Traditionally, this yummy beef dish is used with Betel leaves but, ay you use what you got right? And actually, now that I’ve tried it, I prefer Perilla leaves since it’s more fragrant. Bo La Lot (La Lot being Betel Leaves) now transformed Bo La Tia To (Perilla), is super simple to prepare and so frigkin delicious!
Since Costco sells 100% grass fed beef patties, our house always seems to have ground beef in the freezer. That coupled with our bulk buys of vermicelli (I literally have 2 boxes and some change of noodles in my pantry), the abundance of our mint and fish mint growing in our yard, we were always ready for this dish without even knowing.
I had a list of errands to run yesterday and hubby was home watching our babes. Needless to say by the time I came home ~5PM we were already so hungry. It took a bit of teamwork, but we, in record time, spun up some noodles, veggies, and cooked this yummy beef in a jiffy.
Ingredients:
– Minced garlic, chopped shallots, minced lemongrass (lots of all of them)
– S&P
– A bit of fish sauce
– Ground Beef
– Perilla Leaves
Steps:
1. We used 5 beef patties for 3 adults and 1 very hungry baby. We added about 4 tablespoons of minced lemongrass, 5 chopped large shallots, and a handful of minced garlic. Yes, lots of minced aromatics for us, but it’s up to your personal preference.
2. Season lightly with salt, pepper. and fish sauce. Lightly because you only want to bring out the flavor of the beef. Since we were going to feed this to the babes, we very lightly salted this, but salt to your preference knowing you’ll eat this with veggies and fish sauce/mam nem (fermented fish sauce) later.
3. Combine your beef with its seasonings and aromatics. Don’t over mix since you’ll squish out all the air holes in the ground beef and make the beef more dense than it needs to be!
4. Leaf side shiny down, add your beef mixture and roll. You can choose to skewer this, or put it in metal basket to grill, or if you’re real lazy, just leave as is to air fry or throw in your oven.
5. You can refrigerate this until you need them. I made this in the morning and in the evening we turned our air fryer to 375 and baked for 15-20 minutes or whenever cooked through. If you grill this over a hot flame (how it’s done traditionally) and flip consistently so that its meat juices can baste itself, it will be much more delicious. But hey, when you’re hungry, and its 90 degrees outside nobody cares!
6. Serve with vermicelli noods, veggies, and your favorite fish sauce. You can also opt to eat this as spring rolls 🙂
Optional: roasted ground peanuts, scallion oil, and fried shallots 🙂