As a Korean foodie who has lived in Ho Chi Minh City for 5 years, Choi Jongrak built the YouTube channel Hanquocbros with his brothers to share his perspective on Vietnam. The Korean boys' channel currently has more than 1 million followers, each of their new videos receives hundreds of thousands of views and comments.
Most recently, Jongrak introduced Sarah, his new Spanish friend, to two dishes that he considers very special to Vietnam: blood pudding and shrimp paste.
Although she had been in Ho Chi Minh City for a month of exchange, Sarah had never tried Vietnamese street food. Therefore, the meal with Jongrak became a culinary challenge for the young girl when her Korean friend gave her 3 levels: easy, medium and difficult. The easiest was fried garlic duck, medium was shrimp paste and the difficult was duck blood pudding.
With the garlic duck dish, Jongrak shared that in Korea, the softer the meat, the more delicious it is, while in Vietnam, tough duck meat is preferred, so he was shocked.
For the second dish, the Korean guy brought pork offal with shrimp paste. Sarah smelled the fish sauce and immediately wrinkled her nose in shock because of the strong "fishy smell like seafood", she even refused to eat it.
However, Jongrak convinced her by carefully mixing shrimp paste with a little sugar and lemon juice to dip the pig's intestines. He convinced her that "it smells bad but it's delicious". Indeed, after sipping the first piece of pig's intestines with shrimp paste, Sarah realized that "it's not bad at all".
The final challenge was duck blood pudding. As soon as she heard the name and description of the dish, Sarah was a bit confused. When she saw the bowl of duck blood pudding with her own eyes, the girl was still shy. Jongrak reassured her, "It's just food, don't be afraid. This is an uncommon dish but it's edible."
The Korean YouTuber guided the Spanish girl on how to eat it very skillfully, from squeezing lemon, adding roasted peanuts to the blood pudding to breaking rice paper to scoop it with raw vegetables instead of using a spoon. Jongrak admitted that Sarah was very brave to enjoy the duck blood pudding because even he and many Vietnamese people were hesitant, not everyone could eat this dish.
After the meal, Sarah liked the garlic duck dish the most and she emphasized that the first time she ate blood pudding was also the last time.
