With a dense river system, alluvial deposits and abundant resources, it contributes greatly to creating attractive, unique dishes with a very unique flavor of the culinary culture of Dong Thap people. Let’s explore and experience the attractive Dong Thap specialties with Vietdreamtravel through the article below!
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Dong Thap specialties – Visitors can enjoy and buy as gifts.
Not only admiring the wonderful natural landscape, visitors will certainly be attracted by the very unique dishes of this riverine land in the West.
Lotus root salad
When mentioning Dong Thap specialties, it is impossible not to mention dishes made from lotus – a famous plant in this land, including delicious and attractive lotus stem salad.
After picking, the lotus root is washed, cut into strips and mixed with spices such as lemon, sugar, fish sauce, chili and a little herbs. Waiting for the lotus root to absorb the spices, people add shredded chicken and mix it together.
This salad has a sour, sweet, spicy taste, with the chewy and sweet taste of chicken, and a little crunchy, refreshing from lotus root, so it has a quite effective “cooling and anti-greasy” effect.
Sa Dec noodle soup
Noodle soup is one of the famous and popular delicacies of Sa Dec, Dong Thap. The noodles here are soft, not mushy, not chewy, milky white and fragrant.
In particular, the broth is sweet, delicious but not too fatty, making it even more attractive to diners who must enjoy the noodles at least once.
When a customer orders, the chef will start putting the noodles in the bowl, adding some minced lean meat, heart, liver, … served with chopped green onions and cilantro sprinkled on top, then pouring the broth.
Smoking-shelf snails
Smoking-shelf snails are one of the strange and expensive specialties in Dong Thap in particular and the Western provinces in general. To make this dish, locals mainly use pila conica or apple snails. However, pila conica are more popular and common because their meat is clean and crispy, so when dried for several months, they still retain their freshness.
Snails are sorted, the big ones are selected, healthy and have unbroken shells, then washed, drained, and placed in a hanging basket on the kitchen rack. Snails must be kept in a dry, airy place, away from sunlight and humidity because snails instinctively crawl away when they encounter moisture.
When the snails are hung in the kitchen for a full month, people take down the rack and “fatten” them by soaking them in fresh milk and chicken eggs. Snails that have been hungry for a long time will “squirm” their mouths when they see water and drink the mixture. Thanks to that, the snails are fatter and have a delicious flavor when processed.
Wait for the snails to “nourish” for about 25-30 minutes, then take them out, wash them with cold water and process them into dishes according to your preferences.
Lai Vung fermented pork roll
Lai Vung fermented pork roll is also one of the famous specialties of Dong Thap, enjoyed by many diners and bought as gifts. Unlike fermented pork rolls in other regions, Lai Vung has the sweetness of fresh meat, the crunchiness of the skin, the sourness of the vông leaves, the tamarind leaves and the spiciness of green chili.
According to locals, delicious Nem Lai Vung must have 8 parts of meat, 2 parts of skin, lined with vông leaves and tied with banana strings.
Roasted field mouse
Field mouse or Cao Lanh rat is the ingredient to make a series of famous delicacies in Dong Thap such as sweet and sour stir-fried mouse, vinegar-dipped mouse, stir-fried mouse, … but the most popular is still roasted mouse.
To make delicious roasted rats, people must choose large, fat. After being cleaned, the rats are marinated with spices and then hung on an iron hook in the middle of the jar and the lid is tightly closed. A hole is drilled at the bottom of the jar leading to the moist ground to put in charcoal to grill.
The rats will be roasted in the jar and the lid is opened every 5-10 minutes, turning them evenly until the meat is cooked. When the rats are cooked, people spread a layer of pure honey on the skin to enhance the aroma and make the color more eye-catching.
Grilled snakehead fish in young lotus leaves
Grilled snakehead fish wrapped in young lotus leaves is a rustic dish, familiar to the people of Dong Thap. This dish must use wild snakehead fish to fully absorb the delicious flavor. Fresh snakehead fish is cleaned, processed, the gall is removed, then washed with salt, and drained.
Then, the cook uses a fresh lemongrass stick inserted straight from the fish’s mouth to the bottom of the body and then grilled. The fish is fragrant after being boiled, the meat is removed and rolled with young lotus leaves, dipped in tamarind fish sauce, the attractive flavor will make you want to eat it forever.
Lai Vung pink grapefruit
Lai Vung pink grapefruit is juicy, thin-skinned, fragrant and sweet, when ripe it has a red-orange color. During the grapefruit season, visitors can also visit the gardens here to visit.
Cao Lanh mango
The Mekong Delta is famous as a garden land with many delicious and famous fruit varieties. And when visiting Cao Lanh, mentioning Cao Lanh specialties, we cannot help but mention Cao Lanh mango, a famous sweet fruit in the region.
In Cao Lanh, there are two main varieties of mango: Cat Hoa Loc mango and Cat Chu mango. If visitors from afar have ever enjoyed this fruit, which is known as a Cao Lanh specialty, they will never forget its rich sweetness.
Lotus wine
A famous specialty of the “pink lotus” land that cannot be forgotten is lotus wine. Lotus wine is brewed in the traditional way from lotus seeds, lotus roots, sticky rice and fermented with yeast.
After many elaborate stages, you will get a delicious, rich lotus wine. This is definitely a meaningful gift for relatives and friends after a trip to Dong Thap.
Source: collected by An
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