It is not natural that people give the title “the first delicious dish in Ca Mau” to a strange name: bee pupa (young bee) salad. Surely there must be something very special to be praised like that.

By Thomas Vietnam at vemekong.com | All Best Foods & Restaurants in Ca Mau

1. Better to Know as a Food Lover

Find them: Ca Mau city.

Best time: Dusk-Dawn

Don’t miss: Young Bee Salad

Local’s pick: Tan Tan restaurant, local restaurants near U Minh Ha forest

Tourist’s pick: Restaurant in Ca Mau City.

Blog: https://vemekong.com/young-bee-salad-ca-mau/

Facts: Salad is an easy dish to make but very delicate and meticulous. Everything is measured and weighted to ensure that every ingredient blends perfectly. Therefore, the taste of Ca Mau bee pupa salad was praised as “Ca Mau’s first delicious dish”, becoming the first specialty of Ca Mau cuisine.

2. Better to Know Young Bee Salad

Wondering how U Minh fermented fish hot pot, Ca Mau crab soup are all delicious dishes with the flavor of Ca Mau cuisine, but only at specialty goods, and bee pupa salad is ranked first. Perhaps the first is the rarity, the taste that pleases all taste buds and is the crystallization result of a whole processing process.

We may have eaten silkworm pupae, but we rarely eat bee pupae, especially U Minh forest bee pupae – a type of bee that only lives in the forest for the famous honey near and far. So every time the locals go to the forest to find honey, the lucky worker who finds a nest after cutting the honeycomb only dares to take a few more young bees to enjoy. This is done to maintain the breed and ensure the source of mining secrets. U Minh forest bees suck the nectar of Melaleuca flowers, live naturally without human influence, so not only delicious honey but also bees are greasier than usual. So sometimes just simple processing can be delicious. And it must be added that this is a healthy nutritious food, so it is also used to soak alcohol.

3. Young Bee Salad in Ca Mau

Cooking porridge, frying, or stir-frying is also delicious, but the best taste is only salad. Because the pure taste of bee stings is preserved throughout the processing, no substance is lost. In addition, the taste of vegetables, spices combined in the dish and some secrets increase the attractiveness of the dish. Bee stings are young bees still in the hive, so they must be done gently by dipping them in boiling water. Filter it, drain it, and stir it with hot oil with fragrant fried onions, add a little delicious fish sauce, small pepper, granulated sugar and set aside.

The main vegetable in the first specialty of Ca Mau is shredded young bananas. Therefore, make sure the vegetable stalks are not acrid, thin, crispy, and spongy by washing them with water mixed with a little vinegar. Add some other herbs like basil, cilantro, and chives. And of course indispensable sweet and sour fish sauce mixed with salad, crushed roasted peanuts. After preparing all the ingredients, put on gloves and start mixing the salad. Under the fish sauce in a bowl, mix well with both hands and mix gently, not squeezing like duck salad or chicken salad. Take out the presentation plate, don’t forget to sprinkle peanuts on top, that’s a delicious dish to enjoy.

4. How to Make Young Bee Salad

How to prepare bee pupa:

-Dip the bee hive in boiling water, filter out the clean bee pupa, and you can process dozens of delicious dishes such as bee pupae porridge, stir-fried bee pupae, bee pupae mixed with salad…

-In particular, the bee pupa mixed with salad is popular with many people because it can combine the delicious taste of the bee pupae and the aroma of vegetables.

How to make bee pupa salad:

-To make this dish, people bring the bee pupa, after cleaning, to separate, fry the onion pan so fragrantly, then put the bee pupae on the island, add a little spice, delicious fish sauce, pepper, a little sugar to make it rich, and then set it aside.

-Young bananas are thinly sliced, washed in dilute water, mixed with a little vinegar, then squeezed dry, mixed with bee pupae.

-Crushed peanuts, a little chives and a few chopped herbs, all mixed well.

-Add a little sweet and sour fish sauce and you have a dish where all the delicious, sweet and fatty flavors blend together.

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.

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