R E L A T E D
I N F O

Buying rice paper

Wrapping with rice paper

Tapioca vs. Rice Papers

Carb count

Brown rice paper

Disclaimer on
Vietnamese
Spelling

Several visitors to this site have asked about what goes into making banh trang (rice paper), and if they can make the papers themselves. Sorry, folks, making rice paper isn't exactly something you want to try at home. Most rice paper nowadays is made in factories. What we get abroad is factory made. In Vietnam, some artisans dedicate themselves to making banh trang the old-fashioned way, as described in the photos below. On a 2003 visit to Phu Hai village, which is north of Saigon near Phan Thiet, I had the opportunity to observe this artisanal banh trang maker:

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 crepes: 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 crepe. The resulting rice crepe (sometimes also referred to as a rice sheet in English) is steamed for probably about 30 to 45 seconds.

Removing cooked crepe: A long narrow stick is used to lift and transfer the cooked crepe 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 crepes 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.)

Transfering to 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 papers: To dry the crepes 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.