Bún Riêu - Crab Dumpling Noodle Soup

Bun rieu with an organic tomato soup base

Difficulty: Easy to Medium

There is many different ways to make bun rieu.  There is a shrimp, crab, and snail version.  In Vietnam, the crab version is made from pulverizing little mud crabs and extracting their essence with a sieve and incorporating the meat into the dumpling.  Unfortunately there is no rice paddies here, so this is a more budget friendly version that my 3 year old enjoys eating.


3 to 3.5 qts water
14 oz can minced crab or prawns in spices
1 large egg
1 lb ground pork or chicken
28 oz can organic whole peeled tomato
   or 12oz can dice tomato and 4-6 fresh tomatoes
2 Tbsp Fish Sauce
1 pkg tofu
1 tsp salt
Ground black pepper
1 pkg rice noodles
Chopped green onions
Chopped cilantro
Onions, thinly sliced
Annato oil
1 medium shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced finely
Canned or fresh crab meat, as much or as little as you like or chopped shrimp

Optional:
Split water spinach or thinly shredded cabbage
mint
perilla
lime

Heat up the water in a large stock pot while you are working on the other ingredients.

Drain the tofu package and wrap it with some paper towels and weight it down with a plate or small pan to remove any excess water.

Take out a pan and heat up enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan.  Sautee the garlic and shallots and add the can of tomatoes.  If you are using the whole tomatoes, makes sure you crush each tomato with your hand and squeeze out any juice into the pan.  Add the can of minced prawns or crab.  Sautee to enhance the flavors.  Add the contents of the pan into the stockpot.  Wipe down the pan to prepare it to fry the tofu.

Cut the tofu to small blocks or cubes.  I normally cut it to get 32 pieces.  Heat up some oil.  Blot the tofu again to make sure it is dry when you add it to the oil.  Fry each side to get a golden brown color.  Add each finish piece straight into the broth.

Here I use a small sauce pan with enough oil to at least come half way or more of the object I am trying to fry.

In a large bowl, mix the ground meat, crab/shrimp with the salt, black pepper, and egg.  Combine well.  With a teaspoon, scoop teaspoon size ground meat mixture into the broth.

Allow for the broth to cook for about 15 minutes so that the contents can meld together.  Add 1 tsp of annato oil if needed. Add the fish sauce and taste it.  Adjust with more fish sauce if you need.

Serve with a handful of rice noodles in the bowl.  Ladle the hot broth over the noodles.  Make sure that you get some of the dumplings, tofu, and tomatoes.  Topped the bowl with some chopped green onions and cilantro plus any optional herbs.

Prawn

Crab

Rice noodles

Organic tofu