Cơm Tấm – Vietnamese Broken Rice in Saigon Style – is one of the typical signature dishes of Saigon’s cuisines. Saigoneses could eat Cơm Tấm at anytime of the day, from breakfast, lunch to dinner or supper.
This simple meal is often served with the marinated pork chops, along with a mixture of the pork which is thinly shredded and pork skin, and of course broken rice. Not mention to the meat, there are some customary ingredients, like finely sliced cucumber, pickled vegetables, tomato, and steamed pork, pork meatfloaf with the egg, grilled prawns, and fried eggs. It will be served with a small of delicious fish sauce set aside. Today, I will show you step by step how to make one of most popular Vietnamese food recipes – Vietnamese Broken Rice in Saigon Style – Cơm Tấm. Take a look!
Ingredients
- To make Vietnamese Broken Rice in Saigon Style, first you need to wash the broken rice (also known as “gạo tấm” in Vietnamese) several times till the water gets clear. As an alternative, you could soak the usual rice in water for about 1 hour before rubbing the rice using your hands to break the rice. This will help you “fake” the “gao tam” texture. Add a proper amount of boiling water to cover the rice, press the cooker button to cook the rice.
- The process of making grilled pork chop: Combined minced lemongrass, soy sauce, garlic, fish sauce, vegetable oil and honey together in a bowl. Mix them well. Rub marinade on every side of pork chops and leave it there for several hours, or even overnight in the refrigerator.
- Preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Then, line the baking tray using aluminum foil. Bake the pork chop for about 15 minutes, turn these chops over for baking further 15 minutes. Or, you can pan-fry or grill them on char coal. The time of cooking will be varied depending on the pork chops’ thickness.
- The process of making meatloaf: in a bowl, crack 4 eggs and separate 2 yolks in another bowl. Beat them and add chopped bean threads, plus with shallots, minced woodear mushroom, and meat into. Put pepper, salt, vegetable oil and fish sauce to season. Mix them well.
- Place a food plastic wrap on the square container/mold. Then, add the prepared above meat mixture into and steam them for about 30 minutes. Open the lid, spread the remained yolks on the meatfloaf’s surface. Start steaming for 5 minutes, remove the cover and you will get a perfect meatfloaf having yellow surface.
- The process of assembling the dish: fluff and compress the cooked broken rice in a bowl. After that, turn the rice upside down on the dish so that it has a nice shape after coming out. Put tomato and cucumber slices, pickled daikon, pork chops and carrots aside the plate. Put some scallion oil onto the rice and pork chop.
- Put 2 tablespoons of tasty Vietnamese fish sauce into a small bowl
– Then, serve Com Tam with this. - Enjoy your homemade Vietnamese broken rice recipe in Saigon style!
- Remember that when making this Vietnamese Broken Rice in Saigon Style, the key ingredients making the meat very tender are vinegar, soysauce, vegetable oil (use canola oil for the good result), so try to find enough those ingredients to make sure that you have a great result.
