Like the banh chung and banh tet on Nhat Le street - Hue, for example, once I stopped by to buy them as gifts for a friend, I suggested to the lady selling the cakes: "Banh chung and banh tet wrapped in bamboo strips will be more familiar, ma'am!"; but she just smiled, neither agreeing nor disagreeing...
As a default since the cakes associated with Vietnamese people, associated with traditional Tet, banh chung and banh tet wrapped in banana leaves or dong leaves must be tied with bamboo strips (or giang strips) to look delicious and authentic.
Observe carefully, when the cakes are boiled, the leaves turn a slightly brownish green, and the bamboo strings also change color from white to slightly green, looking very harmonious.
To me, bamboo strips are also memories of the old Tet seasons, when every time my grandmother ate banh chung or banh tet, she would use the strips taken from that cake to separate the cake into small pieces when eating...
The soft bamboo strings have deeply touched my heart with the poor but extremely warm Tet holidays of my childhood in my hometown.
Every time Tet approaches, I ride my motorbike to An Cuu market, stop by an old lady’s shop to buy some bamboo strings to wrap banh tet and banh chung. My house is in the city, so I only wrap a few cakes to have the traditional Tet flavor, but there are a lot of bamboo strings, so after wrapping the cakes, I leave the leftovers there. After three days of Tet, Hue people have an important ceremony, which is the New Year’s offering. I remember the scene when my wife kept asking me to find the leftover bamboo strings from Tet so I could boil chicken legs.
During the New Year's ceremony, every family also looks to buy a beautiful rooster, especially the legs. And boiling the legs so that they are just cooked and evenly cooked is the art of housewives. My wife tied the chicken legs with a light bamboo strip and dipped them when the water in the pot of chicken was boiling evenly. After dipping them evenly a few times, the legs were cooked just right to be placed on the body of the chicken and displayed on the offering tray...
After the offering tray is completed, Hue people often have the custom of taking the pair of hams offered at the beginning of the year to go see what changes the family will have this year. Of course, not everyone follows this old custom today, some families go to see the hams, some don't...
I remember, some families in my hometown in the past, after offering a pair of chicken legs, dried them until they were dry and then hung them on the kitchen rack, leaving them from year to year. If a family had a child with measles or chicken pox, they would burn the pair of dried legs, mix them with water and drink it, then all the poison would be expelled and not be absorbed into the body...
But that soft bamboo string is not only used to boil chicken legs. In the past, in my hometown, when offering food to relatives, a relative with experience in cooking was assigned to boil the head, neck, and intestines of the pig to put on the offering tray.
People also use long, flexible bamboo strips to tie the head, neck, and intestines of the pig to dip many times in boiling water until it is cooked properly and then place it on the offering tray... "Pig out, chicken in" is what I still hear the elders in the family tell their children and grandchildren when arranging and displaying an offering tray properly...
I wonder how many beef noodle stalls in Hue still have pork leg pieces wrapped in bamboo strips. Cuong - a friend of mine told me about the anecdote about musician Bao Chan once coming to Hue to judge songs composed about Dong Ba market.
There was a pretty good song by a Hue musician in the contest. After listening, musician Bao Chan said: “Your song is quite impressive, you just need to adjust some parts of the music and lyrics to make it better, more Hue-style; but you have to invite me to eat vermicelli with pork leg wrapped in bamboo strips before I can show you!”
Musician Bao Chan was just joking with his junior musician, but then he was invited to eat vermicelli with pork leg wrapped in bamboo strips for real. And I heard that "aunt" Bao Chan was eating vermicelli with pork leg wrapped in bamboo strips, praising it as delicious, and even editing the song of his junior musician at the morning vermicelli with pork leg wrapped in bamboo strips on the sidewalk in Hue...
But I wonder if the ham rolls wrapped in bamboo strings of the beef noodle and pig's feet stalls in Hue are just to make the noodle pot more appealing, or are they to be boiled until just cooked like the way Hue people boil chicken ham and pig's head when offering sacrifices?
One thing is for sure, it's all ham rolls, but when the ham rolls are wrapped in bamboo strips and placed on top of the pot of noodles, even before customers eat, just looking at them is already very delicious...
(Article from the Central Highlands Spring Labor publication - 2025)
