This dish is made from simple ingredients including glutinous rice and mung bean but with complex processing. Sticky rice is soaked overnight, left to drain, and then wrapped in a clean coarse cloth so that every rice grains are completely dry. To enhance imbued taste, we add a little salt and mix well. Mung bean is peeled, steamed and finely crushed.

The most important stage to make this dish is mixing rice and crushed mung bean which requires absolute delicacy. The cook have to be exceptionally skillful to evenly coat every rice grains with crushed mung bean. The know-how lies in rice cooling process. When sticky rice is cooked, we should ladle it into a tray, gradually stir and fan continuously so that rice grains do not stick together.

Xoi can be served with black bean sweet soup, Ba Cot, areca flower sweet soup or more simply, with sweet tapioca soup. Each of them has its own exceptional taste: Ba cot sweet soup has warm ginger flavor while areca flower, tapioca sweet soup have charming pomelo flower, jasmine fragrance. The harmonious combination of sweet soup and mung bean coated sticky rice makes a wonderful and unforgetable taste.

Source: Hanoi’s cuisine - Hanoi City Tourism Department