Tet holiday is the time for the whole family to gather together, enjoying delicious dishes that carry the distinctive flavors of Tet from different regions. Today, the section Cooking Tips from TasteVN will suggest 6 simple and easy-to-make Tet meal trays from the North that are also very appealing and loved by everyone.
1 Northern Tet Meal Menu 1
Boiled Chicken
The highlight of today’s menu will be boiled chicken with a shiny golden skin on the outside. The chicken meat is tender and juicy, and when eaten, one can feel the natural sweetness of the meat, making it delicious and one of the essential traditional dishes on the Tet feast of the North.
Main Dishes: Fried Spring Rolls, Green Rice Cake, Salted Pork Leg
Fried spring rolls are delicious with a golden crispy outer layer, and inside is the sweet, tender taste of pork combined with the flavor of mushrooms and the richness of potato. Fried spring rolls will be a wonderful main dish to kick off your Tet meal.
The next main dish is green rice cake – a dish that is very familiar to the people of the North. This dish is a unique combination of pork, live pork, and a gift from nature, which is green rice. All ingredients blend together to create a dish with the gentle aroma of green rice and the sweet taste of pork, making it very distinctive.
Salted pork leg is a dish characterized by its unique delicious flavor. This dish is a harmonious combination of the saltiness of the salt and the natural sweetness along with the crispy, chewy, and delicious texture of the pork leg, which, when seen, makes one want to enjoy it immediately.
Stir-Fried Dish: Stir-Fried Kohlrabi with Beef
Following the main dishes will be stir-fried kohlrabi with beef – a dish that is not only delicious and appealing but also nutritious. Stir-fried kohlrabi with beef has a delicious flavor mainly from the sweetness of kohlrabi combined with tender, delicious beef, which is not chewy; although simple, it is extremely captivating.
Side dish: Pickled onions
To make today’s menu even more complete and help you avoid feeling full, the side dish of pickled onions will do a great job! With perfect crispness and a sweet and sour flavor, the pickled onions will enhance your taste when paired with other dishes.
Soup: Vegetable soup with fried tofu skin
The fragrant and hot vegetable soup with naturally sweet broth from various vegetables, combined with the delicious taste of fried tofu skin, creates a unique combination. When you eat it, you will feel the soft outer layer and the crunchy filling inside, all blending together to create an irresistibly delicious soup.
Dessert: Gac sticky rice and fruits
Ending the meal with delicious gac sticky rice, which is soft and chewy with the fragrant and rich gac flavor, and a gently sweet taste, will surely make you fall in love. In addition, you can also enjoy refreshing fruits like watermelon, grapes,… to help you digest effectively!
Boiled chicken
It is still a familiar meal with dishes that are characteristic of the North, with the main dish being a plate of delicious and hot boiled chicken. When you eat it, you will feel the tender and chewy chicken meat, with the rich and fragrant fat skin, dipping it in a bit of salt and pepper will make you ecstatic.
Main Dishes: Char Siu, Pork Sausage, Meat Jelly
The main dishes of this menu will focus more on simple yet delicious and attractive meals. First, we will have a delicious char siu with beautiful colors. With the characteristic fragrant taste of honey on the outside, combined with the juicy meat inside, the sweet and salty char siu will definitely make you want to eat more rice!
Next is the familiar and very popular dish on the Tet table of the Northern people, which is pork sausage. The smooth sausage meat carries a rich sweetness of pork combined with the gentle fragrance of banana leaves; when dipped in a bit of salt and pepper, it creates a dish that, although simple, is extremely captivating.
Meat jelly is a specialty dish rich in the culinary culture of Nghe An, with eye-catching colors, a chewy and crispy skin, and the sausage meat made from tender veal blended with rich spices, creating a very unique combination.
Stir-fried Dish: Stir-fried Kohlrabi with Chicken Guts
Stir-fried kohlrabi with chicken guts is a delicate combination of the natural sweetness of kohlrabi with the perfect tenderness of the rich and delicious chicken guts that are also very nutritious. This will definitely be a wonderful dish to treat your family during the Tet holiday!
Side Dish: Mixed Vegetable Salad
The nutritious mixed vegetable salad will be today’s side dish. This dish is a combination of fresh green vegetables rich in nutrients such as lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, avocado,… creating a side dish that is both simple yet equally delicious and appealing.
Soup: Dried bamboo shoot soup with pig’s trotters
Next is the soup made from dried bamboo shoots with pig’s trotters, which has a distinctive flavor, delicately delicious that you shouldn’t miss. In terms of taste, when eaten, you will feel the chewy and crunchy dried bamboo shoots with a hint of light saltiness creating a rich and attractive broth, along with the fatty and tender pig’s trotters that make it even more irresistible.
Dessert: Gấc sticky rice, fruits
You can end the meal with a plate of cool, nutritious fruits in a variety of appealing colors. At the same time, you can also choose gấc sticky rice for dessert, which is also a very reasonable option!
The bright red gấc sticky rice has a strong aroma of gấc, with a deliciously chewy layer of sticky rice, and inside is a sweet and fatty mung bean filling, which will surely make your meal even more perfect.
Main dish: Fried chicken wings with fish sauce, pork sausage, shrimp and pork spring rolls
A meal with a harmonious combination from the fried chicken wings with fish sauce, which has the aromatic flavor of garlic butter sauce, chicken wings with crispy skin soaked in spices along with beautiful colors, and the chicken meat is sweet and delicious.
Next is the famous pork sausage – a dish that no Northern Vietnamese person is unfamiliar with. Pork sausage is a wonderful combination of the sweetness of pork, the fatty, chewy, and crispy texture of pig’s ears, along with the spicy taste of pepper. Dipping a bit of pork sausage with sour and salty salt and pepper will make the dish even more flavorful and appealing.
Shrimp and pork spring rolls have a crispy fried rice paper layer on the outside, combined with the rich and delicious flavor of shrimp meat, blended with the sweetness of pork and the creaminess of taro. Shrimp and pork spring rolls will be an extremely wonderful dish on the Tet meal.
Accompaniments: Pickled onions, kohlrabi salad, fried rice with scallions
The accompaniments with their naturally light flavors will help make the menu more perfect. It will begin with the appearance of pickled onions made from vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, and crispy kohlrabi. When enjoyed, the light sourness combined with the subtle sweetness will help reduce the feeling of greasiness after enjoying savory dishes.
The next accompaniment will be delicious kohlrabi salad, a dish made from carrots and kohlrabi. This dish possesses the characteristic sweet and sour flavor of various spices, along with the delicious taste of fish sauce soaked into each strand of carrot and kohlrabi, making it extremely appealing.
To refresh the palate for the meal, this menu includes the accompaniment of fried rice with scallions, featuring a rich and fragrant flavor of fried scallions, complemented by the salty taste of fried shrimp mixed with soft, sticky, delicious rice, which will further stimulate your taste buds.
Soup: Vegetable rib soup
With simple ingredients like baby ribs, mushrooms, onions, carrots, radish, apples,… it has created a fragrant vegetable rib soup that is not only delicious but also very nutritious. The vegetable rib soup with a broth that has the sweet and rich taste of boiled bones, combined with the freshness of vegetables and tender, sweet baby ribs, is extremely enticing.
Dessert: Watermelon
After enjoying the variety of flavors from the above dishes, you will need a sweet and refreshing dessert to soothe your palate. And with this menu, watermelon will be the most suitable dessert for your meal.
4 Northern Tet Meal Menu 4
Main dish: Mackerel in Tamarind Sauce, Salt Steamed Chicken
The beginning of this menu will be a dish with a very unique flavor, which is mackerel in tamarind sauce. The tender, sweet, and firm fish fillets are harmoniously combined with the sour and sweet tamarind sauce. It seems that the ingredients do not match, but when tasted, it is extremely delicious and irresistible.
The next main dish will be a portion of salt steamed chicken, featuring a crispy golden skin on the outside and the strong aroma of lemongrass and lime leaves, with tender and flavorful chicken inside, soaked in spices. Accompanying the salt steamed chicken will be a special dipping salt made from salt, pepper, lime, and onion.
Stir-fried dish: Sweet and Sour Squid
The stir-fried dish in this menu will be sweet and sour squid. This is a combination of the fresh, sweet taste of fresh squid blended with the sweet and sour flavor of tamarind sauce, and the crunchy freshness of carrots, bell peppers, onions,… that will surely captivate you from the very first bite.
Side dish: Banana Flower Salad with Pig Ears, Gac Sticky Rice
Banana flower salad with pig ears, a side dish made from a combination of chewy pig ears, fresh soft banana flower, and delicious carrots soaked in the rich flavor of good fish sauce.
Not only that, combined with the banana flower salad with pig’s ear will be a portion of gac sticky rice with its bright red color, along with a gentle sweet taste and the characteristic strong aroma of gac, which will contribute to making the Tet meal menu even more perfect.
Soup: Pork leg soup with fresh bamboo shoots
In charge of the soup for this menu will be the pork leg soup with fresh bamboo shoots, a soup with tender, fatty pork leg, delicious, crunchy tendons, combined with the characteristic delicious fresh bamboo shoots and rich broth. This soup will definitely make you want to eat it endlessly!
Dessert: Tangerines
A bit of sour and sweet, refreshing taste from fresh, delicious tangerines will help you supplement vitamins and nutrients beneficial for health, helping to balance your taste buds after enjoying the rich-flavored dishes.
Banh Chung
It would be a mistake to mention the Tet meal menu without the appearance of the traditional banh chung. This is a traditional cake of the Vietnamese people, with a pure delicious flavor from the best sticky rice grains, along with the sweetness of mung beans and the fattiness of pork belly.
Main dish: Gio lua, fried caramelized meat, chicken spring rolls
Starting with the main dish will be the familiar gio lua in the Tet meal, with each piece of gio lua being deliciously smooth, and when eaten, you can feel the sweet meat flavor and the delightful chewiness. Enjoying a bit of gio lua with banh chung is simply wonderful, isn’t it!
The next savory dish is fried pork belly – a dish made from a hint of salty, sweet, and fragrant spices, deeply infused in each piece of tender, delicious pork belly combined with the spicy kick of chili pepper.
Finally, closing the savory menu will be the unique chicken spring rolls. Chicken spring rolls have a crispy outer layer and a standout filling, featuring the sweetness of chicken, the chewy crunch of mushrooms, and the richness of potatoes blended with spices to create a flavorful and distinctive filling.
Side dishes: Pickled vegetables, Mixed salad with oil and vinegar, Fried taro
Following the savory dishes will be side dishes with relatively light and simple flavors to ease your palate, specifically pickled vegetables. For many people, pickled vegetables are an indispensable dish on the Tet table of the Northern people.
A mixed salad with oil and vinegar will be an extremely wonderful side dish if you combine it with pickled vegetables in this menu, as the natural light flavor of the salad will soothe the feeling of heaviness, helping to stimulate the taste buds when enjoying the other dishes on the menu.
Additionally, the crispy fried taro with its characteristic nutty and creamy flavor, along with its wonderful crunch, will make your meal even more perfectly complete.
Dessert: Coconut jelly
Nothing is more perfect than ending the meal with a delicious, refreshing portion of coconut jelly. When eaten, you will feel the crispiness mixed with a bit of chewiness of the jelly along with the light sweetness and a hint of creaminess from the coconut milk, which will surely make you love it.
6 Northern Tet Meal Menu 6
Main Dish: Spicy Garlic Meatballs
Coming to the final menu, the first dish that TasteVN will share with you is the spicy garlic meatballs, which are extremely attractive with a salty and spicy flavor. Each meatball is shaped into small balls and then fried until golden brown on both sides, and then coated evenly in a fragrant and rich garlic chili sauce, making it incredibly delicious and appealing.
Accompanying the spicy garlic meatballs will be the eye-catching golden hue of cinnamon sausage that will stimulate your taste buds. The cinnamon sausage is delicious, and when you bite into it, you will feel the soft, slightly chewy texture and the sweet taste of meat, which will surely make you fall in love.
Stir-fried Dish: Mixed Beef Stir-fry
Next is a novel mixed beef stir-fry with various ingredients such as bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, etc., which will make you very excited. The dish is visually appealing with a variety of colors, and the beef is stir-fried to a tender and delicious state, not chewy, blended with fresh green vegetables, making it extremely delicious and hard to resist.
Side Dishes: Steamed Broccoli, Carrots, Cabbage
Before moving on to the next main dishes, let’s balance our taste buds with light vegetable dishes like steamed broccoli, carrots, and cabbage! Although this is just a simple and familiar dish, steamed broccoli, carrots, and cabbage will surely help you not feel overwhelmed after indulging in other delicious dishes.
Dish: Glass Noodle Soup
To conclude today’s meal, we will have delicious and hot chicken glass noodle soup. The broth has a sweet and rich flavor cooked with bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms, giving it a very distinctive taste. The chicken is tender and sweet, combined with chewy glass noodles, making it extremely appealing. This glass noodle soup will definitely leave you feeling “full to the brim”!
Dessert: Melon
Finally, to finish a perfect meal, you can enjoy a few pieces of sweet and cool melon. Each piece of melon has a beautiful orange-yellow color, chilled, and when you eat it, you will feel the refreshing sweet and sour taste, which is sure to make you love it.
Hope that with the 6 menus Northern Tet meal suggested by TasteVN above will help you have delicious and joyful meals with your family and loved ones during Tet. Wishing you success in your preparations!
