Van Dinh grass duck meat is a famous Hanoi traditional food, is considered a famous culinary speciality.
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The origin of Van Dinh grass duck
Van Dinh grass ducks are ducks raised in Ung Hoa, Van Dinh, and Ha Noi districts. With many characteristics of lowland fields, Ung Hoa land is very suitable for this grass duck. In the rainy season, when the water floods on white fields, each duck swim to find food.
In the dry season, the ducks begin to full-grown. Van Dinh grass ducks are not fed with bran or industrial food but they find their own food on the field. Grass ducks eat worms, underwater crickets or grains of rice left over in fields, mosses, shrimp, insects, etc. Therefore, grass ducks are usually not large in weight, usually only about 1, 5kg. The ducks which are grown so carefully only gain the weight of 1.7 kg.
In every evening, the owner of the ducks just needs to shout “screech, screech, screech”, the ducks know the way back to the cages. Duck owners can feed them more rice to fatten them. Because of the characteristics of growing up, living almost in nature, the Van Dinh grass duck tastes distinctly different. Duck grass meat is not thick, but savoury, and their bone is also softer, can be processed into many delicious dishes. Therefore, Van Dinh grass duck has become one of the famous tourist specialities in Hanoi.
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Why is Van Dinh duck a rare favourite food?
Thanks to the delicious meat taste and the unique flavour of Van Dinh grass duck, many restaurants as well as Hanoi cooking class in the South and the North choose grass duck to process. Gradually, Van Dinh grass duck has become a rare delicacy. The first reason is that the grass is very different. A grass duck can be processed into many delicious dishes such as grilled duck, braised duck with qua sau, boiled duck, roasted duck… in which, the most prominent are two dishes of grilled grass duck and grass duck blood pudding.
Unlike regular ducks, grass ducks blood only can be made into a small cup of blood pudding, no fishy smell, but a slight scent, the colour is not red but pink. On the other hand, for the roasted duck, Van Dinh people use charcoal to grill duck. Duck meat is placed in a grilled charcoal grill, turning evenly so that the sides are golden.
The cooked ducks have an attractive smell, yellow colour like honey, slightly scorched, the meat inside is brown. Duck meat pieces are marinated thoroughly when eaten, the meat is savoury and delicious and hard to describe. The soft bone inside is crunchy, can be chewed easily. This dish is served with the dipping sauce made with each family’s own recipe, with the smell of the cilantro and the basil, really delicious.
The second reason is that raising a grass duck takes much more time than many other ducks. Normally, it takes 70 days for a new flock of duck to be gotten into processing. The weight of each duck is only from 1.5 to 1.7 kg. In addition, more and more fields and lakes become more and more polluted, making raising grass ducks difficult and risky.
In the 90s of the last century, China’s white-winged duck spread into our country. This is a duck breed that is easier to raise than grass ducks, meatier, higher productivity. And many Van Dinh people shifted to raising white-winged duck, Van Dinh grass duck gradually became rare. Although this duck breed is not completely lost, it is not easy for visitors on Hanoi food tasting tours to find the original Van Dinh grass duck.
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