Vietnamese Scallion Oil Recipe (Mỡ Hành)

In Vietnamese, scallion oil is called mỡ hành, literally “fatty onion”. It’s traditionally made with lots of oil because people wanted and needed something easy and affordable to lend richness to their simple food. It’s supposed to be luscious, a little something to make a simple dish special. Common Vietnamese uses for scallion oil include:

• Grilled vegetables, such as corn or eggplant
• Broken rice plates (com tam) or just a bowl of perfect rice that you want to doll up
• Sticky rice and roast chicken (xoi ga)
• Grilled seafood, such as whole fish

Modern cooks prefer to cut down on the oil for health purposes. I concur but also, I love the flavor of scallion so I want it concentrated in my recipe here. This is a foundational recipe with lots of ideas for you to doll up your scallion oil to craft your own.

• Scallions are a fancy way of saying green onions. They are interchangeable. At your supermarket, you’re looking for green onions. They likely will not be labeled “scallion.” Whatever you call them, medium size ones – no wider than ½ inch (1.25cm) at the base. Smaller green onions have less onion-y flavor and larger ones can be texturally tough and tired.
• When cutting the green onions, don't make them too thin or too thick. I usually cut them as thick as their white parts. That way, they will still retain their beauty and won't get lost.
• Baking soda is not traditionally used in this recipe, but when you add it to the mixture, the green onions retain their bright color longer. That’s to say you can make it a day ahead, even 2 days ahead. You can also prep the green onion and zap it as part of meal prep. Freshly made green onion oil tastes best.
• If handy, add the sesame or peanut oil (or similar nutty toasty oil) for extra aroma and greater dimension. Walnut or hazelnut oil would work well too. Just a little bit does the job.
• Add garlic or ginger to make scallion-garlic oil or scallion-ginger oil! It's that simple.
• Microwave vs stovetop cooking: For this recipe, the microwave is fabulous because you can mix and serve the green onion oil in the same bowl. The stovetop is better if you don’t have a microwave oven or if you want to better control the cooking process. The stovetop method is great if this is the first time you’ve ever heated up hot oil and green onion.

You cannot mess up this recipe! Play with it to up your Vietnamese food game.