Vietnamese Cuisine - Typical Vietnamese Family Meal

Typical Vietnamese Family Meal

A typical meal for the average Vietnamese family would include:

  • Large bowl/pot/cooker of steamed white rice
  • Individual bowls of rice
  • Fish/seafood, meat, tofu (grilled, boiled, steamed, stewed or stir-fried with vegetables)
  • A stir-fry dish
  • Raw, pickled, steamed, or fresh vegetables
  • Canh (a clear broth with vegetables and often meat or seafood) or other soup
  • Prepared fish sauce for dipping, to which garlic, pepper, chili, ginger or lime juice are sometimes added according to taste.
  • Dipping sauces and condiments depending on the main dishes, such as pure fish sauce, ginger fish sauce, tamarind fish sauce, soy sauce, muối tiêu chanh (salt and pepper with lime juice) or muối ớt (chilli and salt).
  • Small dish of relishes, such as salted eggplant, pickled white cabbage, pickled papaya, pickled garlic or pickled bean sprouts
  • Fresh fruits or desserts, such as chè

All dishes except individual bowls of rice are communal and are to be shared in the middle of the table. It is also customary for the younger to ask the elders to eat first and the women sit right next to the rice pot to serve rice for other people. They also pick up food to each other as an action of care.

Read more about this topic:  Vietnamese Cuisine

Famous quotes containing the words typical, vietnamese, family and/or meal:

    It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.
    Terri Apter (20th century)

    Follow me if I advance
    Kill me if I retreat
    Avenge me if I die.
    Mary Matalin, U.S. Republican political advisor, author, and James Carville b. 1946, U.S. Democratic political advisor, author. All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, epigraph (from a Vietnamese battle cry)

    O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
    and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
    just wait to get at the drinks and food—
    Gregory Corso (b. 1930)

    Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
    That my Michael may sleep sound,
    Nor cry, not turn in the bed
    Till his morning meal come round;
    And may departing twilight keep
    All dread afar till morning’s back....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)