How Vietnamese Rice Paper is Made

Now that you have a sense of how to buy rice paper and how to wrap rice paper rolls to create lovely summer rolls and cha gio imperial rolls, you may wonder if you should tackle making rice paper from scratch. It seems like an easy task as just a few simple ingredients -- rice, water, and salt are involved. So why not? Well, you may want to think again. I surely did when I first observed an artisanal banh trang producer in a small hamlet (it wasn't even an omelet!) outside of Phan Thiet (a city north of Saigon) in Vietnam.

She had been practicing her craft for decades and sitting in the same position for hours, day in and day out hurt, she told me. But, her livelihood and family depended on these skills, which she had honed to a seemingly effortless precision. Such level of culinary craftsmanship comes only from  having done something tens of thousands of times. (You have to cook 1,000 steaks to know how to do them just right!)

"Our rice paper is made by hand and are bigger than normal so we can sell them at a higher price than the factory-made ones," she told me. We ate some of the fresh, hot rice sheets and they were delectable. I could not bring any back to the U.S. with me and now regret it. Here is how this woman makes Vietnamese rice paper:

Rice grinding: Soaked raw rice is ground with water into slurry by this very simple machine. The trough at the bottom of the bucket is made of stone. The grinding mechanism, which the family had obtained just a few years before, spins very quickly, so much so that the walls are splattered by the rice and water mixture.

  

Tangy addition: Nearby, there's a bit of thick old batter that is added to the slurry for a wonderful tang.

 

Making thin rice sheets: The banh trang maker sits on a low stool (a position that she said gets extremely tiring over time) to spread the batter onto a cloth that's stretched over a wide pot of boiling water. After the batter has been thinly spread (note the wide tool that she uses), a bamboo lid covers the rice sheet. The resulting rice sheet (sometimes also referred to as a rice crepe in English) is steamed for probably about 30 to 45 seconds. 

 

Removing cooked rice sheet: A long narrow stick is used to lift and transfer the cooked rice sheet to a cooling "rack" (at far left corner). The cooling rack is a very wide convex (slightly domed) round bamboo rack with a cloth covering it. The rack spins around. Like as with a lazy Susan or roulette wheel, the banh trang maker gives the rack a spin and by the time the rack completes a full spin, the crepe is cool enough to handle.

(Thin, steamed rice sheets like these are called banh uot in Vietnamese. They may be served with a simple fish sauce dipping sauce or filled with a savory mixture of pork, shrimp and mushroom and rolled up into banh cuon -- a favorite Vietnamese breakfast item.)

Transferring to a drying rack: Another person then picks up the cooled rice crepe and places it on bamboo drying rack that resembles a narrow 6-foot-long stretcher. The two women work in this assembly line fashion to produce many rice papers each day.  

 

Drying the rice paper: To dry the cooked rice sheets  into rice paper, the racks are brought outside and placed under to hot sun for a day. The woven pattern of the racks gives the rice papers their distinctive appearance, which factory-made ones mimic. The dried, finished rice papers are stacked up, then tied into smaller stacks and taken to market. These rice papers, which were about 14-inches wide, are sold for a premium because they're made by hand.

These photos are from 2003 and I wonder if this woman is still making artisanal banh trang today.

Additional information:

• Guide to buying rice paper (brand recommendations, where to buy, how to pronounce banh trang)
• Step-by-step instructions on how to wrap rice paper rolls

Comments

[Krista Jo]

When I was in Vietnam, I took a cooking class in which we made fresh sheets of rice paper exactly as indicated above. However, instead of drying them, we ate them immediately.

It would definitely take a lot of practice to get them as thin as do the experts, but it isn't impossible. People who like like fiddly things like making their own pasta would probably enjoy it.

[Diana]

Wow, that's so cool! Those rice papers are huge. I had wondered about the patter, thanks for the info.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Krista Jo, yes, lots of practice. I steam my own rice sheets at home using a special pot and it took me a good week's worth of practice to get things the way I wanted. Lots of fun, though.

Diana, I was very impressed at the size of this woman's rice sheets. Each one was about 16 inches wide and she managed to remove it in one piece every time.

[wayne wong]

Women are indeed from a different planet than men: I doubt the famous patience for which Job was known existed in sufficient quantity for him to make artisanal banh trang for a living --- he certainly wouldn't have managed to remove each sheet flawlessly every time.

[Christina]

Thanks for the wonderful lesson. I've always wondered about the pattern on the sheets too! How interesting.

[Brian]

When I went to a rice paper factory in the Mekong Delta, they were raising pigs at the factory. They said they fed the pigs the rice bran.

You were in Phan Thiet, did you go to a fish sauce factory. Had the most amazing "pure" fish sauce from a factory in Phu Quoc. I don't even know if you can buy it in the US, there really was a significant difference in the taste. I was told that most fish sauce is "blended"?

[mavigul]

al of you satute Hello! How ar you chat waiting thanks prio

[kathryn]

I found your blog via a friend on Twitter, as I wanted to find out how rice paper rolls were made. Thanks for this, it's really interesting and a great visual guide. I never realised the indentations on the sheets came from the bamboo racks on which they're dried.

[Chuck]

I spent a lot of time in Vietnam from 1964 until April 1975, first year in the military then with a small private airline attached to U.S. Forces....I married a lady from Nha Trang, a lady who was "upper class" and couldn't cook....however....I spent a considerable amount of time in the kitchen with a couple of ladies that cooked for the family and to my mother in laws deep regret, I learned to do this. Mother in law no longer with us, divorced after bringing family to the U.S. I still cook and make cha Gio and soups, especially stuffed grape leaves and spicy beef pho.

There is a great community around Wash. D.C. and in Northern Virginia, there are still ladies who make the rice paper at home, and make cha gio to order. I usually call ahead and bring home enough for a month.