Saigon broken rice with grilled pork chop, shredded pork skin, steamed egg loaf, and scallion oil
Origin: Saigon & the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
From the journey of Rice.
This is a dish built out of what the rice trade threw away. Tấm means broken. When paddy is milled, a proportion of the grains fracture, and fractured grains cannot be sold for export: they cook unevenly, they will not stand up in a bowl, and the trade grades them as waste. Through the colonial decades, when Cochinchina became one of the largest rice exporters in the world and the whole grain went overseas, the broken rice stayed behind and fed the delta's farmers and the poor of Saigon. What began as the cheapest food in the city is now its signature, sold from dedicated shops that would not consider using anything else. Broken rice eats differently, and that is the point rather than a concession. The fragments are smaller, they absorb more, and they cook to a softer and slightly sticky texture that holds sauce where whole grains shed it. Vietnamese cooks who can afford whole rice still buy broken rice for this. The full plate, cơm tấm sườn bì chả, is three things over the rice: sườn nướng, a pork chop marinated in lemongrass, garlic, and fish sauce and grilled over charcoal; bì, shredded pork skin tossed with toasted rice powder; and chả trứng, a steamed loaf of pork, egg, and glass noodles with a yellow egg-washed top. Over all of it goes mỡ hành, the scallion oil, and beside it a bowl of nước chấm and a heap of pickled carrot and daikon. It is eaten with a spoon and fork, never chopsticks, and it is Saigon's breakfast.
Broken rice is sold by Vietnamese grocers as cơm tấm or broken jasmine, and it is cheaper than whole rice. It is genuinely a different eating experience and worth seeking out; jasmine rice substitutes acceptably but gives a firmer, drier plate. The full Saigon plate is sườn bì chả, which adds bì (shredded pork skin with toasted rice powder) and chả trứng (a steamed pork and egg loaf). The chop alone is the everyday version and is what most shops sell most of. Make the mỡ hành fresh; it takes ten minutes and is markedly better than a day old. Đồ chua, the pickled carrot and daikon, is essential rather than decorative: the plate is sweet, salty, and fatty, and needs the acid. Leftover grilled pork is excellent the next day sliced cold into a rice noodle bowl with more scallion oil and nước chấm.
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