Banh bot loc, the clear dumpling Hue wraps around a prawn

Banh bot loc is a small Hue dumpling of tapioca starch wrapped around a prawn and a scrap of pork belly. Cooking turns the dough from white to clear, so you can see the orange prawn inside before you bite. The chew is firm and bouncy, nothing like a rice cake.

The dumpling belongs to the set of small cakes Hue eats in the afternoon, beside banh beo and banh nam. Of the set, it is the one visitors remember.

What is inside a banh bot loc?

Each dumpling holds one small prawn and a piece of pork belly. Both are cooked first in fish sauce, sugar and shallots until they turn sticky and dark. Hue cooks often leave the shell on a small prawn. It softens in the cooking and adds crunch and colour.

The wrapper is bot nang, tapioca starch, mixed with boiling water into a dough and pressed thin around the filling. That starch is what makes the dumpling clear once cooked. A wheat or rice wrapper would stay opaque.

What are the two kinds of banh bot loc?

The dumpling comes in two forms, and Hue stalls usually sell both. The leaf version is flat, steamed in a strip of banana leaf. The bare version is boiled, shaped like a small dumpling, and served in a heap with spring onion oil and fried shallots on top.

The cover photograph shows the bare kind, sold by the tray from a street vendor. The leaf kind keeps a faint grassy smell from the banana leaf and travels better, which is why it fills the baskets at markets.

What does banh bot loc taste like?

The dumpling tastes mostly of what is inside and what it is dipped in. The tapioca is neutral. The prawn is sweet, the pork belly salty, and the dipping sauce sweet, sour and hot.

Texture is the real point. The dough is firm, springy and slightly sticky, a chew closer to a gummy sweet than to a dumpling. People either love it on the first bite or find it strange, and few land in between.

How do you eat banh bot loc?

Eat the dumplings with the sweet chilli fish sauce that comes alongside. With the leaf kind, peel back the banana leaf, slide the dumpling off with chopsticks and dip it. With the bare kind, spoon some sauce over the heap or dip each one.

Eat them warm. As they cool the tapioca firms up and turns rubbery, which is the one way to have a bad plate. The fish sauce guide explains the dip, and why it is sweeter in the centre than in the north.

How is banh bot loc different from banh beo?

Banh beo is a soft rice cake steamed in a saucer and eaten with a spoon. The tapioca dumpling is a chewy parcel with a filling. The two share a table rather than a recipe. Hue serves them as a set, with banh nam, a flat rice cake in banana leaf, and banh ram it.

Order a plate of each and the afternoon is complete. The saucers cost 3,000 to 8,000 dong each in Hue, and the dumplings cost about the same per piece. A table of four can try the lot for the price of one restaurant dish.

Where and when do you eat banh bot loc in Hue?

The dumpling is an afternoon snack in Hue, sold between about 3pm and 6pm by the same shops that make banh beo. Kitchens open in the afternoon rather than the morning, so a visitor looking for it at breakfast finds shutters.

Markets sell the leaf version all day in baskets, already steamed and wrapped. They taste better reheated at a stall than cold from the basket. The two-day Hue route puts the cakes after the citadel, which is when the city eats them.

Is banh bot loc gluten-free?

The dumpling itself is gluten-free: tapioca starch, prawn, pork and fish sauce. Cross-contact at a shared stall is the open question. Soy sauce does not belong in the dish, but a busy kitchen may use it for something else nearby.

Anyone with coeliac disease should ask rather than assume. The allergies guide has the Vietnamese phrases and the card to show.