Every year, on the full moon of the tenth month of the lunar calendar (the full moon of Cadak according to the Khmer Buddhist calendar) comes the beautiful moon with bustling festivals during the traditional Okom festival of the Khmer people in the South. Particularly in Soc Trang, in addition to excitedly cheering for the fierce competition on the river of colorful Ngo boats, at night, you can admire the wind lanterns floating high in the sky, or rows of water lamps with brilliant flowers floating on the Maspéro; Impressive in the hearts of tourists is also a rustic Rice flakes dish with bold characteristics of Southern Khmer culinary culture.

By Thomas Vietnam at vemekong.com | All Best Foods & Restaurants in Soc Trang

1. Better to Know as a Food Lover

Find them: Soc Trang city.

Best time: Dusk-Dawn

Don’t miss: Soc Trang’s Green Rice Flakes

Local’s pick: Market in Soc Trang

Tourist’s pick: Supermarket in Soc Trang

Blog: https://vemekong.com/soc-trang-green-rice-flakes/

Facts: Oc Om Boc festival is also known as moon worshiping festival. Each house presents a tray of offerings including: coconuts, potatoes (tapioca or taro), dwarf roots, bananas, gingerbread, fruits… and of course indispensable Rice flakes along with the custom of praying on a full moon night. On the night of the festival, after the moon worshiping ceremony, the Khmer elders scooped up the Rice flakes into large handfuls and put it in the children’s mouths as a blessing, praying for long-lasting satiety.

2. Better to Know Soc Trang’s Green Rice Flakes

Rice flakes needs ingredients that are delicious, long-grain sticky rice. At the beginning of the crop, when the glutinous rice grains have just passed the milking stage, they are harvested early to make nuggets in time for the moon season. Just finished washing, bring back fresh, choose the largest seeds to roast on a hot pan, mix continuously to not burn or scorch. When the glutinous rice seeds in the batch are roasted, the shell is slightly evaporated, there is a faint fragrance and the crackling explosion is immediately poured into the mortar. The mortar must be made of old jackfruit wood, with a narrow and deep heart. The beat of the pestle becomes more and more regular, strong and firm; The more quickly the sticky rice peels off, the more “blooms” into thin, large, even nuggets that retain their plasticity by roasting with enough fire and airy yellow-green color, emitting a scent that wakes up the cozy home garden sticky rice. After finishing pounding, the batch of nuggets is poured through a sieve, removing the rice husk and crumbs. Finished Rice flakes is poured into baskets, then put into bags for preservation.

Soc Trang Rice flakes is famous for its “folk brand” which is Phu Tan Rice flakes (in My Tu district – now in Chau Thanh district) and Chau Hung (Thanh Tri district), which are two communes that often produce special dishes. Picking up a handful of dry rice flakes into the mouth, chewing slowly, you can feel the plasticity of the sticky rice mixed in the light aroma of the new rice crop and the unforgettable sweet and delicate taste. The way to eat “right” is also quite simple and rustic: Just mix the dried nuggets with coconut water (preferably the type of coconut shell), add a few tablespoons of fine granulated sugar with a few grated desiccated coconut and mix well. After about 15-30 minutes, you can eat it right away or sprinkle some crushed roasted peanuts to increase the flavor. Rice flakes has bran shell, so it contains many nutrients such as vitamins B1, B2, PP, many essential amino acids, rich in minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and iron. The Rice flakes dish contains high starch content, lots of sugar and fatty coconut. Although it is just a “play” dish, it provides a lot of energy, compensating for farmers in hard days. Later, flat com is also used to make Rice flakes tet or “Decorate” in addition to fried banana cakes and deep-fried durian cakes, creating rustic dishes that have an unforgettable taste if anyone has tried it once

3. SocTrang’s Green Rice Flakes in Soc Trang

Every year at the end of autumn, there is an opportunity to visit the rural areas with a large number of Khmer people of Soc Trang, if you hear the echo of the beat of the drums and the shackles, mixed with the sound of the fiddle – Khe, you come to visit; You will probably come across for a moment the image of rural mothers roasting the first batch of rice nuggets by the flickering straw fire in the afternoon. A few feet away are the muscular boys spinning barefoot, showing off their muscular muscles, swinging their baseballs with each beat, a few young girls in the colorful traditional sarongs and dragons also rhythmically swinging their sieves, and A group of children happily frolicking by the tall straw dunes in the garden heralds a bountiful harvest – like an idyllic but lively picture of a Khmer village in Soc Trang.

Freshly pounded com is quite crunchy and flexible to eat, and smells like new sticky rice. But to eat better, people have to mix Rice flakes with grated coconut, less coconut water and white sugar. On average, about 1kg of Rice flakes, use a grated coconut, coconut water and ½ kg of sugar. Use a large bowl to mix the Rice flakes, sugar and coconut water, let it sit for about 30 minutes for the coconut water and sugar to be absorbed into the slightly soft nuggets. When eating to add a little grated coconut, crushed roasted peanuts or sesame will increase the attractiveness and fatness. Want to eat for a long time or give as gifts to relatives and friends, people pack pre-mixed nuggets in banana leaves, coconut leaves like banh tet, coconut cakes to cook or steam. At that time, we have flat, delicious and strange banh tet compared to normal banh tet.

4. How to Make Soc Trang’s Green Rice Flakes

Ingredients for mixing delicious Rice flakes

200g Rice flakes

50g pandan leaves

200ml coconut milk

½ dried coconut

Spices: Sugar, Salt

Good tip

Rice flakes has two types, green and white, you can use whichever you like.

To choose delicious desiccated coconut, use your fingernail to press the copra. If it feels hard to press, it’s a dried coconut. Using desiccated coconut will give the finished product more fleshy, sweet, and aromatic than other types of coconut.

How to mix delicious Rice flakes

Step 1. Prepare ingredients

First, you wash the Rice flakes with water to remove dirt and then dry.

To extract pandan leaf juice, wash the pandan leaves, cut them into small pieces, put them in a blender with 100ml of water to puree them. Then, you use a sieve to filter out the pineapple leaves, keeping the water.

For desiccated coconuts, you use a coconut scraper to scrape them into fibers.

Note

During the process of washing the nuggets, do not let the water soak for too long because it will make the nuggets mushy.

Step 2. Make pandan coconut milk

You put 200ml of coconut milk, 50g of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of salt in a pot, bring to a boil. Then, you add 2 tablespoons of pandan leaf juice and continue to boil until the mixture boils again.

Step 3. Mix the nuggets with coconut water

After draining, put the Rice flakes in a bowl, slowly pour the pandan coconut milk mixture into the nuggets. Remember to just pour and mix well, when you see that the nuggets are wet enough, stop and wait for about 30 minutes for the nuggets to absorb the coconut water.

You repeat the above mixing method 2 more times.

Note

Coconut milk with pandan leaves is only added to the Rice flakes when it is still hot and warm. So before you pour it into the bowl of nuggets, remember to reheat it!

Finally, you mix in the nuggets 1 tablespoon sugar to create more sweetness (increase or decrease the amount of sugar depending on taste). After that, you add coconut fiber to the nuggets and you’re done.

Good tip

You wait about 10-15 minutes after mixing to let the sugar soak into the nuggets before eating, it will be more delicious.

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