Mit Tron — Boiled Young Jackfruit, Shredded, and the Base of Da Nang's Snail Salad
Boiled and shredded, young jackfruit has a texture close to pulled chicken. That is why this fills you up more than it looks like it should.
This page is translated from Vietnamese. Prices and opening hours are checked against Vietnamese sources — see the Vietnamese version for the most recent update.
Mít trộn is among the most familiar street snacks in Da Nang: young jackfruit boiled, shredded and tossed with roasted peanuts, Vietnamese coriander and a sweet-sour-hot dressing.
Young jackfruit, not ripe
The most common mistake visitors make is assuming this is made from sweet ripe jackfruit.
It is not. The ingredient is young jackfruit — the fruit still green, the seeds not yet hard. Boiled, young jackfruit is not sweet; it has a fibrous, chewy texture, and shredded it looks a lot like pulled chicken.
That texture is why a dish that reads as a light snack sits fairly heavy.
What goes in
- Roasted peanuts, roughly crushed — for the nutty crunch
- Vietnamese coriander, chopped — the one thing you cannot leave out; without it the dish loses its signature smell
- Fried shallots
- A dressing of fish sauce, sugar, lime or tamarind, garlic and chilli
- Some places add shredded prawn or pork belly
Served with grilled rice paper broken up to scoop with, the same way Hue eats clams with rice paper.
Mit tron and oc hut go together
In Da Nang these two are almost always ordered in the same sitting.
Mít trộn is the base: when eating ốc hút, people spoon the strongly seasoned snail-stir-fry juices over the plate of shredded jackfruit, which makes ốc trộn — the combination many locals consider the proper way.
Ordering one plate of each and eating them alternately is the standard move.
Where and when
Mít trộn is an afternoon and evening dish, sold at snail places and snack stalls.
The densest cluster is at Con Market, plus the places along Nguyễn Chí Thanh and Hoàng Diệu, or Hoà Khánh if you want it cheap.
Portions are small and cheap, so ordering several dishes at once is normal.
Making it at home
Not difficult, but two things go wrong easily.
Boil the jackfruit just enough. Overboiled, it turns mushy and shreds into pulp rather than strands.
The dressing has to be salty enough. Young jackfruit is bland, so a weak dressing means a bland plate. Use good fish sauce to season it — that is the difference between a plate with a long finish and one that is merely sweet and sour.
Other Da Nang dishes worth trying
Ốc hút · pork rolled in rice paper · bún mắm nêm · mì Quảng.
Specialties used in this dish
Mắm nêm Nhựt Hoàng đặc biệt – chai 500ml The special pre-mixed bottle — open and dip, no blending needed. The taste that goes with Đà Nẵng pork rice-paper rolls. 75.000₫ 
Mắm tôm chua Nhựt Hoàng loại 1 – hũ 500g Whole shrimp fermented naturally, gently sour and full-flavoured — the dipping sauce that belongs to a central Vietnamese table. 75.000₫ Prices are in Vietnamese đồng.
Food
- Oc Hut — the Snail Dish Nobody Picks With a ToothpickThe name is the instruction. The tail is cut off so you can suck — one pull brings the snail and the cooking juices at once.
- Banh Trang Cuon Thit Heo — the Dish to Eat in Da NangDouble-skinned pork, a dozen kinds of herb, dew-dried rice paper — but what decides everything is still the bowl of fermented anchovy sauce.
- Bun Mam Nem — the Da Nang Noodle Bowl With No Broth at AllNo broth, no stockpot. The whole bowl rests on one thing: a well-mixed bowl of fermented anchovy sauce.