I’ve outlined a few techniques as well as the sequential steps I take when I make this dish. I try to optimize time and lay things out in a way that I can cook this most efficiently. Otherwise, it can be time consuming. Read over my steps prior to tackling them so you’re ready for the next steps 🙂
Leave a comment below if you’ve tried this or if you have any questions or suggestions! 🙂
Bun Mam Recipe:
(word of caution: I cook for 6-7 people and we eat this for the weekend so you may want to tailor your mam ratio to how many bowls you’re anticipating. I used 2 jars of mam for ~24 bowls)
- Create a broth out of some pork neck bones, lemongrass stalks, and some pounded galangal. Make sure this is lightly salted to bring out more sweetness of the pork bones.
- Remember to boil the neck bones only first. Put enough water to cover your neck bones and once its boiled, remove the water and the neck bones. Wash the neck bones to remove the scum (residual blood and bones) and your pot to ensure you have a clear clean broth. Once your pot and bones are clean, add your pork neck bones to the pot with the lemongrass, galangal, and salt.
- This is tedious, but if you want to make a great broth, the extra 5-10 minutes will be worth it.
- Saute some garlic, lemongrass, and paprika with some sliced pork belly until fragrant. Add this to the broth to be simmered as well.
- You can opt to use a less fatty version like pork shoulder or butt.
- In another pot, strain your mam ca loc and mam ca sac (1 jar of each) with some hot water. I strain my mam three times through a pho noodle mesh strainer to make sure I can really get the water incorporated into the mam, and I get the most out of my mam jars. Then I strain it using a smaller holed mesh strainer a few times which catches the smaller bones that snuck itself in.
- I like to have 2 large pots for this process. It’s tricky but possible to do with one person, but better with two.
- In a hot pan with some oil (I used olive), add some anatto seeds in order to extract the bright red color. Remove the seeds from the oil. Using this oil, sautee some garlic, sliced shallots, lemongrass, paprika, and cayenne pepper.
- Anatto seeds are called ‘hot dieu’. You can find this by the paprika, bun bo hue, and other vietnamese seasonings at the supermarket.
- Anatto seeds have a very fragrant bright red color and smell if properly extracted correctly. It can quickly become a bitter oil if not done correctly. Make sure you taste your oil to ensure it hasn’t gotten bitter.
- To extract the anatto seeds color, warm up some oil (not hot, just warm) and add your anatto seeds. saute your anatto seeds and watch its color. you want bright red oil and seeds that remain red as well. Once your satisfied with the redness of your oil, carefully remove your seeds by pouring your oil through a mesh strainer. If your seeds turn black or dark brown, you’ve gone too far and your oil risks tasting bitter.
- Add the strained mam and oil to your broth.
- Boil some sliced cuttlefish/squid and unpeeled large shrimps in your broth. Remove them when they cook and peel your shrimp. You can boil this separately if you don’t have the right tools to do this easily, but doing it in your broth adds to the natural sweetness of the broth. Also take this time to boil some pork belly separately in salted water to slice when its cooled.
- I use one of those deep mesh ‘cup’ ladles.
- Lightly marinate some catfish steaks with mushroom seasoning powder, fish sauce, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and paprika. I get my fish at Ba Mien since the fishmonger there clean the skin so its nice and white for me 🙂
- Make sure that you only slightly salt this catfish– enough to give it flavor on its own but not to carry saltiness into your broth. The reason is, you’ll season your broth to taste before you add your catfish and don’t want to mess up your balanced broth.
- Throw in some sliced eggplants and boiled bitter melon. I like to cut my eggplants down the center and then into diagonal 1/4-3/4 inch slices and soak them in salted water before cooking. The bittermelon I de-seed and cut down the center and into 2 inch segments and lightly boil before adding to the broth to take some of the bitterness away.
- I boil the bittermelon first lightly (still crunchy) separately from my broth. When I’m ready to serve, I toss them into the broth to finish its cooking without expelling its bitterness into the broth.
- Eggplants just requires soaking in salted water before throwing into the pot. Again, I reserve cooking the eggplant until I’m ready to serve. You want your eggplants to get soft, but you don’t want them to dissolve from sitting in the boiling broth consistently.
- Season broth to taste.
- Vietnamese soups require understanding the balance between salt and fish sauce. Both offer a different salty element. Salt is more harsh and punctuated whereas fish sauce is a more mellow salty flavor. This is why new Vietnamese chefs often use a lot of fish sauce, its more mellow and forgiving. But nothing is worse than having something be overpowered by fish sauce. There has to be a balance. Play with adding a little bit of each and taste testing each time to observe how your broth changes. This will help you build up the experience and skills to be a master improviser 🙂
- Before serving, add in some catfish to the broth.
- Some people like to put their catfish in as part of the broth. But after the 1st round of bun mam, you’ll notice the fish will break apart and find its way to the bottom. The difference in integrity of the fish is definitely noticeable and your second bowl becomes disappointing compared to the first. By reserving your fish and cooking before you serve, you can guarantee each bowl will get better than the first. This is because each bowl will continue to have quality ingredients and a sweeter broth. You’re reserving bittermelon and eggplant to cook before serving, so what’s a few minutes added on to that for the fish?
- Put a few slices of boiled pork belly, bittermelon (if you opted not to put it in the broth), shrimps, and cuttlefish into each bowl of noodles. I use the bun bo hue extra fat noodles for this 🙂 Ideally each bowl would get some eggplant on top of this, a slice of catfish, some of the cooked pork belly in the broth, and a nice ladle of the bright red color of the broth. Tasty to the eyes! This is served with the same salad medley as bun bo hue 😀
Once you get over the smell and the idea that it’s based off of fermented fish, there is a really subtle sweet umami flavor. Combined with the pork broth and aromatics, a sip of the broth really invigorates all your taste buds. Sweet, salty, spicy, and fragrant! It hits the spot every time and unlike many other noodle dishes, my family is ready for more when we run out!
