A wonton is an Asian-style dumping you’ll find used in Vietnamese cuisine frequently, pulled originally from Chinese cooking.

To make a wonton wrapper, the basics of the recipes use a combination of eggs, flour, water, and salt to form the dough. Then, on the inside, it is common to add mixtures of things like pork, shrimp, crab, spices, garlic, or green onions.

The history of wontons in Vietnamese cooking goes back centuries. It is believed that wonton originally referred to a kind of Chinese bread known as ‘bing’. The primary difference between bing and wontons is that a wonton has fillings inside, and is generally eaten after it is steamed or boiled.

Over the course of centuries, the concept of a wonton hasn’t really changed very much. It’s a classic Vietnamese or Asian-style appetizer usually included with a wide variety of different choices. With most wonton wrappers, you’ll find they exist in a small square, usually with a 6 cm length. The dough wrapper itself is thin and can sometimes be transparent when it is boiled. It’s made thin so that it takes less time to boil which evidently means if you boil it too much, it could come undone or disintegrate completely.

Read more: What is in a Wonton Wrapper

A lot of Vietnamese cooking builds from seafood and fish. Along the coast, the fishing culture’s strong and in Vietnamese cuisine, we have come to find so many uses for this protein source including in sauces, wraps, salads, and phos.

Among the types of fish in Vietnamese eating is basa. A white fish native to Southeast Asia, Vietnamese restaurants love using basa fish because it tastes and is similar in texture to cod and haddock but is more affordable. There has been a lot of misinformation shared about basa fish though. Questions continue about whether it’s safe to eat imported, whether it is healthy or a cheap replacement, and whether basa fish carries any significant health risks. Here’s what researchers know about basa fish and our take on the subject.

Basa fish has gone by many names in Vietnamese cooking, including ‘river cobbler’, ‘pangasius’, ‘Vietnamese cobbler’, and ‘swai’. In a sense, North Americans might recognize it as a sort of catfish native to Asia. Its’ flesh is light and firm, and its flavor is mild. Basa is most commonly eaten boneless as a fillet. They are usually imported from Southeast Asia, fished and packaged from the Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers. Also cheap to grow and harvest, basa fish continues to be in high demand all over the world.

Read more: What is Basa Fish and Is it Safe to Eat Basa Fish Imported from Vietnam – the answer’s here!

Used in a variety of Vietnamese recipes, vermicelli rice noodles are a staple of our cuisine. These soft noodles fill bowl after bowl of soups and phos. Contrary to what many North Americans assume, they’re not made from spaghetti but are rather rice-based. For those wondering more about the nutritious value and benefits of vermicelli rice noodles, here’s information on how they’re made and what they are exactly.

Vietnamese vermicelli rice noodles are made from ground rice, grown throughout Asia. These noodles are used not only in Vietnamese cuisine but also Thai and Chinese. Speaking purely on nutrition, vermicelli rice noodles are dense in calories and a high-carb food. Let’s make no mistakes on this. If you’re on a low-carb diet, this is not the right food for you. In fact, some nutritionists pushing low-carb eating will recommend to ask to exclude vermicelli noodles from phos and other Vietnamese dishes.

You may think vermicelli rice noodles are high-carb so they’re not worth having. That aside, vermicelli noodles contain little to no fat and are very low in sodium. We all need carbs to survive so if you have to have some, wouldn’t you rather have carbs that don’t come with any added fats or sodium – this is clean eating!

Read more: How Nutritious are Vermicelli Rice Noodles – See The Truth of this Carb Delight

The flavors of Vietnamese cooking are diverse, ranging from balanced yet spicy dishes to those plundered with herbs. Among the most popular foods in Vietnam, to this day, includes fish and seafood. Although it is sometimes served fresh or cooked without much interference from additional spices, much of the time we marinate our fish and seafood. For example, marinated fish with steamed rice is a chef special at TorontoPHO, bringing together Basa fish with black pepper, onion, fish sauce, and pork. To really get to know why we marinate, you’ve got to get some insight into how we cook in Vietnam.

Early on in Vietnamese cuisine history, two trends were somewhat obvious. The first of which is much of the population was very poor and did not have very many resources to rely on for high quality, healthy foods.

The second is that street food culture was on the rise, with many vendors seeking to prepare large amounts of food they could sell meal by meal to interested patrons. Speaking of, street food vendors are precisely how Vietnamese pho and soups became so popular. A vendor could prepare a large broth throughout the day in a sizeable pot and serve individual bowls one-by-one, pulling from whatever ingredients were available to them on any given day.

Read more: Why We Marinate Fish and Seafood in Vietnam

Scrambled salt fish and chicken fried rice is a proper Vietnamese meal with a sizeable cult following to its name. Looking down on a plate, you’ll see a kaleidoscope of color occupying space. The rose folds of the shrimp, the golden fried rice, the marinated chicken pieces, and greens from the veggies. It’s almost like a piece of art!

In Vietnam history, a lot of fish and seafood is used across various dishes only because of how available fish is. Along the cost, fishermen caught fish every day, selling it to markets and street vendors. Fish sauce in Vietnamese cuisine actually comes from families and vendors trying to maximize the abundance of fish while using their favourite herbs and spices.

The culinary tradition in this part of the world of salted fish dates back to the 1300s it’s believed. There wasn’t a lot of food to go around. A lot of families in lower economic classes suffered because of it. With fish being so plentiful and affordable, and no source of refrigeration to store fish, salt preservation was the best method to prevent it from spoiling.

Read more: Scrambled Salt Fish and Chicken Fried Rice Has a Cult Following in Vietnam

So much ends up blended in East Asian cuisine, with some Vietnamese dishes being inspired by Chinese and vice versa. There are also influences drawn from the French which maintained colonial power in the region for years. There’s a lot of tasty appetizers brought to the West you likely don’t know that originated in Vietnam or Vietnamese cooking. Here are just our top 3 favourites!

Fish sauce chicken wings

If anyone ever brings up Vietnamese chicken wings, what they’re referring to are fish sauce chicken wings. For as much as we love our chicken wings in Toronto, fish sauce chicken wings have cult status in Vietnam. Brined, fried, and glazed to be sticky, sweet, and spicy in all the right ways, these Vietnamese wings bring together a mix of Vietnam cooking and Thai-esque ingredients.

These wings are perhaps the only thing on this list that is purely Vietnamese, with no outside influence from another culture. They’re crispy and chewy, lacquered in fried caramelized garlic and chili paste, and when combined with fish sauce, they’re a home run. Few Canadian cooks serve it like this and you certainly won’t find any Toronto restaurants with Vietnamese chicken wings like ours.

Read more: 3 Quick bites and Tasty Treats You May Not Know Come From Vietnamese Cuisine