It will be a big mistake if you come to Ha Tien without enjoying the delicious fresh herring salad by the beach.
By Thomas Vietnam at vemekong.com | Official Ha Tien Visitor Guide
1. Better to Know as a Food Lover
Find them: Ha Tien city.
Best time: Dusk-Dawn
Don’t miss: Herring salad
Local’s pick: Cay Bang restaurant
Tourist’s pick: Hong Hai restaurant
Blog: https://vemekong.com/herring-fish-salad-ha-tien/
Facts: Herring salad used to be famous in Phu Quoc, Vung Tau. But Ha Tien herring salad (Kien Giang) still has its own charm, “softening” many difficult and gourmet diners near and far.
2. Better to Know Herring salad
Herring is a little bigger than sardines, but it is a bit long, smooth, white, and is loved by many people because of its delicious and nutritious meat. In the waters of Kien Giang, herring is exploited all year round, most in the windy season around the beginning of August of the lunar calendar to near our New Year.
Although it is the same salad, the locals in Ha Tien have different ways of preparing it. Some people take herring fillets and marinate them with a little lemon juice or vinegar for a few minutes and then drain the water. Then add fish sauce, sugar, ginger, chili and chopped onion, mix well. Others stir-fry garlic and purple onions until fragrant before mixing with fresh fish meat and adding a little hearing to deodorize the fish.
3. Herring salad in Kien Giang
But if you want to have a plate of excellent herring salad, the chef must properly process it, especially indispensable roasted peanuts that are crispy and fragrant and grated coconut. The grated coconut for this dish must be really old desiccated coconut to increase the fat. Accompanied by a plate of flexible rice paper, a plate of small noodles, young vegetables and dipping sauce. The best are garden vegetables, wild vegetables such as mango buds, dandelions, spinach leaves, perilla, mustard greens… add a few acrid bananas, a few star fruit and a few cucumbers, the better. Particularly, the dipping sauce must be made from aromatic fish sauce, seasoned in harmony with a little sourness of farmed vinegar, the spiciness of chili peppers and the sweetness, fatness of sugar, and crushed roasted peanuts.
The delicious dish is finished with five colors and five flavors and it will be more interesting when it is served next to the poetic and windy Ha Tien beach.
When eating, you will use chopsticks to pick up fish, coconut, vermicelli and vegetables into the rice paper and then roll it up, dip it, and chew it slowly to enjoy the characteristic flavor of the fish. Herring mixed with salad is more crispy than apricot and not fishy. Settling down, you will feel both the strong aroma of vegetables, combined with the sweetness of fish, the fatty taste of coconut and the sour, spicy, and strong flavors of spices. Oh, ecstatic to the extreme!
Enjoying this dish, you should sip a little spicy yeast, in the right style of wine or medicinal wine, making it more appetizing and easy to digest.
4. How to Make Herring salad
Ingredients for herring salad
500g herring
1 lemon, 6 kumquats
1 onion
5 dried onions
1 piece of ginger
2 garlic bulbs
3 chili peppers
Laksa leaves
100g peanuts
Ricepaper
Spices: Cooking oil, sugar, Phu Quoc fish sauce, monosodium glutamate
Good tip:
– To choose to buy delicious herring, you should choose fresh fish, observe that the eyes are transparent, the gills are light pink with iridescent scales.
– You should not buy fish that are soft, have a bent body and have a lot of scratches on the outside or have an unusual odor.
How to make herring salad
Step 1. Prepare ingredients
Herring was washed, cut off the head and cut diagonally across the belly, then removed the bones to take only the fillet of the fish. Then cut the fillet into bite-sized pieces.
Squeeze the lemon to extract the juice. Thinly sliced onion soaked in cold water to reduce spicy. Finely chopped ginger, peeled garlic, chopped chili. Chopped cilantro.
Step 2. Re-make herring
After the herring is filtered to get the meat, you put it in a small bowl or bowl and pour the lemon juice into it, squeeze it evenly, marinate for 5 minutes so that the herring is back. Then squeeze out the water and put the herring in a large bowl.
Step 3. Dry Onion
Put the pan on the stove, wait until the pan is hot, pour in cooking oil, and fry the dried onions until fragrant. Then take the dried onion to separate the cup.
Step 4. Make the dipping sauce
Put 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of monosodium glutamate, 1-2 chili peppers, 2 cloves of garlic, a little ginger, squeeze the juice of 2 kumquats into a small bowl, grind it, and then add 3 tablespoons of fish sauce. stirring chopsticks.
Step 5. Squeeze herring salad
Season the herring in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of sugar, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, iron chili, the juice of 4 kumquats, sliced onion, and minced ginger, then mix well. Finally, add laksa leaves and roasted peanuts and continue to mix well.
5. Pro tips:
Here are our tips for easing your mind (and stomach) around food-handling environments that you may not be used to.
Make sure the food is freshly cooked. If you’re eating hot street food, it’s always safest (not to mention more delicious) to eat food you can see being cooked to order.
Look for lines and busy stalls. Busy street food stalls are an indicator of popularity, and their high turnover rate means the food is never sitting out for hours and developing dreaded bacteria. Yes, long lines can be discouraging when you’re hungry after a full day of exploring, but it’s not worth the risk of grabbing precooked food from the empty spot next door.
Eat when the locals are eating. The last and most important element here is when to eat. You’re likely already on a weird eating schedule while you’re traveling, but it’s important to try and adjust to the eating times of where you are. A bowl of pho might be lunch for Americans, but it’s breakfast for the Vietnamese. This ensures that you’re eating freshly cooked food and that you can find the best and most popular places to eat.
If you can’t drink the water, then you can’t eat the salad. Most people get so hung up on not drinking the water or skipping ice in drinks that they don’t think about all of the other ways in which water is used in food service. Fruits and vegetables tend to be washed with tap water in most places, rather than the filtered water that locals drink—or sometimes it’s not washed at all. If you’re really craving some produce, try fruits you can peel or cooked veggies.
Trust your gut. If you’re unsure about the food or the way that it’s being prepared, then keep moving. Eating street food all over the world doesn’t make you an expert. Every stall and every country are different, and sometimes the rules can be harder to follow. When something doesn’t look, smell, or feel right, don’t eat it! Trust your judgment. Chances are that there’s another spot close by that’s making something more delicious.
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Can Tho: Co Ut’s Cong cake, Ut Dzach Fine Rice Vermicelli, Thanh Van Grilled Pork Sausage, Crab Noodle Soup At Floating Market, Scorched Rice with Caramelized Fish Sauce, 7-Toi’s Duck Meat Pancake, Banh Mi Thuy, Banana Blossom Salad, Fried Spring Rolls, Fresh Spring Rolls, Fetal duck egg (balut), Honeycomb Cake, Mini Sticky Rice Cake, Cassava Silkworm Cake, Grilled Banana Wrapped in Sticky Rice, Khmer-style Bun Goi Da Soup, Egg Coffee, Con Son Grilled Snakehead Fish, Bun Mam – Fermented Fish Noodle Soup, Lau Mam – Fermented Fish Hotpot, Grilled Snails with Pepper, Magenta Sticky Rice Cake, Duck cooked with Fermented Tofu, Rice Noodle Pizza, Vegetarian Noodle Soup, Snails Stuffed With Pork…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Chau Doc: Chau Doc Fish Noodle Soup, Sugar Palm Fruit, Basa Fish Hot Pot, Mam (Fermented fish), Phu Huong Beef Noodle Soup, Broken Rice with Pork Chop, Long Xuyen Broken Rice, Nui Cam Pancake, O Thum’s Chicken Grilled with Lime Leaves, Stir-fried Shrimp with Sesbania Flower, Sweet & Sour Soup with Siamese Mud Carp Soup & Sesbania Flower, Caramelized & Braised Catfish, Grilled Rice-field Rat with Salt and Chili…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Soc Trang: Pia Cake, Cong Cake (Banh Cong), Bun Nuoc Leo Soc Trang’s Noodle Soup, Soc Trang’s Bun Goi Da Soup, Duck Noodle Soup with black Pepper, Curry Noodle Soup, Grilled Beef on Tile, Khmer-style Tube Cake, Khmer-style Mung Bean Cake (Banh In), Dried Radish (Xa Bau), Stir-Fried Noodles with Seafood (Mi Sua), Soc Trang’s Green Rice Flakes…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Ben Tre: Phu Le Rice Wine, Ben Tre’s Coconut Candy, Flat Banana, Coconut Rice, Snail Pancake, Sea Snail with Coconut Milk, Coconut Worm, Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork, Son Doc Puff Rice Paper…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Cai Be: Puffed Rice Cake…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Vinh Long: Elephant Ear Fish (fried giant gourami)…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in My Tho: Fried Sticky Rice, Snakehead Fish Rice Porridge, Hu Tieu My Tho (Noodle Soup), Coconut Banana Cake…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Tra Vinh: Macapuno Coconut, Bun Nuoc Leo Tra Vinh’s Noodle Soup, Tra Cuon’s Sticky Rice Cake…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Sadec: Sa Dec Noodle Soup, Sadec Crab Hotpot, Lai Vung Spring Rolls, Sa Giang Shrimp Puff Pastry, Lai Vung Tangerine…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Bac Lieu: Spicy Beef Noodle Soup, Bac Lieu’s Three-striped Crab, White Radish Pies, Bac Lieu Thick Noodles & Creamy Coconut Milk, Bon Bon Pickles…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Ca Mau: Banh tam ga cay (Silkworm rice cake with curried chicken), Grilled Vop clams with salt and pepper, Grilled Mudskipper Fish, Stone Crab Roast With Salt, Young Bee Salad, Nam Can’s Crab, U Minh Forest’s Honey, U Minh’s Fermented Fish Hotpot…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Hau Giang: Cau Duc Pineapple, Cai Tac’s Pork Organs Porridge, Hau Giang’s Bronze Featherback Fish Cake…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Ha Tien: Herring Fish Salad, Spider crab cake soup, Ken Noodle soup, Xoi Xiem (Siamese sticky rice), Steamed Noodle soup, Ha Tien Oyster porridge…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Rach Gia: Stir Noodle Soup, Kien Giang Fish Noodle Soup…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Con Dao: Bang nut jam, Vu Nang Snail, Roasted Pork Bread (Banh Mi), Coconut Ice Cream…
Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Phu Quoc: Phu Quoc Sim Wine, Phu Quoc Pepper, Phu Quoc fish sauce…
Hopefully, the above tips will help you to come up with a great plan for your adventure in Mekong River Delta, Vietnam. Have a safe trip!
“Sleep less, travel more, respect more” – Thomas Vietnam – Local travel expert.
Thank you
