Vietnamese · Soup
Bún Măng Vịt
- Intermediate
- 55 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 1 whole duck, about 2 kg
- 20 g fine sea salt, for scrubbing
- 30 ml rice wine, for scrubbing
- 60 g ginger, 40 g halved and charred for the broth and 20 g finely grated for the dip
- 2 onions (about 250 g), halved and charred
- 3 L water
- 150 g dried bamboo shoots, soaked overnight, then boiled uncovered in three changes of fresh water, 20 minutes each, and rinsed
- 90 ml fish sauce, 60 ml for the broth and 30 ml for the dip
- 15 g rock sugar
- 500 g fresh rice vermicelli
- 2 cloves garlic
- 3 bird's eye chillies
- 30 g caster sugar
- 60 ml lime juice
- 30 g Vietnamese coriander leaves
- 150 g white cabbage, finely shredded
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilBlanching & shockingSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothSoaking dried goods back to lifeMashing & puréeing
The words inside
Vietnamese CorianderBamboo Shoots
Allergen screen
Found: fish · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Scrub the duck in a bowl, not under a running tap, with the sea salt and rice wine, working into the skin, then rinse it and wash the bowl, the sink, the taps and your hands before touching anything else. Cut the cabbage and pick the herbs before the duck, never after. This strips the film that carries the loudest of the duck smell.
- Lower the duck into the water with the charred ginger and onions, bring it to a bare shiver and hold it exactly there, skimming, for 50 minutes to 60 minutes, until the thigh reads 74C (165F). Lift the duck into iced water for 5 minutes, then drain it. 50 min
- Simmer the prepared bamboo shoots in the broth for 30 minutes, then season with the 60 ml of fish sauce and the rock sugar until the broth tastes a shade too savoury on its own. 30 min
- Pound the garlic, chillies and grated ginger with the caster sugar to a rough paste, then let it down with the lime juice and the 30 ml of fish sauce for the dip.
- Chop the duck through the bone into 2 cm pieces. Pile vermicelli, cabbage, bamboo and Vietnamese coriander into bowls, ladle the broth over, and set the dipping sauce beside each one.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir (the classic)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais (Morgon)
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Black cherry spritz
Acid and silk against duck fat: the oldest marriage in Burgundy, with Gamay as its cheerful younger witness.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.