Chicken rice (com ga) is one of the specialty dishes of Hoi An Ancient Town. A dish of local style chicken rice includes yellow steamed rice, shredded chicken, shredded papaya, herbs, and sliced white onion. It is served with a small bowl of soup containing cubes of boiled chicken blood and organs. In this article, HoiAn Day Trip Company tells you everything that you need to know about Hoi An style chicken rice (com ga).
You may also like: Specialty Food in Hoi An, Vietnam
• Content by Tam Le, founder of HOIAN DAY TRIP CO.,LTD
• Designed by Giang Cong Minh, co-founder of LS E&C LTD and his team
• Photo by Dang Cong Loi, Dao Xuan Son, Tam Le & others
Must Knows about Hoi An Chicken Rice
– Main ingredients: rice, chicken, papaya, herbs, white onion
– Other names:
– How to pronounce ‘com ga’: /cum gar/
– Origin: Hoi An city, central Vietnam
– Where to find it: street vendors, eateries, markets, restaurants
– Local preference: lunch and dinner
– Foodie guide: https://hoiandaytrip.com/hoi-an-chicken-rice
– Facts:
Ingredients and How to Make Hoi An Chicken Rice
A dish of Hoi An local style chicken rice includes yellow steamed rice, shredded chicken, shredded papaya, herbs, and sliced white onion. It is served with a small bowl of soup containing cubes of boiled chicken blood and organs.
The Chicken
About the chicken, local people will buy a whole chicken. This chicken should be from families or farms in Hoi An’s countryside where farmers raise it by rice seeds for approx 4 months (traditional way). The best one is a poussin with a weight of 1,5-1,6 kilograms, and slaughtered on the same day.
After washing and removing organs, people will put clean chicken into a metal pot, fill it with fresh water, and add some ginger slices & purple shallots. Fresh water should be from Ba Le Well, a 1000-years-old well in the Hoi An Ancient Town. When the water has boiled, people reduce the fire and keep it for about 10-15 minutes. Then, turn off the fire and keep the chicken to stay inside the pot for 10-15 minutes. This method helps the chicken not too overcooked. Before eating, it’s placed in a basket or hung up to drain. Some local restaurants use the oil and turmeric powder to paint this boiled chicken, making it look more yummy. The classic Hoi An chicken rice has shredded chicken, instead of chopped chicken.
The boiling water is kept to cook with the rice later. This makes Hoi An chicken rice more special than other similar dishes around the country.
The Rice
Rice is another important ingredient to make Hoi An local style chicken rice. Not all rice can be suitable for this dish, so local people must buy a specific type of rice for it (they often call it ‘rice for chicken rice’). It should be less sticky than the common rice in Vietnamese daily meals.
The special feature of Hoi An style chicken rice lies in how local people process the rice. After washing carefully with tap water (to remove the dirt & grass seeds), the rice is drained for a while. They will stir fry them on the pan, but won’t be long. Next, put all of the rice into the pot containing the water left from boiling the chicken. Experiences are required to know the moderate proportion between the rice and the water. Steaming time depends on the amount of rice. For more colors, somebody adds turmeric powder into the pot, and the rice becomes yellow then.
Vegetables & Herbs
The only herb used for Hoi An style chicken rice is the peppermint or Vietnamese coriander or Vietnamese mint (called rau ram). It should be grown and picked in Tra Que Vegetable Village where farmers still use traditional farming methods. It often has a small size because locals believe that tiny herbs have more flavours. The spicy taste of this peppermint makes the chicken rice interesting.
Green papayas are bought at local markets or from farmers at Tra Que vegetable village. Different from Hoi An style beef noodle soup (Pho), it will be a green, unripe fruit. Local people will peel it, and shred it into moderately long strings. After that, these papaya strings are soaked in vinegar and freshwater, to reduce their bitterness and enhance the crunchiness.
How to Eat Hoi An Chicken Rice Like a Local
A dish of Hoi An local style chicken rice includes yellow steamed rice, shredded chicken, shredded papaya, peppermint (rau ram), and sliced white onion. It is served with a small bowl of soup containing cubes of boiled chicken blood and organs.
To eat like a local, firstly visitors need to use the paper to clean up chopsticks and spoons. After that, taste the rice to know if it suits your personal liking or not yet. To personalize or enhance the flavours, can use lime, Hoi An chilli sauce, soy sauce, and fresh chilli sauce. Local chilli sauce looks like a jam because it’s made with fresh red chilli, tomato, garlic, sugar, and other spices. After adding sauces/spices, please mix up everything.
Because the chicken rice is quite dry, a small bowl of soup is also served. It contains a savoury soup with cubes of boiled chicken blood and organs (called nuoc xuyt). After a spoon of rice, locals drink a spoon of this soup. On the other hand, using organs and blood to eat is to not waste food. Sometimes, people pour this soup on the dish of chicken rice and then mix, to eat easier. None of these ways are wrong. Right way is the one people like.
Best Places to Eat Hoi An Chicken Rice in Hoi An
Visitors can go to these local restaurants to eat local style chicken rice in Hoi An:
– Com Ga Hien
– Com Ga Xi
– Com Ga Ba Buoi
Better to Know about Eating Local in Hoi An
– Local family-run restaurants always serve better local foods than tourist restaurants. Places inside small alleyways potentially are hidden gems. The price is even more affordable at these lesser known spots.
– Restaurants where you can see a queue or crowds, food or drinks there are absolutely better or safer than others. Vietnamese people also avoid places without people eating, such as roadside eateries.
– Hot foods are often safe to eat for non-Vietnamese people. Refuse cold food (especially ones sold on the street, markets) or things you don’t see people cooking.
– Make sure that you learn some basic Vietnamese words or sentences to order foods, such as xin chao (hello, hi), cho toi mot (something) (I want one…), toi an chay (I am vegetarian), khong cay (no spicy), cam on (thank you), tam biet (goodbye) or numbers (mot/one, hai/two, ba/three, bon/four, nam/five, sau/six, bay/seven, tam/eight, chin/nine, and muoi/ten).
– Ask any local people you know (tour guide, driver, hotel receptionists, bellmen, etc) to receive their recommendation for good places to eat local.
– Raw vegetables are popularly used in local dishes, such as noodles or noodle soup or sandwich. They are often washed by tap water or unwashed. If can not drink tap water, remove or refuse them. Likewise, in most iced drinks (such as coffee or herbal tea), people add ice made by tap water also.
– On the 1st day and 14th-15th days of each lunar month, Hoi An citizens eat vegetarians. Many local restaurants and street businesses will be closed by that.
– If you don’t eat pork or beef, due to diet or religious restrictions, be careful when want to try local food here, if don’t see the ingredient description. Pork and beef are very popular meats, so they will be in numerous dishes. Street vendors may say ‘no pork’ or ‘no beef’ for better business, but please check before buying!
– Consider joining a food tour guided by locals who know much better about dishes in the city, including things never mentioned in guidebooks or on the internet.
– If have an allergy (milk, egg, peanut, wheat,…), ask anybody you know before trying or search for ingredients on the internet. By the way, fish sauce is popularly used to marinate Vietnamese foods, so make sure that you know this information if you’re fish allergic.
– Food portion (or size) here is often not really big (locals prefer eating with their family at home). You may try double or some different dishes for main meals.
– If don’t see the price on the menu, please ask in advance to avoid overcharging, especially when you are not a local. In Vietnamese, how much is bao nhieu.
– Most popular cutleries are chopsticks and spoons. To know how to use it, browse here
