select the best Ngu Qua basket (five kinds of fresh fruit including bananas, oranges, kumquats, pomelos and finger citrons). Each family should put it on the altar with a young rooster which is cooked whole then placed in glutinous rice. Before every banquet, offerings are brought over to the ancestors’ altar. After prayers, these are shared between all the family members.

On the first day of Tet, all the family gathers together to share a big feast with certain kinds of traditional and delicious dishes such as pork pie, frozen meat, boiled chicken, square sticky rice cake, pickled welsh onion, young bamboo soup and che kho (pudding made of green bean). Most of these dishes are cooked especially for the Tet occasion. These are all served around an arrangement of vegetables.

Vietnamese women are responsible for cooking all the food. They put a huge effort into making the best dishes to treat their families during the Tet holiday. Traditionally, they cook each kind of dish, which are mostly served cold in large quantities so whenever guests visit, a feast can be arranged very quickly. Most of the dishes are prepared days or one week before Tet Eve.

Tet food takes some time to prepare, the most time consuming dish is banh chung (square sticky rice cake) which requires good team work. This cake is served cold and sliced into pieces held together with bamboo strings. Banh chung is cooked one to two days before the New Year. The ingredients include: the best sticky rice, green bean, pork, la dong (cover leaf) and even lat (the string around the cake is made from a special kind of green bamboo). It takes around eight hours to cook 10 banh chung cakes.

(Source: Vietnam Discovery)