Vietnamese Wild Duck Cabbage Salad
History of Cabbage Salad in Vietnam & A Few Words of Vietnamese
Vietnamese cabbage salad is the perfect crisp salad for hot summer days. The salad is an easy, crunchy cabbage slaw with fresh herbs with crispy duck breast.
Traditionally the herbs are called rau song, meaning fresh greens. It consists of a mixture of cilantro, Vietnamese coriander, perilla, Thai basil, and mint. However, I kept things simple and easily accessible for myself (and you too) with just cilantro and mint. Sometimes I feel extra, and take a drive to my local Vietnamese market to find these specialty herbs.
The recipe came from merging two classic dishes called Gỏi Ga, chicken salad; and Gỏi cháo vịt, duck congee with salad. Save your duck bones, and I’ll be sure to share a simple duck congee recipe soon.
Below are a few tips to help save you some time before you start cooking!
Good To Knows Before Cooking
Make the Dressing Ahead of Time!
To save time, make the salad dressing, crispy shallot oil, and salad base ahead. If you have a food processor or a mandoline, it will save you lots of time dicing the carrots and cabbage. Although luckily I had a sharp knife and a lovely friend who was willing to help me chop the salad base as I worked on other things.
Use this Nước Chấm, Vietnamese Dipping Sauce recipe for the salad dressing. Every Vietnamese home has its own version of this sauce and it tastes different from family to family. The ingredients are mostly the same, some folks prefer to use white vinegar, more chillis, and/or sugar and for extra color adding grated carrot. Traditionally the duck salad dressing has a bit of grated ginger, which marries well with the iron taste of duck meat. Although since I heavily spiced my duck breast I omitted the ginger in the dressing.
Prep the Duck and Seasoning
You can also make the salt and pepper spice mix ahead of time for the duck recipe. Here's the must-try recipe for the 5-spice crispy duck, or you could serve it with seared duck breast seasoned however you like.
I’ll admit traditionally the duck salad is served with poached or steamed duck, that’s been seasoned with salt. The 5-spice salt and pepper mix is taken from Taiwanese cooking. Often this mix is used to sprinkle on top of popcorn chicken or other deep-fried foods such as squid or pork chops. Although defending the authentic flavors of Vietnam, we use 5-spice heavily in many of our beloved recipes such as Bún Bò Huế (spicy beef noodle soup), Bò Kho (beef stew), and Tit Heo Noung (grilled lemongrass pork).
The recipe will make a lot of extra spice mix because really you only need about two pinches for each duck breast you cook, but it keeps for a very long time in a jar with a tight lid. I’ve discovered some non-traditional ways to enjoy it, such as sprinkling it on elk breakfast sausages, hashbrowns, eggs in any style, and stir-fried sea asparagus. So please take the time and make it, you won’t be disappointed. I haven’t been this excited about a recipe since I discovered how to make my own crispy chili oil!!!
Vietnamese Wild Duck and Cabbage Salad
Ingredients
Instructions
- Make salad the dressing using this recipe for Vietnamese Dipping Sauce, Nước Chấm.
- Shallot oil - Slice shallots thinly. Add shallots, salt, and oil into a cold pot. Turn on the heat to medium-low heat until golden-light-brown. Do not leave; they will go from brown to burnt really quickly! Set aside and let it cool down before using.
- Mix together salad base of green cabbage, carrots, red onion, cilantro, and mint.
- Assemble salad bowls with all the ingredients above. How much dressing and shallot oil is up to you. Let the salad base marinade in the dressing while you cook the duck.
- Pan-fry duck breast. I highly recommend using the linked salt and pepper mix, in my 5-spice crispy duck recipe.
- Slice the duck and add it on top of salad bowls. Garnish with crushed peanuts. Enjoy!
Thanks to Tiffany and Travis Bader at Silvercore for gifting me with these wild duck breasts. I couldn’t believe how much was fat beneath the skin—What a treat to cook and eat!
To me, ducks seem incredibly hard to hunt (actually what isn’t), and even farmed ducks are expensive to buy. Therefore out of fear of messing up the precious gift, I had the waterfowl game sitting in my freezer for months. The recipe has been forming in my head for over 6 months before I got the courage to defrost the package of duck breast and try them out. I am really proud of how the Vietnamese duck cabbage salad turned out, and I am even more excited for you to try it out! Let me know how it goes.
Happy Cooking!
Jenny
