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Bánh Cuốn 🇻🇳 Vietnamese Cuisine

Bánh Cuốn

Gossamer-thin steamed rice sheets wrapped around a savory filling of pork, wood ear mushrooms, and shallots. Served with silky chả lụa, crispy shallots, bean sprouts, and a pool of nuoc cham.

⏱30 min prep 🔥30 min cook ⏰60 min total 🍽4 servings 📊hard

The Cultural Story

There is a kind of cooking that looks like magic until someone shows you the mechanism. Bánh cuốn is that kind of cooking. At street stalls across northern Vietnam, vendors stretch a thin batter of rice flour and water across a cloth drum stretched over a steaming pot, place a lid on for thirty seconds, and then lift off a sheet of cooked rice so thin you can read through it. The filling — ground pork and wood ear mushroom, fragrant with shallots and fish sauce — goes in a line at the edge, the sheet is rolled around it with a wooden stick, and the whole thing slides onto a plate in a matter of seconds. The vendor does this all day, never slowing. Bánh cuốn is a northern Vietnamese dish, associated above all with Hà Đông and Thanh Trì, districts outside Hanoi where the best rice was traditionally grown. The dish has been made for centuries as a breakfast food — light, easy to digest, nourishing without being heavy. It is eaten in the early morning, before the heat of the day, with a glass of sweet soy milk on the side. The version made in Cao Bằng, near the Chinese border, includes a regional variation with ground pork and a different spice blend; the Saigon interpretation adds more herbs and bean sprouts. But the fundamental technique — the gossamer rice sheet, the simple savory filling, the drizzle of nuoc cham — is unchanged. For home cooks, making bánh cuốn from scratch requires either a dedicated steamer setup or a wide non-stick pan used as a crepe pan. Either way, the first few attempts will be less than beautiful — the sheets tear, the filling falls out, the roll is too loose or too tight. This is normal. By the fifth or sixth roll, a rhythm emerges. The sheets become thinner, the rolls tidier. And the reward — a bite of soft rice around savory filling, a shard of fried shallot for crunch, a dip in fragrant fish sauce — is substantial enough to make the practice entirely worthwhile.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. 1Make the batter: whisk rice flour, tapioca starch, salt, and oil into cold water until completely smooth with no lumps. The batter should be very thin — like water with a faint milky hue. Rest 15 minutes.
  2. 2Cook the filling: heat oil in a pan over medium-high. Add shallots and garlic, stir 1 minute. Add ground pork and break up into tiny pieces as it cooks, 5–6 minutes. Add wood ear mushrooms, fish sauce, pepper, and sugar. Cook 2 more minutes until fragrant and just slightly caramelized. Set aside.
  3. 3Set up your steamer: bring a wide pot of water to a boil. If using the cloth-drum method: stretch muslin tightly over the top and secure it. If using a non-stick pan method: lightly oil a large flat non-stick pan and place over medium heat.
  4. 4Cook the sheets (non-stick pan method): pour a thin ladle of batter (about 3 tbsp) into the pan and quickly swirl to cover the bottom in a very thin, even layer. Cover immediately. Steam 30–45 seconds until the sheet is set and slightly translucent. Uncover and carefully peel off the sheet with a spatula onto an oiled cutting board.
  5. 5Fill and roll: while the sheet is still hot, place 1 tbsp of filling across the center in a line. Fold in the sides slightly, then roll the sheet around the filling from one edge to the other — a loose roll, not tight. Slide onto a serving plate.
  6. 6Serve: arrange rolls on plates alongside sliced chả lụa and blanched bean sprouts. Scatter fried shallots and herbs generously. Drizzle nuoc cham over the top or serve in a small bowl alongside for dipping.

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