🇻🇳 Vietnam · a Tết dish
Canh khổ qua nhồi thịtVietnamese bitter melon soup
A Vietnamese soup of bitter melon stuffed with minced pork (with egg, or with wood-ear mushroom and glass noodles), simmered whole in broth and cooked for Tết.
Origin and history
Canh khổ qua is a Vietnamese Tết dish. Vietnamese newspapers describe a folk belief that eating bitter melon soup at the new year lets the hardships of the old year pass, with the bitterness said to balance the rich pork of the holiday meal. One family account cooks it on 30 Tết as an offering to the ancestors.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 1 h
- Hands-on
- 30 min
Ingredients
- 4 young, slender bitter melons (khổ qua), about 25 cm / 10 in long, kept whole
- 200 g7 oz minced pork, belly or shoulder, with some fat
- 1 duck egg or large chicken egg, to bind the filling
- 6 dried wood ear mushrooms (mộc nhĩ), soaked until soft, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp fish sauce, for the filling
- 1 tbsp oil, for the filling
- ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 scallions, whites minced into the filling, green leaves softened in warm water and used for tying
- 1.5 litres6 cups water or light pork stock
- 1 tsp salt, plus extra for soaking
- coriander (ngò rí), chopped, to finish
Method
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1. Cut each melon open lengthwise along one side, scrape out all the seeds and the white pith, and rinse.
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2. Soak the melons for 10 to 15 minutes in salted water (about 150 g salt per litre, 2/3 cup per quart), then rinse in clean water.
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3. Blanch the melons briefly in boiling water to take off some of the bitterness, then drain.
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4. Mix the pork, egg, chopped wood ear, minced scallion whites, fish sauce, oil and pepper until sticky and even.
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5. Pack the filling into each melon so it is full but not overpacked, then tie each melon in two or three places with a softened scallion leaf.
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6. Bring the water or stock to a boil with the salt, lower in the stuffed melons and simmer gently for about 20 minutes, until a chopstick slides in easily.
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7. Taste and adjust with salt (not sugar), sprinkle in the coriander and pepper, and turn off the heat.
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8. Slice the melons into rounds and serve in bowls with the broth, with steamed rice, and chilli fish sauce or soy sauce for dipping.
Notes
- Choose young, thin melons: older ones are more bitter, and thick ones tend to split. Add them only to boiling liquid so they keep their colour.
- Other cooks mix glass noodles (bún tàu or miến) into the filling and hầm (braise) the melons for longer over a very low flame; this recipe is the straightforward simmered form.
- A Vietnamese family account gives the Tết version as six melons with a pork-and-duck-egg filling, cooked on the afternoon of 30 Tết for the ancestors' tray, and says it is often paired with braised pork and eggs (thịt kho hột vịt).
- Make ahead: the stuffed melons reheat well in their broth.
Adapted from Mytour, Cách nấu canh khổ qua nhồi thịt (quantities, method, simmering time) and Báo SGGP, Chiều 30 Tết ăn khổ qua (pork and duck egg filling, salting).
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.