Bún riêu is another very popular and flavor-packed Vietnamese rice noodle soup, with soup flavored with tomatoes, shrimp paste, fish sauce and a meat broth. And would it really be a Vietnamese soup if it wasn’t loaded with herbs and vegetables? Compared to the other Vietnamese soup recipes we tofu banh mi calories here, this is the only one with shrimp, crab, tomato and tofu.
We’ll cook this with a relatively easy method, but delicious results. If you want to get a little crazier with effort I’ll let you know how to mod the recipe below too! A lot about this soup makes me think it was born out of convenience and necessity. If the restaurant has a pot of meat broth ready, they can cobble together the rest with other common Vietnamese kitchen and pantry items. Skills-wise, this soup is pretty easy to make once you know what’s in it. And if you’re up for it, there are a few mods I have below you can make to the recipe if you’re so inclined.
The meatball looking fellas in this soup, called gach, or rieu, were originally made with pounded mini crabs in Vietnam. We’re not going to pound or blend any crabs for this recipe but we’re going to substitute a 5. Crab pounding for this reminds me of David Chang’s thoughts on lollipopping chicken drumsticks: a pain in the butt to do, so if someone’s doing it for you it’s a real sign of love. Some of the more experienced cooks in my family have the patience to work in fresh baby crabs into their rieu though. My late, maternal great grandmother loved to cook and was apparently pretty crafty and resourceful. Lacking proper tools to pound crabs for this soup when in the States, she fashioned a mortar and pestle from an old army helmet and a baseball bat!
You’ll have better tasting soup and a bunch of extra meat you can add to the bowls of the carnivores of your family if you want to make your own pork broth. However, if you want to go with canned broth or stock, there are many other flavor components that make the soup so don’t despair if you go the canned route. Relative to other soups, like bún bò Huế, some people think there’s not enough meat in bún riêu. There’s so much flavor and interest going on already, in my opinion. However if you notice at restaurants, some other bún riêu recipes, or realize Americans enjoy obscene amounts of meat in their diet, there can be more meat added. If you have the patience to make your own broth for this soup recipe, simply using pork ribs with meat on it, you can omit the canned chicken broth.
Yes chicken broth is not the same as pork broth but I’ve learned through a lot of my mom’s cooking that she will use broths interchangeably, especially when it’s not a clear and simplified recipe where the plain broth itself should shine, such as a light chicken pho. We can control the aroma if its not truly your thing. Oddly enough this makes me think of the show Brew Masters, in which Sam Calgione, president of Dog Fish Head brewery, tells us that they will add more of an ingredient during the cooking process so it has a more intense flavor. If they want more of that fruit or ingredient to show off its aroma, it’s saved for later in the process. For this recipe we’ll use the paste from Lee Kum Kee since it has a balanced level of saltiness we can work with.