For many Vietnamese people ‘chao suon’, a bowl with simple ingredients such as porridge, pork ribs and salted shredded meat is their dish of choice.

The key to making the dish, firstly, is the rice selection. Khang Dan rice may not make delicious steamed rice but when it comes to making porridge, it’s perfect.

To make it soft and easier to grind into rice powder, cooks have to soak it in fresh water the night before, then take it out in the next morning, grind it and stir it with the bone broth which is steamed with the pork bone.

While the actual cooking may be simple, the preparation takes a long time.

As the rice is soaked in water a night before, it’s easy to grind into a powder and together with the sweet flavour of the bone broth it is delicious, greasy and healthy.

By adding salted shredded meat, the bowl becomes saltier to make the taste last longer and with hot cruller (fried Chinese bread sticks or locally known as ‘quay’) which is crunchy and greasy, we finally have the last piece of the chao suon.

VNS