Mi Quang — the Vietnamese Noodle Bowl With Almost No Broth

Visitors from northern Vietnam trying mì Quảng for the first time usually ask the same thing: why is there so little liquid? That is precisely what identifies the dish. Mì Quảng is not a soup. There is only enough sauce to cover the bottom of the bowl — thick and concentrated, there to soak into the noodles rather than to be drunk.

The noodles and that yellow colour

Mì Quảng noodles are made from rice batter steamed into sheets and then cut, wider and thicker than phở noodles. The traditional yellow comes from turmeric water mixed into the batter, not from food colouring.

Before going into the bowl the noodles are usually tossed in a little shallot oil, so they do not stick and to lift the aroma.

The sauce — small in quantity, strong in flavour

Mì Quảng comes with several kinds of sauce: prawn and pork, chicken, snakehead fish, or frog. Prawn and pork is the most common.

The basic method: marinate sliced pork belly and prawns with chopped shallot, garlic, fish sauce, pepper and a little turmeric. Fry the aromatics, sear the pork, add the prawns, then add just enough water to barely cover. Simmer gently until it reduces and thickens.

The key point: the sauce has to taste considerably stronger than the broth for phở or bún, because there is so little of it that the concentration must be high enough to carry into the noodles.

Season it with good fish sauce. Nước mắm nhĩ — the first drops drawn from the fermentation vat, high in protein and gentler in aroma — gives depth without harshness, quite unlike diluted industrial fish sauce.

What has to be on top

• Grilled sesame rice cracker, crumbled — this is what gives mì Quảng its texture
• Roasted peanuts, roughly crushed
• Fresh herbs: lettuce, Thai basil, mustard greens, shredded banana blossom
• Spring onion and coriander
• Green chilli, bitten whole rather than ground into powder
• Lime, squeezed over before mixing

The sesame cracker is not decoration. Crumbled into the bowl it sets a crunch against the soft noodles — without it, the bowl loses a layer of texture.

How to eat it

Mix from the bottom up so the sauce coats every noodle, squeeze the lime, add chilli sauce if you want heat. Bite into a green chilli somewhere in the middle. And do not go looking for a spoon — there is no broth to drink.