6 Delectable Dishes to Prepare Early for Tet

The Tet festival is just around the corner, bringing joy to every corner of our homeland. Let's prepare some delightful Tet dishes in advance to treat the whole family!

1. Pickled onions

Pickled onions are a must-have on the dining table for many families during every Tet season. While not challenging to make, achieving the perfect crispiness, sweetness, and deliciousness of pickled onions requires a special touch not known to everyone.

Pickled onions complement well with braised meat, square sticky rice cakes, or roasted meat, making the hearty Tet dishes less overwhelming and more enticing.

2. Smoked meat

A familiar dish, but have you ever thought about making it yourself? Ensure you'll leave a strong impression on the whole family!

During Tet, friends often invite each other for a glass of wine or a bit of beer. With this smoked ham hock dish, you can prepare in advance for Tet. When guests arrive, simply slice it, and you'll have a delicious appetizer to serve! Buying this dish from outside might be pricey, and the quality and food safety are uncertain. Now, you can be completely reassured with this delicious and hygienic smoked meat.

3. Pickled cucumbers

During Tet, alongside dishes like bamboo shoot soup, stir-fried dried shrimp, cold cuts, and square sticky rice cakes, pickled cucumbers play an indispensable role on the dining tables of many families.

Pickled cucumbers, with their crispy texture and harmonious sweet, sour, and spicy taste, help alleviate the quick satiety from the abundant protein-rich Tet dishes.

4. Vinegar-soaked beef shank

Vinegar-soaked beef is both easy to eat and easy to make, suitable for party menus. Despite being meat, it offers a harmonious sweet, sour, and spicy flavor, allowing for indulgence without feeling overwhelmed. If you try vinegar-soaked beef once, it will undoubtedly become an essential Tet delicacy for your family many times over.

If in a rush and needing to serve it sooner, you can cut the meat into smaller pieces for quicker marination.

5. Green banana salad

For those who haven't tried this green banana salad before, imagine it resembling Hanoi's salted young jackfruit with a crispy, sweet, sour, and slightly bitter taste—easy to eat and adds extra excitement to your family feast during Tet!

Green banana salad, also known as bitter banana salad, is a specialty of Quang region, offering a delightful mix of sourness, sweetness, and a hint of bitterness on the palate. Paired with rich and fatty dishes to balance flavors or served as a palate cleanser for wine, Tet with a jar of green banana salad is always a delightful experience!

6. Pork soaked in fish sauce

Pork marinated in fish sauce is an essential dish on many families' Tet feasts.

I learned this fish sauce-marinated pork recipe from a friend in the Central region. With this method, I hope you can save time during the busy last days of the year. The meat is marinated, boiled, and then soaked in fish sauce, so even though the marinating time is short, it remains fragrant, flavorful, and rivals the traditional fish sauce-marinated pork dish.

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Source: Travel guide Mytour – Via Afamily