Young Coconut (coconut tofu) Salad with Shrimp & Pork is known as a “luxury” dish of the people of Ben Tre, because in order to prepare this dish, people have to cut down a whole coconut tree to get the young white core inside the trunk.
By Thomas Vietnam at vemekong.com | All Best Foods & Restaurants in Ben Tre
1. Better to Know as a Food Lover
Find them: Ben Tre city.
Best time: Dusk-Dawn
Don’t miss: Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork
Local’s pick: Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork Restaurant
Tourist’s pick: Restaurant in Ben Tre
Blog: https://vemekong.com/young-coconut-salad-with-shrimp-pork-ben-tre/
Facts: Coconut tofu is the upper part of the coconut tree, located deep in the trunk, including young buds that have not yet sprouted outside and petioles. So, to get the tofu, you have to cut down the whole coconut tree.
2. Better to Know Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork
All the country roads, alleys in Ben Tre are a paradise of coconut. Wherever you go, you will see tall coconut trees, shading and bearing fruit. Perhaps that’s why the dishes here all add coconut to increase the flavor. However, coconut tofu salad can’t always be enjoyed. This is a special dish that people often use to treat guests.
3. Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork in Ben Tre
Coconut tofu salad has a sweet and sour taste, cool, crispy, fragrant and frugal, low in fat. In addition, the ingredients to make the salad include peeled tiger prawns, pork belly, thinly sliced pork ears, laksa leaves, crispy roasted onions and peanuts.
Coconut tofu is thinly sliced into long strands mixed with the above ingredients, adding spices and sugar, forming an attractive and flavorful salad.
You can feel the salad as a picture with the pure white color of coconut tofu, the eye-catching red color of shrimp, the light brown color of meat, and the cool green color of laksa leaves. Served with this dish is a cup of sweet and sour fish sauce and crispy shrimp crackers.
4. How to Make Young Coconut Salad with Shrimp & Pork
Ingredients for salad with coconut tofu with shrimp and meat
Fishauce 100 gr
White sugar 100 gr
MSG 10 gr
Lemon juice 50 ml
Chili sauce 3 tbsp
Minced garlic 30 gr
Minced chili 30 gr
minced cilantro 30 gr
Bacon is only 200 gr
Fresh shrimp 200 gr
Coconut tofu 300 gr
Carrot 150 gr
Cucumber 150 gr
Fried onion 50 gr
Roasted peanuts 30 gr
laksa leaves 30 gr
White wine 1 tbsp
3 slices ginger
Salt 1/2 teaspoon
Purple onion 2 pieces
How to make coconut tofu salad with shrimp and meat – Ben Tre specialty only used on Lunar New Year
Step 1: Preliminary preparation of ingredients to make coconut shrimp and shrimp salad
– Wash the coconut tofu, cut into long strands to taste, but don’t be too thin, it will reduce the crispness. Prepare a bowl of cold water, add 1 teaspoon of sugar and squeeze a few slices of lemon, then soak the coconut tofu to create sweetness and not make the coconut tofu dark (the coconut tofu is easy to darken).
– Peeled carrots, seedless cucumbers and also cut into fibers like coconut tofu. Chopped cilantro.
– Clean prawns. Put in a boiling pot with a little white wine and a few slices of ginger to make the shrimp meat fragrant and reduce the fishy smell. When the shrimp is cooked, remove the shell and cut the shrimp in half.
– Bacon just washed with a little salt. Put in a pot of boiling water with a few slices of red onion to make the meat fragrant. When the meat is cooked, take it out and let it cool a bit, then cut it into thin slices.
Step 2: Mix fish sauce and salad
– Cook fish sauce: Put fish sauce, white sugar and monosodium glutamate in a pot, stir until sugar and MSG dissolve, then turn off the heat, let cool.
– Mix fish sauce mixed with salad: add chili sauce, minced garlic, minced chili, minced cilantro and lemon juice to the bowl of fish sauce cooked above, stir well and we have a delicious mixture of fish sauce and salad that can be applied to many dishes. many kinds of salads such as lotus root salad, pomelo salad,…
– A small tip for you on how to make fish sauce dipping salad is to add coconut water to the fish sauce mix made above until you see the right dilution!
Step 3: Mix salad with coconut tofu with shrimp and meat
– Use 2 large bowls, one we put in coconut tofu, cucumber and carrot, the other bowl for pork and shrimp. In each bowl, we add 3 tablespoons of fish sauce to mix the salad and soak for about 15 minutes to infuse. After 15 minutes we drain all the water in the mixture of vegetables and shrimp to prepare the salad.
– Before eating, we use a large bowl, put vegetables, shrimp meat and 3 tablespoons fish sauce into the mix. Then add laksa leaves, roasted peanuts and fried onions and mix well.
So, the delicious and eye-catching coconut tofu salad has been completed. How to make shrimp and coconut tofu salad in the right style with shrimp puffs and dip with sweet and sour fish sauce for the full flavor of the Lunar New Year
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.
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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…
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Must-Eat Foods & Restaurants in Tra Vinh: Macapuno Coconut, Bun Nuoc Leo Tra Vinh’s Noodle Soup, Tra Cuon’s Sticky Rice Cake…
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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
