Dishes on Tet (Lunar New Year Celebration) in Hanoi

 Tet dishes, the traditional dishes served on the Tet holiday, are the chưng (square sticky-rice) cake, pork paste, grilled chopped meat, brined meat, brined fish, pickled onion and different kinds of fruit jams. The most typical dish for Tet is the chung cake.

It is said that:

Thịt mỡ, dưa hành, câu đối đỏ

Cây nêu, tràng pháo, bánh chưng xanh

(“Pork fat, pickled onions, red parallel sentences

New Year’s tree, firecrackers, green square sticky-rice cakes”)

This is a famous pair of parallel sentences which sketches a colorful and clear picture of the Tet holiday or Lunar New Year Celebration.

Tet dishes, the traditional dishes served on the Tet holiday, are the chung (square sticky-rice) cake, pork paste, grilled chopped meat, brined meat, brined fish, pickled onion and different kinds of fruit jams. The most typical dish for Tet is the chung cake. According to legend, the sun is round and the earth is square; so the chung cake symbolizes the earth (whereas the giay cake represents the sun). The cake has a sticky rice crust and stuffing made of sifted green beans and pork scented with fish sauce and pepper. It is wrapped in dong leaves, tied with a bamboo string and boiled for 10-12 hours. It is then drained well and unwrapped before eating. The unwrapped cake has a beautiful jade green color thanks to being boiled in leaves.

Chung cake is very sticky and so the bamboo string, rather than a knife, is used to cut it when served. The string used to tie the cake before cooking is split into 4 small threads, which are run through the cake to divide it into 8 equal triangles. Each triangle has three layers: a blue layer of crust, a yellowish layer of green bean, and a pink layer of pork. Thus the “chưng” cake can create this attractive picture of harmonious colors.

In the past, people had a clear cut division between ordinary meals and Tet meals. In the lead up to Tet, families were busy preparing a lot of traditional dishes for the three days of Tet. Tet was small or big in different families, but however poor a family was, they prepared chưng cakes, pork and pickled onion. Tet was not only an occasion when people could enjoy the specialties but also a time when family members could come together to prepare the dishes, especially the wrapping and boiling of chung cakes. In big families with a lot of children, the atmosphere could be quite boisterous. Children were eager to gather around the fire with the pot of boiling chung cakes, listening to their grandparents or parents telling Tet legends. on the last day of the lunar year, the grandfather or father in the family usually wrapped small chung cakes for the children, while the women in the family rushed around preparing a New Year’s Eve feast.

The feast was different in different families. However, there were always traditional dishes: chưng cakes, boiled chicken, lean pork paste, roasted cinnamon pork, spring rolls, fried mixture and soup of pig’s leg and dried bamboo shoots (or soup of raw paste, chicken broth and kohlrabi, carrots).

Nowadays the concept of “eating Tet” is not the same. Tet dishes can be found throughout the year and can be eaten at any time. Some dishes, which take a lot of time to cook such as chung cakes, pickled onion and jam can be bought in shops at any time. However, the boisterous atmosphere of preparing dishes for Tet holiday and the eagerness of the children in each family can still be seen in Hanoi on the days near Tet holiday.

Dishes on Tet (Lunar New Year Celebration) in Hanoi