🇻🇳 How to Make Com Tam

Craving Com Tam? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Com Tam at home, in about 40 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

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• 2 pork chops or thin-cut pork shoulder steaks
• Marinade: 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp soy, 3 cloves garlic grated, 1 tbsp oil, 1 tsp black pepper
• 1½ cups broken rice (or jasmine rice)
• Nuoc cham: 3 tbsp fish sauce, 3 tbsp sugar, 5 tbsp warm water, 2 tbsp lime juice, 1 clove garlic, 1 chilli
• 1 fried egg per person
• sliced cucumber and tomato
• 2 spring onions + 2 tbsp hot oil

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Marinate the pork for at least 30 min, overnight if you can. The sugar is what gives you those lacquered dark edges, so resist the urge to cut it back.
2. Rinse the broken rice twice and cook it with slightly less water than usual — broken grains drink faster, and you want fluffy rather than sticky.
3. Grill or pan-fry the pork over high heat for 3–4 min a side and let it char in patches. Chase colour here, not gentle even cooking; the marinade is meant to catch.
4. Rest the pork for 5 min before slicing. This is the step that decides whether the juices stay in the meat or run out onto the board.
5. Stir the nuoc cham until the sugar has fully dissolved, then taste: sweet, salty and sour in roughly equal measure, and thin enough to pour by the spoonful.
6. Pour the hot oil over the sliced spring onion to make a quick scallion oil, and spoon it over the rice.
7. Plate the rice, pork, a fried egg with a crisp lacy edge, cucumber and tomato, then pour nuoc cham over everything. The dish is designed to be eaten wet.