Banh can or Mini rice pancake is one of the most popular street foods in Hoi An, Vietnam. It’s simply made with rice milk (or rice flour), quail egg, pork sausage and all fried. Raw vegetables are also served to make eating this late afternoon snack easier. Now, let’s HoiAn Day Trip Company provide all information about Banh can or Mini rice pancake in Hoi An Vietnam.
You may also like: Specialty Food in Hoi An, Specialty Food in Da Nang, Specialty Food in Hue 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 Banh Can (Mini Rice Pancake)
– Other name(s):
– Origin: southern Vietnam
– Where to find: street vendors around Hoi An
– Ingredients: rice milk (or rice flour), quail egg, pork sausage, shredded green papaya, raw vegetables
– Time: late afternoon
– Price: 20,000 to 30,000 VND/cake
– Calories:
– Travel blog: https://hoiandaytrip.com/banh-can-mini-rice-pancake-hoi-an
– Fact:
Ingredients & How to Make Banh Can (Mini Rice Pancake)
Banh can or Mini rice pancake is simply made by rice milk or rice flour, quail egg, pork sausage. Shredded green papaya and raw vegetables are served as side dishes. Vegetables are lettuce, pennywort (rau ma), sweet basil, lemon basil, heart leaf (fish leaf), bitter grass, etc.
Here are steps to make the Vietnamese Banh bo (cow cake):
Step 1: Soak common rice in fresh water for many hours and then wash carefully. Grind the soaked rice into rice milk and then add turmeric powder to make it yellow. To save time, local people will buy rice flour in the market and then mix it with water (the percentage of water should be bigger than the percentage of rice flour) to make the rice milk.
Step 2: Pour the rice milk into the molds of a big pan to fry.
Step 3: Add one or two quail eggs onto the cake and then wait until they’re cooked.
Step 4: Pick up the fried rice pancake and place it onto the plate.
How to Eat Banh Can (Mini Rice Pancake) Like A Local
To eat Banh can or Mini rice pancake like a local, visitors need to use chopsticks to pick the cake and then dip it in the fish sauce (with sugar, lime juice, garlic and red chilli). Somebody likes placing all the cakes on a plate and then pouring the fish sauce into the plate, in order to eat with raw vegetables.
Additional toppings can be steamed pork sausage in banana leaf (cha la), fermented pork (nem chua) and fried pork sausage (cha chien).
Where to Eat Banh Can (Mini Rice Pancake) in Hoi An?
Here are the best places visitors can go to try Banh can or Mini rice pancake in Hoi An:
– Banh Can Co Xi: a street vendor on the pavement of Cao Hong Lanh Street (near the Hoi An Evangelical Church)
– The food court in Hoi An Central Market (on Tran Phu Street), the biggest local market in Hoi An
Better to Know about Eating Local in Da Nang/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
