Recipe: Bò Lá Lốt
By Leluu
La Lot (Betel Leaves) with minced beef, blended lemongrass, peanuts, garlic and chilli. Getting the perfect balance of sweet, sour and salty is crucial. These are great to make in advance for a dinner party because you can roll them and only bake them 20 mins before you are ready to eat.
Ingredients
(For 8 – 12)
800g minced beef
50g sesame seeds
100g blended peanuts
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
6 lemongrass stalks
4 birds-eye chillis – de seeded
4 garlic cloves
2 tbsp honey
1/2 tbsp pork flavouring granules
2 or 3 packs La Lot leaves
1 tbsp sesame oil
Method
-Blend peanuts or cashew nuts until coarse
-Finely blend lemongrass, then add the garlic and chilli and continue to blend until all is fine grain.
-In a bowl, add lemongrass, garlic, chilli to the minced beef, nuts, honey, sugar, salt, pepper, pork granules and sesame oil and mix well together with your hands.
-Test your mixture by frying up a mini burger. Adjust to your balance. If too salty add more sugar, if too sweet add more salt.
-Leave to marinade for 20 minutes in the fridge.
-Break the La Lot leaves off the stalks and wash thoroughly and dry.
-Spoon onto the leaves the mixture and roll – should make finger sized rolls
some leaves will be larger or smaller than others.
-Place on a baking tray, drizzle with seasame oil and bake in a preheated oven at 180C for approximately 15 minutes. Serve hot.
Peanut Sauce
4 x garlic & 4 x birds-eye chillis – blend together
4 tbsp cider/ white wine vinegar
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp blended peanuts
4 tbsp fish sauce (Three Crabs brand)
Mix all the ingredients together, if too sweet add more vinegar, too salty more sugar, too sour add more sugar – balance your sauce to your taste.
You can eat these with vermicelli and herb salads, add to summer rolls or enjoy on their own.
If you can’t get betel leaves, make patties/ burgers and have in a nice light baguette with thai basil, coriander and cucumber. It makes a delicious Banh Mi.