Next: 6 to 8 Feb 2027
Tết
Vietnamese New Year: sticky rice cakes wrapped in leaves, braised pork with eggs, and candied fruit.
What is eaten for Tết
Tết is the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, and the food is made days ahead so the first days can be spent visiting. The heart of it is bánh chưng, a square cake of sticky rice, mung beans and pork wrapped in leaves and boiled for many hours. The south makes the same thing as a log called bánh tét. With it come pork sausage, pickled onions, and in the south pork braised with eggs in coconut water. A tray of candied fruit and seeds is kept out for guests, and food is first set before the ancestors.
The dishes
Bánh chưngSquare sticky rice cake with mung bean and pork, boiled for hours.
Bánh tétThe log-shaped rice cake of the south.
Chả lụaSmooth pork sausage sliced beside the rice cake.Caramelized pork and eggsPork and eggs braised in coconut water, a southern Tết dish.
XôiSticky rice, often coloured red with gac fruit for luck.Also part of it, and being written: Candied fruit (Candied fruit and seeds offered to every guest.).
More dishes made for Tết
Written by the Thali desk with AI assistance. Background: "Tết" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from family to family and place to place. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Xôi: Khương Việt Hà, Public domain, source
- Chả lụa: stu_spivack, CC BY-SA 2.0, source
- Bánh chưng: vi:user:Viethavvh, Public domain, source
- Mì Quảng: Gary Stevens, CC BY 2.0, source
- Bánh tét: viviandnguyen_, CC BY-SA 2.0, source