Bun Cha Recipe - Vietnamese Pork Patties with Noodles, Herbs and Salad [VIDEO]

Seared Pork Patties on a Bed of Noodles, Herbs and Salad with Pickled Vegetables

I've made another cookery video with the folks from VoucherCodes (the first one was for ohn no khao swe - Burmese Coconut Chicken Noodles).

This time around, the theme is Affordable Alfresco - perfect for the lovely summer we're having right now, so I decided to adapt one of the salad dishes from my book Noodle!.

This dish originates from Hanoi - its full name is Bun Cha Ha Noi. Bun refers to the noodles* and Cha refers to the meat patties.

Apparently Bun Cha is the second most popular dish in Vietnam after their national dish of pho. You can see why this might be the case as it delivers a lot of punch - sweet and smoky meat over piquant herbs and salad wrapped up with soft, cooling noodles.




You'll also be interested to know that it's super-quick to make and the ingredients are all easy to find - you can use entirely British produce.

What's more, out of all the dishes in the Affordable Alfresco series, mine worked out the cheapest - I do love pork mince.

Searing the pork patties

You can make this dish in a griddle pan, cast iron pan, under or grill or on a barbecue - in fact, the last one is how it's meant to be done - just watch out for spattering fat!

As you can eat bun cha cold, it makes good picnic food too - wrap everything separately and then drizzle the sauce over at the last minute. I even served it up at my book launch.

Bun Cha at #noodlebook launch by P P Gettins

One of the best bits of the bun cha are the pickled veg which you serve with it - I always make extra and put them in my sandwiches, with rice, on everything.



Watch me show you how to make Bun Cha below and you can find the full recipe on the Voucher Codes blog here.

How to Make Bun Cha by MiMi Aye aka meemalee

*Bun are round rice noodles - thin (aka rice vermicelli) or fat is fine. However, as you can see from the photos and video, desperate times mean you can use flat rice noodles instead (the local supermarket had run out of the right type). These flat rice noodles are called banh pho in Vietnamese, hence the name of the national dish and my fury when various restaurants think it's okay to use whatever the hell noodle they fancy and not clarify or apologise for doing so.

Thanks to VoucherCodes for inviting me to create this recipe video. I received a fee for taking part.

Buy my book NOODLE! here.