🍚 Cơm tấm sườn (broken rice with grilled pork chop)
Cơm tấm is Saigon's broken-rice plate: fluffy fragments of rice topped with a sweet-savoury grilled pork chop marinated in fish sauce, garlic and sugar, with a fried egg, a spoonful of scallion oil and tangy pickled vegetables. Smoky, caramelised pork meets soft rice and bright pickles. Everything is drizzled with nước chấm, a sweet-sour fish-sauce dipping sauce.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 thin bone-in pork chops (about 600 g)
- 2 tbsp fish sauce, 1 tbsp sugar, 2 garlic cloves and 1 shallot, minced (marinade)
- 400 g broken rice
- 4 eggs
- Pickled carrot and daikon (do chua) to serve
- Dipping sauce: 3 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp lime juice, 6 tbsp water, 1 chilli
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 3 scallions, sliced, warmed in 2 tbsp oil (scallion oil)
Method
- Mix the marinade, coat the pork chops and leave for at least 30 minutes.
- Rinse the broken rice and cook it with about 500 ml water until fluffy.
- Grill the chops over high heat or under a hot grill for 4–5 minutes per side until charred and cooked through.
- Fry the eggs in the oil.
- Stir the dipping sauce ingredients until the sugar dissolves.
- Plate the rice with a chop, an egg and pickles and spoon scallion oil over the rice; pour over the dipping sauce.
How to make it lighter
- Pick a lean chop and trim the fat before marinating.
- Take a smaller scoop of rice and extra pickles or cucumber and tomato.
- Cook the egg with a light film of oil and use the scallion oil sparingly — 1 tbsp oil ≈ 120 kcal.
History
Broken rice, the fragments left over from milling, was long a cheap staple in southern Vietnam. In Saigon it became a much-loved street food, and today cơm tấm with grilled pork chop is eaten at all hours, from roadside stalls to restaurants.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →