Bến Tre Original · Grilled Banana Sticky Rice
Chuối Nếp Nướng
Photo: Hồ Đức Hải / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The sticky rice is usually cooked with coconut milk before wrapping, so the dish gets coconut twice — once inside the rice and again in the thick coconut sauce poured over the top.
A ripe banana is wrapped in glutinous rice, bound in banana leaf, and grilled over charcoal until the leaf chars and the rice turns lightly crisp at the edges, then sliced and drizzled with sweet coconut sauce and crushed peanuts. Mekong Delta street carts, especially around Bến Tre and Cần Thơ, grill it fresh over open coals as customers wait.
Why it's made this way: The dish is thought to have originated in Bến Tre province, whose coconut groves and banana plantations gave it its core ingredients, and it spread from there across the wider Mekong Delta and eventually the rest of the country.
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