Hanoi Tourism - Young rice: the delicious and valuable snack of Hanoian

Hanoi Tourism - Young rice is a present from the rice field, but it's not available everywhere. The special, delicious and sweet young rice can only be found in Hanoi. Hanoian treats this kind of snack with a special pamper love which makes young rice becoming the most special gift among a wide variety of gifts in Hanoi.

Young rice, as its name, is the young sticky yellow flowered rice, which makes the light sweetness just like mother's milk with the tip of the tongue. After harvested, it must be processed within 24 hours in order to obtain a good tasty young rice.

After cropping from the field, the young rice maker should provide special care to avoid losing the "milk" of the rice. Then, the grain is put into hot pan to dry roast until the rice grains become soft. The flame to roast should made from firewood with a medium strength. After the rice grains are cooked, it will be grinding stage. Today, there is a lot of mechanization and automation processes to save time and human effort, but the grinding stage is still being done manually. The pestle should be handy for the user should pound the grain gradually with a constant speed, then remove the husk. The rice leaves are milled, mix with water and then coloring the grain with the obtained green solution.  After that process, the young rice will be turquoise in color with a very pleasant smell.

Then the young rice will be placed flattened on the surface of a lotus leaf, the leaves are placed layer by layer inside a bamboo-made basket. Today, it is less common to see young rice vendors with two baskets on the two sides of the yoke, but you can easily encounter fresh young rice are sold on every roadside. From the past until now, young rice has still been an elegant and special gift of Hanoi.

Vong young rice is made picky, hence, it should be tasted in a subtle way. You should try young rice by pieces, chew slowly to taste and enjoy the smell as well as the sweetness of young rice. Hanoian often tries young rice with persimmon or ripe banana; it is also cooked to make other delicious foods like young rice cake, pressed young rice, etc.

It might cost lots of papers and words to describe the deliciousity, the hidden beauty as well as the specialty of young rice. Hope who is reading this article to have a chance to try this themselves by visiting Hanoi on a windy, sunny August day.

Author: Ngat Huong

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