Bun cha recipe: Hanoi's grilled pork and noodles

This bun cha recipe follows Hanoi's classic format: pork belly marinated with shallot and black pepper, grilled hard, then dropped straight into a warm, sour-sweet dipping sauce, in the style of Vietnamese cookbook author Uyen Luu.

Bun cha is Hanoi's best-known lunch, sold from low plastic stools since the 19th century and known abroad for the "Combo Obama", named for a 2016 dinner between Barack Obama and Anthony Bourdain at a bun cha shop in the city. Bun means rice vermicelli; cha means grilled meat.

Ingredients

The sauce is the dish; the pork just swims in it.

• 500g pork belly, sliced 3mm thick
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 shallots, minced
• 2 tbsp fish sauce, for the marinade
• 1 tbsp sugar, for the marinade
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 tbsp fish sauce, for the dipping sauce
• 4 tbsp sugar, for the dipping sauce
• 4 tbsp lime juice
• 6 tbsp warm water
• 1 garlic clove, minced, for the sauce
• 1 red chilli, sliced
• 100g carrot, julienned and quick-pickled
• 100g daikon, julienned and quick-pickled
• 300g dried rice vermicelli
• Mint, perilla and coriander, to serve

Method

1. Mix the pork with the garlic, shallot, fish sauce, sugar, pepper and oil. Marinate for 30 minutes: the sugar and fish sauce season the meat through, while the shallot helps tenderise it.
2. Dissolve the sauce sugar in the warm water, then stir in the fish sauce, lime juice, garlic and chilli. Add the pickled carrot and daikon, and taste until sweet, sour, salty and hot all come through.
3. Cook the vermicelli, then rinse under cold water until the strands separate and cool completely, so they don't turn gluey in the bowl.
4. Grill the pork over the hottest heat you have, ideally charcoal, until charred at the edges, two to three minutes a side. High heat is what gives bun cha its smoky edge.
5. Drop the hot pork straight into the bowl of warm dipping sauce rather than plating it dry. In Hanoi, the meat swims in the sauce and soaks it up as it cools.
6. Serve the bowl alongside the vermicelli and herbs, for everyone to assemble their own mouthful.

Why the sauce comes first

Nuoc cham is what makes a bun cha, more than the pork itself. Taste it alone before serving: it should hit sour, sweet, salty and hot in quick succession, not one flavour sitting on top.

Nothing stronger than a cold Vietnamese lager suits it. Vietnam Restaurant Week returns to Hanoi and Saigon this month, with several kitchens putting their own bun cha on set menus.