Vietnamese Bun Cha Vermicelli Salad
By Lee Jackson ↣ Published on: March 2, 2020
For a light, bright pop of South East Asian fragrance and flavour, this delicious and healthy bun-cha vermicelli salad has everything in abundance. Soft rice noodles are the bed to the dish, topped with fragrant pork balls (bun cha) lightly pickled veg and and fresh, crunchy salad.
My Vietnamese Bun Cha Vermicelli Salad bowl is a great lunch or dinner, any day of the week. Light and soft vermicelli rice noodles act as a base to juicy spiced and fragrant Vietnamese pork meatballs.
This Hanoi Style vermicelli salad often comes with an array of fresh toppings too, from crunchy cucumber and lotus root, to bean sprouts and lettuce - my version features lightly pickled carrot, daikon radish and green cabbage. Sweet tomatoes add to the mix, along with spring onion, mint & cilantro. The result is a perfect mix of texture and flavour.
No Vietnamese salad would be complete without a pour over dressing. Nước chấm or nước mắm dấm - both share a fish sauce base, to bring in the right amounts of salty, sweet and sour notes to the bowl. This salad uses a nước mắm dấm dressing and is essential in creating the best bun cha salad bowl experience!
What's Ahead?
Stuff You'll Need and how-to.
Making this simple Vietnamese noodle salad is easy. Here are the key flavours to make the magic happen.
- For the bun cha pork meatballs - squish the following together with your hands: ground pork, chopped shallots, crushed lemongrass, chopped chilli, chopped cilantro, white pepper, salt, grated ginger and crushed garlic. Make them into meatballs and fry until browned and juicy.
- For the pickled toppings - mix together hot water, sugar, salt and rice vinegar. Cool then soak julienned carrots, radish and green cabbage to lightly pickle.
- For the essential Nuoc Mam Dam dressing - Mix together sugar, hot water, fish sauce and rice vinegar.
- Other ingredients - cooked rice noodles, spring onions, cherry tomatoes, mint and cilantro.
Once you've cooked your meatballs, it's all about arranging them on top of the rice noodles and garnishing with the pickled toppings and other garnishes. Serve the dressing on the side to pour over when eating.
Serving & Storage Suggestions
- Make in advance and freeze - You can make the meatballs in advance (before cooking) and keep them in the fridge or freeze until you need them. If you're freezing, freeze them on a baking tray in a single layer, not touching each other, then once solid, stumble into a bag and back into the freezer. They shouldn't stick together this way.
- Leftovers? - The salad is a meal in one, so it's all you need. It's best to arrange and serve this dish straight away, leftovers aren't much use after a day as the noodles will become too soft and fall apart as they'll continue to soak up the dressing. The meatballs will dry out too. My recommendation is to not have any leftovers! Trust me, it'll be easy to eat it all!
- A refreshing drink - I love to serve this vermicelli salad with a refreshing Vietnamese limeade drink. A combination of fresh 1 lime (juice of), 3 tbsp sugar and 400ml water. Mix the three together, chill and serve cold with some mint. Yum!
Ready to get cooking?
The star of the show are most definitely the bun cha, pork meatballs. A combination of all things Vietnamese. Fragrant lemongrass, cilantro, ginger and garlic with an ever-so-slight chilli note - Vietnamese food isn't spicy on the whole, but a little nod to South East Asian spice can only be a good thing, right? Give yourself a healthy treat tonight, tomorrow or both! This salad is a winner winner, pork ball dinner. Hope you enjoy!
More Vietnamese recipes
If you liked this bun cha vermicelli salad recipe, I'm sure you'll love some more of my favourite Vietnamese recipes too.
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Video Recipe
Ingredients
For the Bun Cha
- 1 lb Ground pork (500g) (minced)
- 2 shallots (finely diced)
- 1 lemongrass stalk (white only, very finely chopped)
- 1 chilli (finely chopped)
- 10 cilantro stalks (finely chopped)
- ½ tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ginger (crushed)
- 1 tsp garlic (crushed)
For the pickles
- 1 cup boiling water
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup rice vinegar (or white vinegar)
- 2 carrots (peeled and finely julienned)
- 1 cup daikon radish (peeled and finely julienned)
- 1 cup green cabbage (sliced)
For the Nuoc Mam Dam (dressing)
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 cup boiling water
- 3 tbsp fish sauce (from anchovies)
- ½ cup rice vinegar (or white vinegar)
Other Ingredients
- 3 tbsp peanut oil (or vegetable)
- 6 cups cooked vermicelli rice noodles (1½ cups per person)
- 4 spring onion (thinly sliced)
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes (halved - or slices of tomato for each bowl)
- mint (small bunch)
- cilantro (small bunch)
Instructions
To make the Bun Cha
- Using your hands mix together the pork, shallots, lemongrass, chilli, cilantro, pepper, salt, ginger and garlic. Roll a small ball, a little smaller than a ping-pong ball. Repeat with all the pork mix, then refrigerate while you prepare everything else.
To make the pickles
- Add the boiling water to a bowl then add the sugar and salt and whisk to dissolve. Add the vinegar and whisk again to combine. Pop in the fridge to cool completely.
- Meanwhile, julienne the carrot and daikon and slice the cabbage. When the vinegar mix is cooled, combine with the vegetables and return to the fridge.
To make the Nuoc Mam Dam (dressing)
- Add the sugar to a bowl along with the boiling water, fish sauce and vinegar. Whisk to dissolve the sugar and set aside to cool completely.
To make the salad bowl
- Cook the fresh or dried vermicelli rice noodles to the packet instructions and drain with cold water to stop the cooking process. Set aside until needed.
- Add the oil to a frying pan over a moderate heat. Arrange the pork balls in the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes each side until browned all over and cooked through.
- In a large bowl, arrange the rice noodles, then top with a few bun cha.Squeeze the pickles to drain the excess liquid then arrange next to the bun cha.Add some sping onion, tomato, mint and cilantro and serve alongside a small bowl (about ½ cup per person) of the Nuoc Mam Dam dressing to pour over just before eating.
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