Missing home during Tet - Hot rice with pork sausage.

In the North, it's called "giò," while in the South, it's called "chả." Whether celebrating Tet in the Northern style with a lavish feast of many delicious dishes, or in the more casual Southern style with pickled onions, pickled vegetables, and braised meat, chả is always a must-have on the feast table.

Among all the different types of Vietnamese sausage, Vietnamese pork sausage (also known as giò chả) and Vietnamese head cheese (giò thủ) are two indispensable specialties.

Making delicious Vietnamese pork sausage requires meticulous attention to detail, starting with the meat selection. The pork must be fresh, warm, and reddish-pink. The tendons and skin must be removed, leaving only the lean meat, which is then pounded. Making traditional Vietnamese pork sausage is very laborious; it requires pounding the raw pork in a stone mortar by hand. Those who specialize in selling sausage use a wooden mortar, stomping on it to reduce fatigue, or they grind the meat until it's finely minced and then knead it in the homemade way. But pounding by hand is still the best way to make a delicious sausage.

Wait until the minced meat is finely ground into a smooth, sticky, and glossy mixture of meat fat before adding fish sauce and seasonings according to your family's recipe. Scoop the mixture into the dough, wrap it in banana leaves like a traditional Vietnamese rice cake (bánh tét), and steam it. If the roll weighs about 1kg, steam it for about 1 hour; if it's smaller, about half a kilogram, steam it for about 50 minutes.

The sausage, cooked until tender, emits a subtle, fragrant aroma of hot meat. Remove from the pot, drain, and then enjoy hot with white rice. Good sausage slices should have tiny pores, a slightly pinkish tinge, and a moist texture. Any slice that is pure white, smooth, and flawless likely contains a lot of borax!

When Tet comes around, if you don't give each other Vietnamese pork sausage, you should at least give each other a few packets of pork head cheese.

Pork head terrine, with its crunchy, chewy texture, is a delightful snack, making it an ideal appetizer for older men during holidays. It can be made at home, but it's quite complicated; easy to make but difficult to make delicious. Balancing the proportions of pig's ears, nose, tongue, wood ear mushrooms, pepper, and spices to achieve a crispy and flavorful terrine is no small feat. Some people dislike adding pig's nose for fear of fat, others prefer less tongue for fear of dryness, while some love the cartilage and wood ear mushrooms, so they just add a lot of them…

When stir-frying pork, you have to carefully measure the pepper, fish sauce, onions, and other seasonings, because there's no exact recipe for this dish. If you ask my mother, she'll just say, "Add a little of each!" A good pork head terrine should be neatly wrapped and tightly packed. A little secret is to quickly heat the banana leaves over a fire; they become softer, less pungent, and easier to wrap, handle, and tie.

In Vietnam, we can make Vietnamese sausage from any kind of meat, including beef sausage, horse sausage, veal sausage, and many more... each region has its own style, each family has its own recipe, and there are countless varieties. Therefore, when you eat homemade sausage, sometimes it tastes so good one year, but the next year it tastes completely different, because each time they add a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Just kidding, but my Vietnamese sausage is the best. I've traveled, eaten all kinds of cold cuts, smoked meats, sausages, etc., but I still remember and love my Vietnamese sausage the most, especially when paired with a bowl of hot white rice – perfect for eating while it's still steaming.

Article: Pan Banana

Photo: Multiple authors

The Thanh