Visiting Can Tho city, if you have never eaten fried spring rolls (Cha Gio), then try it once. This is an indispensable dish on the table of Vietnamese people during Tet. And now fried spring rolls are cooked a lot in family meals. Fried Spring rolls is a familiar name for people in the South.

By Thomas Vietnam at vemekong.com | All Best Foods & Restaurants in Can Tho

1. Better to Know as a Food Lover

Find them: Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho city.

Best time: Dusk-Dawn

Don’t miss: Fried spring rolls

Local’s pick: 69 Fried spring rolls restaurant

Tourist’s pick: Huynh Hoa Fried spring rolls restaurant, Ma Tham spring rolls restaurant…

Blog: https://vemekong.com/fried-spring-roll-can-tho-food/

Facts: In each region, people will process fried spring rolls in many different styles with many different flavors. Coming to each region across the country, diners will enjoy different flavors of fried spring rolls, imbued with the cultural identity of each region.

2. Better to Know Fried Spring Rolls

Fried spring rolls, a dish born in the South

According to many documents, spring roll is a dish born in the South. Writer To Hoai in the book The Old Story of Hanoi wrote: “Hanoi’s Fried spring rolls” are born when they don’t know. Only know the new fried spring rolls from Saigon to Hanoi.

According to writer To Hoai, Saigon fried spring rolls were made normally in big restaurants in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. According to the change of time and Hanoi’s own taste, fried spring rolls can be turned into Hanoi fried spring rolls and completely different from the original dish in the South.

Fried spring rolls are made from Saigon’s spring rolls but are still completely different, spring rolls are made from rice flour, then fried spring rolls are made from wheat flour.

For a long time now, Vietnamese dishes (meat, fish, shrimp, squid) that were pounded in a pot (later there was a remote machine) could be called cha, for example fish cake, silk roll, fried rolls, squid rolls, shrimp rolls, beef rolls… Southern spring rolls are made from minced meat, not minced meat like the Hanoian way of making spring rolls.

What about from the Gio? Spring rolls are the meat of cattle and poultry, pounded, mixed with some other ingredients, tightly wrapped in cylinders and usually cooked by boiling or steaming. It is said: to bundle up like a bundle of hams, which means to bind tightly, to pack tightly, to tightly roll up a round cylinder. Then, the form of spring rolls is also wrapping and tightly wrapping round cylinders.

But there is also a simple explanation without being afraid to be reprimanded, that is: Cha is from the sound of pounding (pounding rice, pounding meat, pounding flour with a mortar and pestle). Spring rolls come from the sound of bundles (rolled, rolled with rice paper).

Thus, fried spring rolls are composed of ingredients for making dishes in which meat is the main ingredient that is pounded, then bundled and rolled with rice paper. Now, it’s the magic of Vietnamese when it opens the pictographs and onomatopoeias in a fried spring roll.

3. Fried Spring Rolls in Can Tho

In Can Tho City, traditional fried spring rolls include lean ground meat, beansprouts, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, vermicelli, wood ear mushrooms and eggs. The filling is finely chopped, mixed and wrapped beautifully on the outside of the rice paper. The delicious taste, the balance of flavors has created the uniqueness of this dish. The spring rolls are fried until golden brown. As soon as we take a bite, we can feel the crispy, slightly salty taste of rice paper, sweet, ripe vegetables inside. All have created a distinct overall taste, only available in Vietnamese cuisine.

Over time, fried spring rolls were modified with a combination of many new fillings and the shape of the roll was also broken. Not just pork spring rolls, you can replace it with beef or make seafood filling, which is also very delicious. You can add cheese filling to create an exceptional breakthrough for the dish. And vegetarian spring rolls are also a perfect choice for modern life. Spring rolls, a dish full of sophistication, skillfully combine ingredients. Created a brand of spring rolls that cannot be confused with any national cuisine.

4. How to Make Fried Spring Rolls

Ingredients needed to make fried spring rolls

– Lean minced meat: 350g

– Pork fat: 150g

– Carrots: 150g

– Tapioca (beans): 150g

– Vermicelli: 150g

– Taro: 150g

– Head of green onion, red onion, garlic

– Dried cat mushrooms: 10gr

– Chicken eggs: 1 egg

– Fried onions (can be fried at home or bought from outside)

– Rice paper used to roll spring rolls (2-3 volumes)

–Ground pepper, sesame oil, sugar, oyster sauce, mayonnaise, seasoning, monosodium glutamate, salt.

How to make Fried spring rolls

Step 1: Prepare the meat

You use a little onion head washed and finely chopped

Add a little garlic, red onion peeled, washed, smashed and minced

Lean meat and fat you buy, wash and dry before you mince the meat. When the meat is drained, you chop the meat to make it easy to mince, add a little onion, red onion, minced garlic with 1 teaspoon of pepper, minced with the meat.

Meat should be minced at home. Although it is a bit laborious, it creates a better taste than when you grind the meat outside.

After that, you also mince 150g of fat to add to the spring rolls to help keep the spring rolls from drying out. If you do not like to eat fat, you can always use 500g of lean ham.

Step 2: Prepare the spring rolls

Use 10 grams of dried black fungus, soaked in water to create bloom. After the mushrooms have been soaked. You will wash it with water, dry it and then cut it finely.

Add the chopped mushrooms to the minced meat. Add 3 tablespoons fried onion, 2 tablespoons sesame oil, 1 tablespoon sugar, ½ tablespoon oyster sauce, 1/3 tablespoon mayonnaise to create fat for the dish. Add 1 tablespoon seasoning, 1 tablespoon MSG, ½ teaspoon salt. Mix well to infuse the flavors evenly.

Step 3: Prepare the remaining vegetables

Use 150g peeled carrots then grate. Then squeeze out the water

Use 150g of cassava roots, cut the fibers through boiling water and also squeeze out the water.

Use 350g of taro, peeled, grated and lightly fried through the shredded taro. Dry frying through the surface of the potato is okay. No need to fry for too long, it will be dry when making the spring roll filling

All ingredients must be squeezed when adding to the mix. The processing kernel must be dry to avoid water leakage when rolling.

Step 4: Mix the fried spring rolls

Pour carrots, cassava roots, taro, vermicelli, chopped green onions and 1 chicken egg into the prepared filling above. Stir the mixture evenly. If you do not put eggs in the filling, the taste of the dish will be lost.

Step 5: Roll the fried spring rolls

Put a little spring roll filling on the surface of the rice paper. Then roll it up by hand. When spring rolls, you should note that you should not roll too tightly. Because when frying the filling, the crickets will leak out. Put the right amount on the rice paper. Roll evenly and lightly.

Roll all the prepared fillings, then we will put the spring rolls in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before frying. The purpose of this is to keep the crust crispy for longer.

Step 6: Make the dipping sauce

Use 1/2 tbsp seeded minced chili, 1.5 tbsp lemon juice, 2 tbsp sugar, and 3 tbsp fish sauce.

Put the sugar in a bowl with the lemon juice. Add half a cup of boiling water to dissolve the sugar. Add fish sauce and chili together. Stir well and you have finished the dipping sauce. You can add sweet and salty depending on the taste of the dipping sauce.

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 is 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