Photo: Vinnie Cartabiano · CC BY 2.0
Bo La Lot (Beef Rolled in Wild Betel Leaves and Grilled)
A southern Vietnamese grill: seasoned minced beef rolled finger-thick in lá lốt (wild betel leaf), grilled over charcoal, scattered with crushed peanuts and spring-onion oil, and eaten wrapped with rice noodles, rice paper and herbs. The leaf is not peeled off; it is eaten with the meat.
Ingredients
- Filling
- minced beef · with some fat in it400 g
- minced pork · keeps it from drying out, optional100 g
- shallots · finely chopped2
- garlic · chopped3 cloves
- lemongrass · the pale lower part only, minced1 stalk
- fish sauce1 tbsp
- oyster sauce1 tsp
- sugar1 tsp
- black pepper0.5 tsp
- five-spice powder · optional1 pinch
- neutral oil1 tbsp
- Rolling and grilling
- lá lốt (wild betel leaves) · from Southeast Asian grocers30
- pork caul fat · optional100 g
- neutral oil · for brushing the leaves2 tbsp
- To finish and serve
- roasted peanuts · roughly crushed3 tbsp
- spring onions · thinly sliced3
- neutral oil · for the spring-onion oil3 tbsp
- rice vermicelli (bún) · cooked200 g
- rice paper12 sheets
- lettuce, mint, coriander, cucumber to taste
- nước chấm or mắm nêm · for dipping to taste
Steps
- ⏲ 30 min
Work the shallots, garlic and lemongrass into the meat with the fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, pepper, five-spice and 1 tbsp oil. Leave it 30 minutes for the seasoning to go in.
- ⏲ 10 min
Pick the leaves off their stems, wash and pat dry. Stiff, fresh leaves tear; spread them out until they have wilted a little and they roll more easily. Keep the stems.
- ⏲ 20 min
Lay a leaf glossy dark-green side down, so it ends up outside, put a spoonful of filling (about 15g) at the stem end and roll it up tightly, finger-thick. Pin the end with a stem, or thread four or five rolls side by side onto two skewers. If you are using caul fat, wrap a thin layer round the meat before rolling.
- ⏲ 2 min
Brush the outside of the leaves with a little oil.
- ⏲ 9 min
Grill over low charcoal that has stopped flaming (or a grill pan on medium-low), turning often, for 8-10 minutes. They are done when the leaf has shrunk and clings tight to the meat and its edges are crisp.
- ⏲ 2 min
Meanwhile heat 3 tbsp oil until it is just short of smoking and pour it over the sliced spring onions.
Spoon the spring-onion oil and crushed peanuts over the rolls. Wrap them in rice paper with noodles and herbs and dip.
Variations
- Pan-seared. Smarter restaurants sear them in a pan; pavement stalls grill them over charcoal.
- In a bánh mì. Stuffed into a baguette with cucumber, pickled vegetables and coriander.
- Chả lá lốt. Pork instead of beef, pan-fried. Common in the north.
- Bò bảy món. A seven-course beef meal where these rolls are a fixture.
Tips
- Do not peel off the leaf. The scorched leaf is the flavour of the dish.
- Glossy side out. The meat goes on the back of the leaf.
- No thicker than a finger. A fat roll burns its leaf before the middle is cooked.
- Oil the leaves. A dry leaf burns at once.
- Low heat, turned often.
- Read doneness off the leaf. When it shrinks and clings to the meat, they are ready.
More detail and the reasons why (2)
- A raw parcel straight onto the fire. Ikan pepes steams its banana-leaf parcel before grilling it, because grilled from raw the leaf burns before the fish is cooked. Bò lá lốt goes onto the coals raw and gets away with it because the parcel is only a finger thick, so the meat is done in minutes, and because the leaf is oiled and the fire kept low. And unlike a banana leaf, lá lốt is eaten, so the leaf scorching is not a failure but part of the taste. For managing the fire see grilling.
- From vine leaf to lá lốt. Vietnamese Wikipedia, citing the Sydney Morning Herald, says the dish descends from the Middle Eastern dolma, meat rolled in vine leaves, which travelled through Bengal to Southeast Asia, and that in Vietnam, where vines do not grow well, lá lốt took the vine leaf's place. Both are leaf rolls, but Iraqi dolma simmers for a long time in a broth while these are done over a fire in minutes. The same article says that with caul fat round the meat, the fat melts over the charcoal, soaks into the meat, runs out and soaks back in; kokoretsi is a grill where the caul fat is the whole fat supply.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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