Northwest Vietnam is not only famous for its eternal beauty of the mountains and the nature, but also for its delicious local dishes that you can only enjoy to the fullest on motorbike trips. Have a taste of the Vietnamese flavor and you will fall in love with it. Especially, it will make your motorbike trip in the S-shaped country become more memorable.
“Armpit” pork, Vietnam
Don’t be gross yet, the dish is actually not as weird as its name. The “armpit” pork is a significant local dish that can only be found in the mountainous areas of Vietnam. Local people often release newly born pigs into the forest for them to support and to feed themselves. So their meat is very tasty and has a natural flavor.
The delicious pork of Northwest Vietnam
This type of pig is only weighted about 10 to 15 kilograms, 20 kilograms at most, so people can easily carry them around by holding it under their armpit. That explains the weird name.
Due to having a small amount of weight, the meat is really delicious with less amount of fat. It will be such a great dish to regain energy when going on a motorbike trip to Vietnam.
The dish is often found in the meal of Northwest people
Purple sticky rice
Despite its pink color, this sticky rice is popularly known as purple sticky rice. The dish is cooked from fragrant glutinous rice grains with large and soft seeds. The eye-catching color of sticky rice is created from a tree called a plug. According to many people, this plant has the effect of curing intestinal diseases and is very good for health.
The eye-catching purple sticky rice
Besides purple, you can find the sticky rice dish in various colors. This is the pride of the Tay people's cuisine, often appearing during the festival but can now be found popular in markets. The five main colors you can find of sticky rice are white, red, blue, purple and yellow.
The local people in Northwest Vietnam believe the sticky rice brings fortune
White is the original color of rice, the remaining colors are made by soaking rice with water of forest leaves and tubers. These leaves and tubers are easy to find in the forest, or in the garden. According to the local people’s culture, these colors represent luck, goodness, and is also a unique feature not to be missed on the Northwestern motorbike road trip in the ripe rice season.
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Smoked pork
The smoked pork is a special dish of local people in Northwest Vietnam, but this dish is not always available. Frontier Travel Vietnam highly recommend you to join a motorbike trip in the winter to taste this delicious food.
The delicious smoked pork of Northwest Vietnam
The meat is marinated for quite a long time, from 5 to 7 days, then hung up to the kitchen and grilled-smoked. Being marinated with dried spices such as chopped fruits, peppers, cardamom, etc, the dish brings such a strange yet attractive flavor that no one can resist.
Apple, Northwest Vietnam
Apple is the type of fruit that can only be planted or grown wildly in the Northwestern of Vietnam. Coming to the mountainous areas, visitors will be delighted with the fragrant smells of the apples blend with the earthy and refreshing environment of nature, which creates such a great experience you won’t be able to forget.
You can also buy dried apple as souvenirs to your loved ones. Apples are chopped, dried and packed into separate portions. This is the famous specialties of the Northwestern with great effects on people’s health.
This is the significant fruit of Northwest Vietnam
You can eat the dried apples or use it as ingredients to cook delicious dishes People often put Northwestern dried apples in stews to increase the flavor as well as increase the number of nutrients in the dish. Simply put, you can use dried apples to make a tea that will help treat diseases like fatty liver, heart disease, blood pressure, etc. Worth to take a motorbike trip to Vietnam, right?
Northwestern sausage, Vietnam
This is a favorite dish of Northwestern local people with the typical flavor of the mountainous area. It is the toughness of the intestines, the sweetness of lean meat and the fatness of the fat. All combine to bring out a delicious and impressive flavor.
Northwesterners often hang their sausage on the ceiling
Especially, you should try the sausage from Dien Bien, Vietnam. Sausage is a traditional dish of Black Thai people, Nung people and some other ethnic groups in the Northwest. Different from Chinese sausage, Dien Bien sausage is made from half-lean meat and half-fat. Local people wash and filter the layer, cut into small pieces after marinating the meat with salt, sugar, monosodium glutamate, wine, ginger juice and some typical spices.
This is a dish you definitely should not miss because the sausage is bite-size, delicious and help you regain energy greatly.
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Au tau porridge, Ha Giang
Ha Giang “au tau” porridge has long been known by many people for its originality. “Au tau” is a kind of toxic tubers, but if processed carefully it can become the delicious and attractive porridge with absolutely no poison at all. This porridge is suitable to enjoy in the cool weather, such as from October to February of the following year, especially in the mountainous area of highland Vietnam.
The unique porridge of Ha Giang
The porridge is made from glutinous rice which is fragrant and delicious, with the fleshy taste of the tubers stewed with greasy pork sausage. Besides, the porridge is also served with chicken eggs and some spices to help the dish smell sweet. This specialty is often sold in the evening on cold days in Ha Giang.
>>>Learn more: Top Specialties Of Ha Giang You Really Should Buy When Traveling
Here are the delicious dishes that you will have the chance to taste when joining a motorbike tour in the Northwest of Vietnam. Frontier Travel Vietnam provides lots of high-quality travel tours that will end up bringing you nothing but joy. Join us and you won’t regret it.
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