Southern Vietnam’s Signature Rice Plate

This is thịt nương sả: thin pieces of pork (usually bone-in) that are soaked in sweetened fish sauce redolent with lemongrass, shallots, and garlic and grilled until they char and crisp. The chops are a popular element of cơm tấm, the staple rice plate dished out by street vendors in and around the southern region’s largest city.

These meals typically feature a mound of the splintered grains known as broken rice (“cơm tấm” refers both to the broken grains and to the rice plate) flanked by the grilled chops and/or other proteins; mỡ hành (scallion oil) and salty-spicy-tangy-sweet nước chấm, ubiquitous Vietnamese condiments for seasoning the meat and rice; and accompaniments including raw cucumber and tomato, chopped peanuts, and thin-sliced chiles.

As a home cook, I also love cơm tấm because the elements are simple to prepare and putting them together rewards you with a dynamic meal. All you need are the right ingredients (or suitable backups) and some precise techniques for preparing them.

When I talked to Tu David Phu, the Bay Area chef and author of The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between (2024), about the classic profile of these chops, he emphasized the importance of their texture.

“Vietnamese people generally like their meats with a bit of chew,” he said, noting that these chops are typically cooked well-done and that chewing gives you opportunity to savor the meat, so you don’t need as much of it to feel satiated.

I opted for half-inch-thick, bone-in blade chops, which, unlike rib or center-cut chops, are loaded with flavorful, collagen-rich dark meat that delivers both savor and chew.

For the marinade, I stirred together equal amounts of fish sauce, brown sugar (in place of harder-to-source palm sugar), and vegetable oil, plus minced shallot and garlic, black pepper, a Thai chile, and loads of lemongrass.

After soaking the chops for several hours, I retrieved them from the marinade and seared them over a hot fire until they were burnished and hit 155 to 160 degrees—15 to 20 degrees above my typical doneness goal for Western-style pork chops—to ensure proper resiliency.

A mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, and water that’s seasoned with garlic and/or chile, nước chấm is one of the cuisine’s essential dipping sauces. Phu calls it “the soul of Vietnamese cuisine” in his book, and it’s an exceptionally good match for grilled foods such as these chops.

The key to a good batch is flavor balance: I made sure to use hot water (which helps quickly dissolve the sugar) and to grind—not just mince—the garlic and chile so that their flavors dispersed evenly.

Mỡ hành (scallion oil), the other signature condiment of a rice plate, couldn’t be simpler to make: Just sizzle sliced scallions and a little salt in neutral oil for about 30 seconds, and you’re done. The brief, relatively gentle cook maintains the scallions’ fresh bite while infusing the oil with sweet, grassy savor that continues to build as the oil sits.

Broken rice is grain that has been damaged during processing, and it can be sourced from most well-stocked Asian markets as well as from online retailers.

I found that you cook it just as you would whole rice. Here, I rinsed 3 cups of rice (enough for about 8 servings) until the water ran clear and then steamed it according to our standard 1:1 ratio of rice to water plus an extra 1/2 cup of water to account for evaporation.

Then I cupped the grains into mounds for serving, noticing that their jagged, slightly sticky texture was tailor-made for catching the meat’s flavorful juices. (Whole long-grain white rice, such as jasmine, is a fine alternative to the broken kind.)